Chapter 3: The Woman at the Door

She was at his office at nine the next morning.

Not Jade. Someone else entirely.

Jade arrived at Crest Holdings at eight fifty-five, coffee in hand, hair down, wearing a slate grey dress that was professional enough for the world and fitted enough to remind herself of who she had decided to become. She had slept in Dominic's bed and woken to the smell of coffee already made and a man who looked at her across his kitchen like she was something he had not expected to still want in the morning light but did anyway, thoroughly and without apology.

She had left his building feeling like a woman walking on new ground.

That feeling lasted precisely until she stepped off the elevator on the forty-second floor and saw the woman standing at Dominic's office door.

Tall. Blonde in the specific way that required maintenance and money. Wearing a cream dress that probably cost more than Jade's first car and carrying herself with the particular ease of someone who had stood in this exact hallway many times before and considered it familiar territory. She was speaking to Dominic's assistant with a smile that was warm on the surface and territorial underneath, and when she turned and saw Jade the smile did not change but something behind her eyes sharpened immediately.

Jade kept walking. She went to her own office, which was three doors down and glass-walled, set her coffee down, and opened her laptop.

She was seventeen minutes into her work when Dominic appeared in her doorway.

She looked up.

"You saw her," he said. It was not a question.

"Blonde. Cream dress. Comfortable with your hallway." Jade kept her voice even. "Who is she?"

He came inside and closed the glass door behind him, which she noted because it meant he did not want the floor to hear this. He stood with his hands in his pockets and the expression on his face was controlled but not entirely, something moving underneath the surface of it.

"Celeste Harrow," he said. "We were together for two years. It ended fourteen months ago."

"She does not appear to have received that information," Jade said.

"Celeste receives information selectively." He looked at her steadily. "She is also a silent investor in two of my subsidiary companies. Which makes a clean exit complicated."

Jade looked at him for a long moment. She was good at reading situations and what she was reading now had several layers. The history in his voice when he said her name. The specific tension in his jaw. The fact that he had come directly to Jade's office before doing anything else.

"Is she a problem?" Jade asked.

"She can be," he said. "I want you to know about her before she introduces herself to you, which she will do, and which will be deliberate."

Jade appreciated the warning. She also filed away the fact that he felt the need to give it. That spoke to the nature of Celeste Harrow more clearly than anything he had said directly.

"I have a meeting in twenty minutes," Jade said. "With your Valen account team."

He nodded. Turned to go. Then stopped with his hand on the door.

"Last night," he said, his back still to her.

"Yes," she said, before he could finish.

He turned and looked at her over his shoulder and something in his face shifted, loosened slightly, the controlled surface cracking just enough to show the warmth underneath. Then he opened the door and walked back into the hallway and she watched him go and felt the specific and inconvenient sensation of wanting someone in a way that went beyond the physical.

She pressed her fingertips against her desktop and refocused.

Twenty minutes. She had work to do.

The meeting with the Valen team ran ninety minutes and by the end of it Jade had restructured their entire approach, reassigned two briefs, and identified the reason the previous pitch had failed, which was that it had been built around what the client said they wanted rather than what they actually needed. The team looked at her with a mixture of intimidation and relief, which was exactly the response she aimed for.

She was walking back to her office when Celeste appeared beside her.

Not from a doorway. Simply materialised, the way women who are very practised at inserting themselves into spaces do it. Suddenly present, matching Jade's stride as if they had been walking together the entire time.

"You must be the new director," Celeste said. Her voice was smooth and warm and carefully calibrated. "I have heard good things."

"From whom?" Jade asked pleasantly.

A slight pause. "Dominic mentioned you."

"Did he." Not a question. A receipt.

Celeste smiled. Up close she was striking in a way that was assembled rather than natural, every element considered and placed. Her eyes were pale blue and very sharp and they were doing a thorough assessment of Jade that was disguised as friendliness.

"He speaks highly of your work," Celeste said.

"That is kind," Jade said. They had reached her office door. She stopped and turned and faced Celeste directly with a pleasant expression and absolutely no give in her eyes. "Was there something you needed?"

Another pause. Longer this time. Celeste was recalibrating, Jade could see it, had expected a different kind of woman and was adjusting her approach.

"Just introducing myself," Celeste said. "I like to know the people in Dominic's world."

"Now you know me," Jade said. She smiled. "It was lovely to meet you."

She went into her office and sat down and did not look back through the glass, though she felt Celeste standing there for a moment before moving away.

She opened her laptop and stared at the screen and felt the situation settling around her like weather. She had walked into this building yesterday morning as a professional with a pitch. Twenty-four hours later she was sleeping with the man who owned it and had just been assessed by his ex as a potential threat.

She should have felt destabilised.

Instead she felt the particular sharpening that happened in her when a situation became complicated. The same focus that came over her when a room underestimated her.

She pulled up the Valen brief and started building the campaign that was going to make Dominic Crest very happy.

She planned to make him happy in other ways too, later.

But work first.

Always work first.