Maya felt lighter than she had since she’d left Italy as she walked into the big room, packed tight with colleagues and clients. There was entirely too much speculation in the gazes that landed on her, Lorraine and Ethan on Lorraine’s other side. Everyone got the optics, just as Ethan had wanted.
She put the smile she’d practiced on her face, she held her head high and she began to work the room.
After all, she was good at it.
But there was something missing as she moved from one gleaming knot of people to the next. She could still do her job. She could smile here, insert a witty comment there, act confident and at ease. As if nothing had happened.
And yet she felt as if she was wearing someone else’s skin. As if she was a puppet, going through the motions.
This is black-and-white and gray straight through, something whispered inside her when she laughed politely at a very wealthy client’s joke that wasn’t the least bit funny. When what you want to do is shine.
She snuck away after she’d done an exhausting round of platitudes, evasions and pointed commentary. She made her way down the abandoned, hushed hall, letting herself into one of the executive-level washrooms. It was single use, which meant she could lock the door and take a deep breath in peace before avoiding her own reflection in the mirror.
Maya didn’t have any business to take care of, so she simply stood there. Wishing she felt more like herself again. Or not herself—but the person she’d been the last time she’d stood on this floor, a year ago at this same party, absolutely certain that she knew every last facet of her beautiful future.
She let out a hollow laugh at that.
Then, when she thought she had no choice but to head back into the fray and resume smiling until her cheeks hurt, she marched over and threw open the door.
And then stopped, because she was apparently having a stroke.
Or maybe she’d fallen, there inside the washroom, and hit her head so hard that she was seeing things.
Because the man who stood there didn’t make sense.
He was dressed in another dark, bespoke suit that licked over that lean, hard physique of his and made him...more, somehow. More dangerous. More beautiful. More him. His dirty-blond hair was raked back from his face, his beard made him look like some kind of pirate and his blue eyes blazed with a dark, consuming fury she could feel like a punch to the gut.
Because she knew it was all for her.
“Charlie...” she whispered, unable to make sense of this. He stood there with his hands in his pockets, his body looking relaxed when she could tell that he was nothing close to relaxed. At all. Quite the opposite. “You can’t... How... You can’t be here.”
“Too bad for you, babe,” he drawled, too much Texas and far too much lethal retribution in his rough, low, gorgeous voice. “Because I am. And that means you’re pretty much fucked.”
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