‘I want you to do everything in your power to make this party a success,’ Lily told her. ‘I’m releasing your other clients to Laura for the week.’
‘What?’ Eleanor heard the outrage in her voice, and strove to temper it. She had several clients she’d been working with for months, and she knew Laura—another frenemy—would be eager to scoop up the contacts and run with them. Eleanor gritted her teeth. This business could be brutal. She’d toughened up a lot in the last ten years, but it still made her weary. She also knew there was nothing she could do about it.
If Lily was going to make that kind of executive decision, so be it. He wasn’t worth her jeopardising her career; he wasn’t worth anything. She would work on Jace’s damn party for a week. And then she would forget—again—that she’d ever met him.
Lily’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is that going to be a problem, Eleanor?’
Eleanor bit the inside of her cheek. She hated that tone, that silky, dangerous, warning tone that her mother had always taken with her as a child. Funny, how she’d ended up in a job just like her mother’s, with a boss just like her mother.
Except there was nothing remotely funny about it, or even coincidental. Every choice, every decision had been intentional, a way of distancing herself from everything she’d been or believed in. A way of reinventing herself.
And it had worked.
Now she turned to smile sweetly at her boss. ‘Of course not. I’m absolutely thrilled—and honoured, Lily—to be working with Mr Zervas. Getting his account is a coup for the agency.’
Lily nodded, seemingly satisfied. ‘So it is. Are you meeting with Zervas again?’
‘I’ll email him the particulars tomorrow.’ Eleanor shuddered inwardly to think what that meant. She’d be tied up in begging calls for the rest of the day, recalling favours and currying some more so she could make this thing happen.
The idea that she would have to slave away all for Jace burned in her gut, her heart. It was just wrong.
But she wasn’t about to lose her job over this, or even her cool. And, Eleanor told herself, there could be some sweet, sweet satisfaction in showing Jace how he hadn’t hurt her at all.
Even if he really had—and horribly at that.
She spent the rest of the day immersed in work, planning Jace’s party while refusing to think of the man himself. A call to Atrikides Holdings yielded some interesting—and unsurprising—information.
‘It all happened so fast,’ gushed the staff member Eleanor had been connected to when she asked to speak to someone about details. Eleanor leaned back in her chair and prepared to hear some gossip. ‘One minute everything was fine—it’s a family business, you know—and the next he swooped in and took over. Fired half the people.’ The woman—Peggy— lowered her voice to an awed hush. ‘They had to leave that very day. Pack their stuff in boxes. Even Talos Atrikides—the CEO’s son!’
‘Well, hopefully this party will go some way to smoothing things over,’ Eleanor replied. She could listen to the gossip, but she wouldn’t indulge in it herself. She knew better.
Still, as she hung up the phone, the conversation left her a little shaken. She’d fallen in love with Jace Zervas when he’d been just twenty-two years old, charming, easy-going, carefree and careless. She hadn’t realised just how cold—and cold-hearted—he’d been until he’d walked away.
And hearing about his actions with Atrikides Holdings today confirmed it. He really was that man.
The other one—the one she’d fallen in love with—had been nothing more than a mirage. A lie.
It was nearly midnight by the time Eleanor finally stumbled out of the office, exhausted and eyesore from scanning endless sheets of paper with their myriad details. Still, she had the basis of a party to propose to Jace—via email—tomorrow. Massaging her temples, she headed out into the street, the only cars visible a few off-duty cabs. It looked as if she would have to walk.
It was only a few blocks to her apartment in a high-rise condo on the Hudson River, a gleaming testament to glass and steel. Eleanor didn’t particularly like the modern architecture, or the building’s fussy, high-maintenance residents, but she’d bought it because her mother had said it was a good investment. And she didn’t spend much time there anyway.
Sighing, Eleanor nodded hello to the doorman on duty and then headed in the high-speed lift up to the thirtieth floor.
Her apartment was, as always, dark and quiet. Eleanor dropped her keys on the hall table and flicked on the recessed lighting that bathed the living room with its modern sofa and teakwood coffee table in soft yellow light. Outside the Hudson River twinkled with lights.
Her stomach rumbled and she realised she had skipped dinner. Again. Kicking off her heels, she went to the galley kitchen and peered in her near-empty fridge. It held half a carton of moo shoo pork and a yogurt that was—Eleanor peered closer—two weeks past its sell-by date. Neither looked appetising.
Dispiritedly Eleanor closed the fridge. It was hard to believe she’d once baked cookies and muffins by the dozen, had dreamed of owning her own café. She’d been unbearably, determinedly domestic, and now she could barely feed herself.
She grabbed a handful of rather stale crackers from the cupboard and went back to the living room. Funny, she hadn’t thought of her old café dream in years, yet when she’d known Jace she’d spent hours embroidering that daydream, how it would be a little bit of everything: coffee shop, bakery, bookstore, gallery. Warm, cosy, bright, and welcoming. The home she’d never felt she’d had. It—everything—had seemed so possible then, so bright and shiny.
And now having Jace back in her life so suddenly, so surprisingly, brought it all back. The dreams, the disappointments.
The despair.
Eleanor thrust the thought away as she munched another cracker. Her stomach rumbled again. Perhaps sleep was better. She was exhausted anyway, and at least when she was asleep she wouldn’t feel hungry. Neither would she have to think—or remember.
Dropping her uneaten crackers in the bin, Eleanor turned towards her bedroom.
Yet as she lay in the darkness of her room, the duvet pulled up to her chest, sleep didn’t come. She was exhausted yet her eyes were wide open and gritty. And despite her best effort for them not to, the memories came, slipping into her mind, winding around her heart.
Lying there in the dark, she could almost feel the late autumn sunshine slanting onto the wide-planked wooden floors of her college apartment. She saw herself, tousle-haired, young, laughing, holding out a cupcake to Jace. They weren’t lovers then; they hadn’t even kissed. Yet. He’d invited himself over to taste the treats she’d been telling him about when he’d come into the café where she worked for his morning latte. And high with anticipation, Eleanor had invited him in, revelling in the charged atmosphere as he took a bite of the cupcake right from her hand, and then, laughing, pulled her close for a kiss.
It had been so easy, so right, and she’d gone without even considering another option, a different choice. He’d tasted like chocolate.
She closed her eyes, her throat tight and aching. She didn’t want to resurrect these memories. She worked hard never to remember them. Yet they came anyway, so sweet and yet so bitter for what came afterward.
The empty apartment. The disconnected cellphone. The bounced emails. The cold, cold despair when she’d realised just how alone she was.
Groaning alone, Eleanor turned on her side, tucking her knees up to her chest, and clenched her eyes shut as if that could keep the memories from coming and consuming her.
The blip of her baby on the monitor. The hard, sharp edge of the examining table, the cold slime of the gel on her tummy,