Page 20

I wasn’t sure what had gotten me here. The office was stylish, a blend of modern and Art Deco giving it a flair somewhere between playful and elegant, and the receptionist smiled politely at me, although I’d seen enough polite smiles to know when someone was ready to put someone out the door. Things must have been stressful here.

“Hi there, what are you here for today?” she said, a young woman with a tight blonde bun.

What a fantastic question. I wasn’t even sure, just that I needed to see her. “I’m looking for Cameron.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Miss Mercier is quite busy at the moment. Can I pass on a message?”

I glanced past reception at the glass wall into a meeting room, a quietly heated argument going on judging by their expressions. No sign of Cameron. Must have been stress all over the office today. “I think she’ll make a second to see me. Would you tell her I’m here?”

“Mm. Your name?” I’d never seen a person so skeptical.

“London.”

She paused with her hand on the phone. “Sinclair? The real estate agent?”

“In flesh and blood. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Ah…” She made a face. “Well… Miss Mercier has switched to—”

“Do you want me to walk back there and just go find her myself?” I wasn’t sure what was possessing me right now, but whatever it was, it wasn’t taking prisoners. The receptionist flickered a nervous smile.

“My apologies. I’ll, er… let her know.” She punched a few numbers on the phone, holding it up to her ear. “Hi, Cameron, er… Miss London Sinclair is here to see you. Are you expecting her?”

She raised her eyebrows, nodding along at sound from the other side.

“I’ll send her over. Thank you.” She hung up, giving me an odd look. “I… apologize. I didn’t know you had an appointment.”

I smiled wryly, my heart beating faster. “Must have slipped my mind to mention it. Very sorry.”

She pointed down the hall. “End of the hall, make a left. She said you can walk right in. Have a lovely day, Miss Sinclair.”

“You too. And just call me London.” I walked past her, heading down the hall, and out the corner of my eye, I saw a woman on the verge of tears pacing the floor in a breakroom. People falling apart at the office was hardly a new sight for me, but… I ached wondering what was happening. Wondering what it meant that I couldn’t stop wondering how Cameron was doing, how her business was doing.

The door to her office had her nameplate on it, Cameron Mercier, and I stopped for a second just to admire how nice her name looked in that plating before I knocked once, pushing the door open.

Inside the office, Cameron stood at a full-wall window overlooking the water, her back to me, dressed sharply in a pinstripe suit, one hand in her pocket and the other holding a coffee cup. And—well, whether I liked it or not, the fact remained that she looked damn good in her power posture like this, and it… did things to my chest, knowing how we’d been before.

“You’ve never been one for advance warning,” she said lightly as I stepped inside, shutting the door behind me.

“I didn’t have advance warning, myself,” I said, my breath short. “I was driving and I… found myself here.”

She hesitated, still not looking at me. I didn’t dare move from the door, didn’t dare sit down, anything until she looked at me, but she remained steadfast. “So. You’re still in the city.”

“Still have the rest of my lease. I’ve been… looking.”

She paused. “But?”

I let out a shaky breath. “That’s what I’m wondering, too.”

She set down her cup, and she turned, finally, to face me. That deep, dark look in her eyes—she was barely holding herself together. I doubted anyone but the people closest to her could tell—the intensity she carried herself with still made her look untouchable, unapproachable—but like this, for me, here, now, it was obvious.

“You are a woman of extraordinary timing,” she said lightly. “Just when I’d fully accepted that you were going and I had to move on, here you are, in my office.”

“I… wanted to see you again.” I paused. “It didn’t feel right that I’d last seen… Amelie, and not you.”

She walked around to this side of the desk, leaning backwards against it, and she took a long sip from her coffee before she set it down and gestured me to the winged armchair, the red velvet look of it giving a seductive, almost alluring look to the space. “Have a seat.”

“And leave you standing?”

She smiled wryly. “You’re as contrary as ever. Put your ass in the chair.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely.” I sat down. Cameron turned away, looking out the window again.

“So. Where are you heading?”

“Vegas, probably. A… former coworker and friend is over there, said she could get me some contacts.”

She sighed. “Got tired of the rain and went to the desert. Makes sense.”

She wasn’t talking about the rain at all, but I wasn’t ready to approach that. “What’s happening here? Everyone’s on edge.”

“Ah. So you picked up on it.”

“Salesperson’s job.”

She gave me a thin, barely-there smile. “Our parent brand is considering dropping us. That’s the gist of it.”

“What—why?” My stomach dropped. She leaned back against the desk again, casting her gaze to the ceiling.

“From the sounds of things? Bad rumors. A tactical war being waged against my reputation that I’ve been entirely unaware of. And they’re now suspecting that a brand with my name on it is no longer tenable.”

Christ. So I really was a bad luck charm. A sick curse. “You don’t… know who’s behind it, do you?”

“I’ll let you hazard a guess.”

