Novels by Blossom

Chapter 5: Eleven YearsI heard them before the elevator doors closed."She'll come crawling back within the week." Lucinda's voice, carrying the way it did when she assumed the room had already emptied of anyone worth lowering it for. "Where else does a girl like that have to go?""We need the Ferrers signed before quarter's end," Damian said, lower, already back to business. "Their name is the only thing that gets us to the table with the Whitfields. Nobody else can open that door right now.""And thank God for it," Lucinda said. "Imagine if they ever knew a woman like Amara had worn our name. We'd be a laughingstock in that boardroom before we ever sat down."The elevator doors closed on the sound of her laugh. I said nothing there was nothing to say to a room that had already emptied of anyone worth saying it to, and no one in it would ever know how wrong she was about whose name would actually open that door."No family," Priscilla added, satisfaction thick in it, the sound of a

Chapter 4: GuestsI had the corrected file sent and my laptop half packed when the elevator chimed, followed by Lucinda's voice pitched into the register she used only for people worth performing for."They're early," she said, though her face said she'd planned it exactly this way. "Amara, be a dear and put on a fresh pot of coffee. The good cups."Two years ago I'd have been moving before she finished the sentence. I noticed myself hesitate now — half a second, just long enough to feel it before old habit won anyway.I was rinsing the good cups when Bianca Ferrer walked in like she already owned the floor. Beautiful in the specific, engineered way that took a team of people to maintain. She looked at me once, a sweep from my flats to my ponytail, and decided I wasn't worth a second glance."Oh." To Damian, not to me. "I didn't realize your assistant would still be here.""Amara was helping with the Hensley numbers.""Of course she was." Bianca smiled the way people smile when they'v

chapter 3: The ClauseThe doorman still smiled at me like I belonged there. The divorce hadn't made the building gossip yet. Small mercies one more night of being Mrs. Cross before the city started talking.Lucinda opened the door herself, waiting the way a spider waits."Amara." She said my name like it cost her something. "How efficient of you to still come running.""I'm here for the Hensley file. Not for you.""Of course." She stepped aside just enough to let me in, not enough to make it easy. "Whatever you are, you're certainly useful. Damian always did say you were good at your job.""It's lovely seeing you here again, Amara." She smiled, already turning back toward the hall. "Habit is difficult to break."Whatever you are. I filed it away with everything else, in the drawer marked for later.Damian was in his study, sleeves rolled, three monitors glowing with numbers I already knew were wrong. Something crossed his face when I walked in, gone before I could name it."You came

Chapter 2: The Charity CaseNaomi opened her apartment door before I finished knocking. She'd been watching through the peephole."Tell me he didn't do it over email.""Worse. In person, on our anniversary, in under five minutes. Then he answered his mother's call before I finished my sentence.""I'm going to kill him."I chuckled "Get in line."Naomi was my bestfriend and the one person in the world I would never trade for anything. I knew she could never betray me. So I ran to her everytime.She pulled me inside by the sleeve of my coat, sat me on the forty-dollar Craigslist couch we'd bought together in college, and put a glass of wine in my hand before I'd taken my shoes off. Naomi Reyes had been the only person at my wedding who wasn't there for Damian and the only one who'd looked at me afterward like she was worried instead of impressed."Start from the papers," she said, curling up across from me the way she used to when we studied for exams we were both terrified of failing.

Forsaken Heiress: My Ex Husband's New BossChapter 1: Five MinutesThis was the third time I was fixing a mess made in the HENSLEY FILE this week. You would think I got paid better.His footsteps didn't stop at his own office door that afternoon. They stopped at mine.I knew Damian Cross by the sound of his footsteps before I ever learned to read his face fast and even, a good day, fast and clipped, trouble upstairs. Three years married, three years working for him one floor below his own, long enough to know exactly which one was coming before it arrived. This one I'd never heard before."Mr. Cross." I looked up. In this building I was still Ms. Whitfield from the twelfth floor, and he was still Mr. Cross from the forty-first. Frank Delgado was still at the printer behind him, close enough to hear anything Damian didn't bother lowering his voice for. "Did you need the Hensley file?"He didn't answer. He set a manila folder on my desk, holding it at the very edge, like it might burn h