Page 12 of To the Chase

I buttoned my jacket and smoothed a hand over my hair. “All right. I have to talk to Paul before the meeting. I’ll see you there.”

Paul was nowhere in sight, and I didn’t feel like hunting him down for a question I could answer myself. Stalking toward the main conference room, I halted in the doorway.

Twenty minutes before our weekly team meeting, the only person in the room was the caterer. Even facing away from me, it was abundantly clear this was not Rachel, who had been catering our meetings for a year.

Rachel did not have big, blue curls. I’d never noticed the shape of her hips and ass, so I couldn’t state with one-hundred percent certainty, but I was pretty sure they hadn’t come close to filling out her pants likethiswoman’s. Rachel moved with quiet efficiency. This woman moved with the smooth grace of a ballet dancer wrapped in the curves of burlesque.

Rachel had also been sixty-two.

This woman?Notsixty-two.

Pulling my gaze from her, I scanned the table she was setting, and a knot unfurled in my gut. Cups filled with meats and cheeses lined up in neat rows. A tray of fruit, perfectly arranged in a rainbow spray. In between movements, she used a black pen to check off items listed on a small clipboard.

The orderliness of it all was a fascinating contrast to the streaks of royal, sky, and ocean weaving through her hair and the glint of silver in her nostril. She looked like the kind of woman who’d enter a room and send it into delightfully maddening disarray, yet she was methodical and precise.

It was soothing to watch.

Too soothing.

She turned abruptly, catching me staring, and her brows dipped.

I probably looked like a creep.

Watching her work. Standing in the doorway. Saying nothing.

She gathered herself first, wiping every trace of wariness and replacing it with polite professionalism. “Oh, hi. How are you?”

Her voice was a 1920s speakeasy. Illicit. Thick with smoke and velvet.

“Where’s Rachel?” I blurted.

Her head jerked. “I don’t know who Rachel is, so I can’t answer that. The only person I know here is Paul. He might know where Rachel is.”

Of course. Why would she know where our usual caterer was?

“All right.” I rapped on the doorframe as she stared, her eyes bouncing over me. I was keeping her from her job—the only reason she was here. Now wasn’t the time for conversation.

Swiveling on my heel, I went in search of Paul.

Normally, I didn’t like disruptions.

This one, though? I didn’t think I was going to mind.

Not in the least.

Chapter Five

Bea

HeknewwhoIwas. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I was so sure of that, but I was.

What I didn’t get was why he wasn’t acknowledging our brief but intense past.

The simple answer? It had only been intense for me, while I had been a minor blip in his life. Based on his bajillion-dollar company, the power he so clearly held, and what my AI buddy, Anthony, had explained, it’s what I was leaning toward.

It blew my mind the shy yet blunt Tore I’d met in the bar, dressed in well-worn jeans and a faded anime shirt, was the same man who, just last week, had been wearing a sleek, well-tailored suit, occupying a doorway like he owned it.

On second thought, I supposed he did own it.