I paused, a sick feeling in my throat. “Er…”

She hung her head. “You’d tried to warn me. And I suppose I was living with my head in the sand. It wasn’t even a full week ago we had the conversation at the hotel, and you told me he might try to sabotage me. Even while we were having that conversation, he was actively in the middle of talking to the representatives at the parent brand. I just… I just…” She raked her fingers back through her hair. When she spoke again, her voice was cracked, jagged around the edges. “ Dammit. I wanted to believe I knew him. That all of that wasn’t for nothing.”

I was up on my feet before I noticed myself moving, and I stepped in, laying a hand on her arm. “Cameron… you did know him. You do know him. Just… the version of him that existed before.”

She took a long, shaky breath, and she shook her head. “Don’t patronize me. I like you too much to let you.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.” She looked up, meeting my gaze with the intensity of her eyes, narrowed just a fraction. “I’ve had to sit with this for the past forty-eight hours in some kind of hell of my own making. I never knew him. I couldn’t. He didn’t want me to. And then there’s you.” She turned away, picking up her coffee off the desk, walking back to the window. I swallowed hard, trying to pull myself together, put words together.

“What… about me?” I said, and she gestured idly without looking back at me.

“You tell me. What sort of person are you?”

The air in here felt tense, tight, like I was breathing through a cloth. I leaned against her desk, grounding myself on the solid feel of the hard wood. “Aside from being a bad luck charm? Don’t know.”

“You don’t know, or you don’t want to know?”

I frowned. She tipped back the last of her coffee and, with an exasperated sigh, crumpled the cup and tossed it into the trash, turning back to me. She looked like she’d aged ten years as she sank into her desk chair.

“I’m needed at an event in half an hour. I don’t have all day here.”

Everything in me told me to shrink away. I gripped the desk tighter. “Are you telling me to leave?”

“I’m telling you to get to the point, London. Why are you here?”

“I told you—”

“So you did. Now tell me the truth.”

I bristled. “Just because you’re stressed doesn’t mean you need to be cryptic about everything. What are you saying?”

She tented her hands on the desk. “I’m saying I don’t believe you—that you’re here just to see me as Cameron before you leave. And I’m asking for you to tell me the truth.”

I pursed my lips. I had no way of conveying to her that it was the truth, regardless of what… what she might have wanted. What I might have wanted. Was it true?

I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. What I was thinking anymore.

Cameron softened. “For you to tell yourself the truth,” she said, gently. I squeezed the desk tighter, my hands aching now from the strain.

“Why don’t you believe me?” I managed, but it came out small, thin, reedy. Cameron looked down, searching for words, before she met my gaze and gestured me back to the armchair. Limply, I sank back into it. “Cameron…”

“I let myself move… too quickly, perhaps,” she said, delicately considering each word. “With you, that is. And I did the same with him, years ago. Generally, I think it’s a strength of mine—that I move intensely once I have my sights set on something, and I don’t back away from what I want. But perhaps the years… teach me caution, as they always do.”

I took a long breath, folding my hands on my lap. “Are you saying you regret what we—”

“Not for a second.” She stopped me with a hand up. “But now that I’ve had this time… to sit with your disappearance and his betrayal. I can see the two of you at once, and from where I’m standing, you don’t look that different.”

I felt a sickly surge of something in my chest, heat flaring out to my fingertips and tightening my throat. Still, I schooled my reaction. “I could think of a few differences.”

She smiled lightly. “Too true. No, you’re right. You’re completely different. And yet alike in one fundamental way. Neither of you will be who you are.”

It hit me like a wet slap, a gut punch that left me sinking slowly back against the chair. I wanted to ask what she was talking about, but… as if I needed clarification?

No wonder he’d pissed me off. There was a saying—we hate in others what we hate in ourselves. Kevin Farmer in my office had felt like I was talking to a wax model, everything he did fake, an affect, something put on to appear a certain way. Trying to put on an image. Be something so the world would perceive him how he wanted.

He had the same black cloud Garcia had seen over me.

I pulled in a shuddering breath, and I made myself relax in the chair. “Bold words from the one with a professional alter-ego…”

She laughed lightly. “Ah, see? This is why I like you, London. You challenge me not because you want it, but because I need it. Maybe I’m no better. Maybe that’s why I gravitate towards people who do the same thing.” She stood up. “London… I’m glad you came. I was of half a mind to find you. I needed closure. I have… really enjoyed our time together. But as long as you’re still like this, as much as it pains me to say—you could only ever hurt me.”

I stood with her, a sick feeling churning in my stomach. “Like this… like what?”

She gestured airily as she came around the desk, not looking straight at me. “Like… how did you put it? So many ways?” She let out a soft breath. “A salesperson.”

I stopped, watching as she walked past me, pausing with her hand on the door handle.

“Take care, London. Earl of Westlake too.” She smiled—distantly, strained, not looking at me. “You’re going to do well in Vegas. I’m sure you will.”

Words slipped from my lips before I could catch them. “And if I find myself back here?”

She opened the door. “And face the rain? I don’t see why you’d do that to yourself.”

Cameron stepped out through the door, pulling it shut behind her, and the office was quiet in her absence.