Novels by Pearl Charles

Julian's POVThe photo stayed up for three days. I knew because David's assistant mentioned it, not to me directly, but to Linda, who mentioned it to me with the specific neutrality of someone delivering information without editorializing."It's generating some attention," Linda said. "The architecture publication that covered the brownstone picked it up. There's speculation about the nature of your current domestic situation.""My domestic situation is my marriage," I said."I know that. I'm telling you other people are deciding what it is based on a sidewalk photo and a vague caption." She looked at me. "Do you want to address it?""No.""Nadia?""Nadia doesn't perform for speculation." I kept my voice even. "It'll disappear in a week." Linda nodded. "The Columbia decision comes in two weeks.""I know.""Don't let noise land in the same window as something important." She went back to her screen. "That's all."Nadia didn't mention the photo again.Not because she was suppressing it.

Nadia's POVI didn't think about Serena Cole on Monday.I thought about her on Tuesday. Not obsessively. Not the kind of thinking that derails work or requires management. Just the occasional surface-level appearance of her name in my mind, the way an unwelcome variable appears in a model you thought was complete.Julian had been transparent. He'd told me before he'd read the brief, before he'd made any decision. He'd taken the meeting on his terms, at his office, his assistant's involvement making it professional by structure.I knew all of that.I also knew that I didn't know Serena Cole. I knew them for eight months, four years ago, and they were mutual. I knew David Song had recommended Julian to her, which meant David knew they had history and had made the introduction anyway, which was either thoughtless or deliberate, and I hadn't decided which.I called David on Tuesday afternoon. He picked up on the second ring."Nadia," he said. "You referred Serena Cole to Julian," I said.

Julian's POVHer name was Serena Cole.I hadn't thought about her in three years. We'd dated for eight months before my marriage to Nadia, the kind of relationship that existed in the space between two people who were convenient for each other and honest enough not to pretend otherwise. It ended cleanly. No damage, no residue.Or so I'd thought.She called on a Monday morning while I was at the office.I didn't recognize the number. I picked up because I was expecting a call from the London team. "Julian." Her voice was exactly as I remembered it. Precise, slightly amused at everything. "It's Serena."I sat back in my chair."Serena," I said."I'm in New York. I heard through reasonably reliable sources that you're at a firm called Meridian now." A pause. "I wanted to reach out. It's been a long time.""Three years.""Almost four." Another pause. "I'm not calling to complicate anything. I have a business proposition. My firm is looking for a CEO consultant for a six month project. Som

Nadia's POVI woke before Julian.That didn't happen often. He was constitutionally early, up before six most days with the quiet efficiency of someone who'd decided morning was worth being present for. I lay in the dark and listened to him breathing, and looked at the ceiling, and felt the particular quality of a Sunday that had nothing in it.No calls. No deadlines. No travel. Just the apartment and the three of us. I stayed in bed for twenty minutes because I could.Julian was up by seven.I heard him in the nursery, the low voice he used with Elise in the mornings, explaining the day in terms she was assembling into meaning. She had twelve words now. She used them with the precision of someone who understood that language was a tool and tools should be used correctly.I came downstairs at seven-thirty.He was at the stove with Elise in the carrier on his back, which he'd started doing on weekend mornings when she wanted to be held and he wanted his hands free. She was examining th

Julian's POVI was up at six-thirty. Elise was already awake, talking to herself in the nursery in the way she did before deciding whether the day required announcing. I went in before she made that decision.She looked at me."Morning," I said. She held up her arms.I picked her up, and we went to the kitchen. The rain against the windows, the apartment warm, Nadia still asleep. Saturday routine, no different from any other Saturday except that nothing required us to go anywhere.I made coffee and held Elise on my hip while the machine ran, and she examined the rain on the window with the focused attention she gave to the weather."That's rain," I told her. She pressed her palm against the glass. "Cold," she said. New word from Thursday, deployed accurately."Yes. Cold."She looked at me to confirm she'd used it correctly. "Very good," I said. She accepted this and went back to the rain.Nadia came down at eight.Hair not right, the oversized sweater she wore on weekend mornings, cof

Nadia's POVWashington was three days of the most focused work I'd done since Mumbai.Carol and I spent the first two days in the hotel preparing. Not the presentation itself, that was ready. The room. Who would be in it, what they cared about, and where the framework intersected with the specific policy problems the World Bank working group was trying to solve.The working group lead was Dr. Amara Osei. Ghanaian, sixty, had spent thirty years at the intersection of development economics and infrastructure policy. Carol had sent me her published work in July. I'd read all of it.She'd built the theoretical foundation I'd been standing on when I built the framework. I hadn't fully understood that until I was sitting across from her.The meeting was four hours.Not a presentation. A working session. Dr. Osei had read the Mumbai presentation, the methodology section of the research paper, and two of my firm's Southeast Asia market reports. She arrived with seventeen pages of notes.We we