Chapter 4: Have We Met?

"Sit down, Miss Rowan."

No hello. No smile. Just four words, as cold as the glass behind him.

It was him.

Six years older and sharper around the edges, but him. The same dark hair. The same jaw. The same eyes, the ones that had looked so tired of the whole Velvet Room. Under the cold, there were dark circles. He looked like he hadn't slept in years. That hadn't changed either.

My knees did the sitting for me. I dropped into the chair across from his desk and held my bag in my lap like a shield.

Tessa said grown men cried in this room. Now I understand. It wasn't that he was scared. It was that he was real, and he was six feet away, and he had no idea what he'd done to my life.

A gold nameplate sat on the corner of the desk. Gideon Hale. Chairman and CEO.

G. For Gideon.

I wanted to laugh. I also wanted to crawl under the carpet. I had spent six years thinking of him as a hired man named G. I'd slid two thousand dollars across a nightstand like a tip. He probably spent more than that on lunch. He owned this building. And the one next door. And, if the news was right, half of NorthHill.

What was a man like that doing in the Velvet Room in a plain black shirt? Why hadn't he said anything? His face gave me nothing.

"Amy Rowan," he said, reading from a folder. He didn't look up. "Thirty-one. Finance degree. Six years behind a bakery counter in Brookmere, plus bookkeeping for a few small shops." He turned a page. "Before that, nothing. Why?"

"Before that, I was a wife."

It came out before I could stop it. Honest. Stupid.

Now he looked up, just for a second. His eyes landed on my face, and the pen in his hand stopped moving.

Then it moved again. So fast I thought I'd imagined it.

He doesn't know me, I thought. Relief hit so hard I felt dizzy. The short hair, the glasses, the six years. They worked. To him, I was a stranger in a gray blouse. If he remembered that night, he'd have said so. A man like him doesn't play games with a bakery clerk.

I should have been glad. A small, stupid part of me felt something else. Something close to hurt.

"A wife," he said.

"Divorced. It's a long story, and it's not part of the job."

"Fair." He closed the folder. "One rule before we go on. I don't tolerate lies. Not big ones, not small ones. Tell me the truth, even when it's ugly."

"Understood," I said. My stomach folded in half.

"Now. Tell me why Hale Group should hire a woman from a bakery counter."

"Because I'm good with numbers, I work hard, and I don't need to be told twice."

"Everyone says that."

"Then test me."

My own voice surprised me. I'd never talked to a boss like that in my life. But six kids and a pickle jar make a person brave.

Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. He took a single page from his desk and slid it across.

"A vendor budget," he said. "Something is wrong with it. You have five minutes."

I picked it up. Numbers calm me down. They always have. They don't laugh at you. They don't call you names. They just sit there and tell the truth.

My bag buzzed against my leg. I didn't look. It buzzed again.

"You can answer that," Gideon said.

"It's just my landlady."

That was true. It just wasn't the whole truth, and I was getting good at that kind of truth.

I turned the phone off, dropped it in the bag, and went back to the page. Two minutes later, I put it on his desk.

"Line fourteen and line twenty-two are the same invoice. Same vendor, same date, same amount. Someone billed you twice. That's forty-eight thousand dollars."

He looked at the page. Then at the clock on the wall. Then at me.

"Two minutes," he said. "My analysts usually need twenty."

"Your analysts probably never had to make forty dollars last week."

I didn't mean to say that, either. The truth kept slipping out around him. I'd have to fix that.

"That's a hard way to learn arithmetic," he said.

"It's the only way that sticks."

His mouth moved. It wasn't a smile, just the ghost of one. For one second, I saw the man at the end of the bar, the one who'd said That's fair. Then it was gone, and I was holding my breath.

"Who taught you to read a budget?"

"Nobody. I built my ex-husband's first one at a kitchen table. He took the credit."

"And you left."

"He didn't let me go. I left."

"Good," he said quietly.

I didn't know what to do with that word, so I just sat there with it.

"Finance, fortieth floor," he said. "Junior analyst. Three months of probation. I read every report from every new hire myself, so make them good."

"Yes, Mr. Hale."

"Julian will give you a badge."

That was it. I stood up. My legs worked, barely. I walked to the door without looking back, with one rule in my head: don't run.

My hand was on the handle when he spoke again.

"Miss Rowan."

I turned. He was watching me with his head tilted, the way you look at a word you know but can't place.

"Have we met before?"

My heart stopped. It just stopped. For one second, I forgot how to talk.

"No," I said. "I'd remember."

Which was true. I'd remember. I had remembered for six years.

"Of course." He kept watching me. "You remind me of someone."

"I get that a lot."

I never had.

Julian was waiting outside with a badge and a big smile. "Well? You're alive. Good start." He handed it to me, then paused, studying my face again. "You're pale again. Did he make you cry?"

"No. He gave me the job."

"On the spot?" Julian's eyebrows went up. "Huh. He doesn't do that. And you were there twenty-five minutes. Most people get ten."

"Is he always like that?"

"Like what? Cold?" Julian shrugged. "Pretty much. For six years, I've never seen him look at a new hire twice. You're lucky."

Lucky. I nearly laughed.

I rode the elevator down alone. My reflection in the steel doors looked calm. Inside, I was screaming.

Zoe stares exactly like that. Chin up, daring the world to blink first. I'd watch Gideon do it ten minutes ago. For six years I had told myself the kids looked like me. Six faces, and not one of them had my eyes.

My phone lit up when I turned it back on. Dot. Kids want to know if you got the job. Max says if not, he's selling Zoe's robot.

I stared at it. Six little faces. Six pairs of his eyes.

I typed one word. Yes.

Then I leaned my head against the cold wall and let it sink in. Gideon Hale, the most powerful man in NorthHill, was the father of my children. He had just looked me in the eye and asked if we'd met.

And I was going to work for him.

Rule two: keep them hidden. I had never needed it more.