Chapter 3

Erica's POV

The doors slid shut behind us with a soft, final hiss, and for one horrible, suspended second, all I could do was stare.

The coffee - dark and spreading - had already soaked through the front of his shirt and down one leg of what were very obviously custom trousers. His shoes - expensive Italian leather, no doubt - were ruined, glossy with it. And the documents. God, the documents. Whatever was printed on those pages was bleeding into an unreadable mess of black ink and brown stain, curling at the edges like they were trying to escape their own destruction.

Then I looked up.

And the floor of the elevator tilted sideways beneath me.

Malcolm.

Malcolm…

And suddenly, I was fifteen years old all over again, standing in front of the boy who used to sit two rows behind me in class, all sharp jaw and easy charm, the boy I'd written his name in the margins of all my notebooks like an idiot. The same boy who had hurt me so badly and left a deep gashing scar in my heart…

I was so busy being fifteen and stupid and star-struck all over again that I didn't even register he was already yelling.

"…do you have any idea what's in these documents? Do you understand what you just…" He dragged a hand down his face, coffee-stained fingers coming away wet. "This is a billion-dollar acquisition. This is classified. And you just…" He gestured at me, at the ruined mess, at the entire catastrophe I'd apparently become. "You just destroyed it. Clumsy doesn't even begin to cover this."

That snapped me right out of it.

"I… I'm so sorry," I stammered, already reaching for napkins I didn't have, already reaching for anything. "I'll pay for the dry cleaning, I'll replace the shoes, whatever the documents cost to reprint, I'll cover it, I swear, just…"

"Cover it?" He laughed, short and humorless, and it wasn't a sound I remembered from him at fifteen. This one had teeth in it. "Sweetheart, I don't think you could afford the shoes, let alone whatever's on those pages."

Sweetheart.

Something in me that had been dormant for the remaining fifteen years of my life immediately sat straight up and started screaming.

"Excuse me?" My voice climbed before I could stop it. "You don't know a single thing about what I can or can't afford. I offered to help. I apologized. You could try being a decent human being for one second instead of…"

"Instead of what? Being furious that a stranger just poured scalding coffee on a nine-figure deal?"

"It was an accident!"

"Convenient kind of accident."

And there it was - the same careless cruelty, dressed up in a better suit. I hated that some small, humiliated part of me was still keeping score of every word, still filing it away next to fifteen-year-old wounds I thought had scarred over years ago. I hated more that he didn't recognize me at all. Not a flicker. Not a pause. I was completely, thoroughly invisible to the boy who once made invisibility feel like the safest thing in the world.

"You know what," I snapped, arms crossed so tight I could feel my own pulse in them, "just stay in your lane. I'll figure out how to make this right without your commentary."

"Believe me," he said, cold and clipped, straightening his ruined jacket, "I intend to stay very far away from your lane. I'll handle this myself."

"Perfect."

"Perfect."

The elevator doors opened on that word, and I checked - it was the exact floor I was heading to. I stormed out, striking my heels hard enough to sting, desperate for distance, desperate for air that didn't taste like coffee and old humiliation and a cologne that, infuriatingly, smelled so good.

I made it maybe ten steps before I realized he was behind me.

I hastened my pace. Weren't we just extremely clear about lanes? About staying in them? I kept my eyes on the little brass nameplates mounted beside each door, scanning for Executive Boardroom, trying very hard to pretend the footsteps behind me belonged to literally anyone else in this building.

They didn't slow. Neither did mine.

By the time I found the right door, my heart was hammering for reasons that had nothing to do with the walk, and when I spun around to demand an explanation, he'd already stopped, close - closer than the hallway required, close enough that I had to tip my chin up to hold his glare.

"Why are you following me?" My voice came out sharper than I meant it to, but honestly, I'd earned the right to be sharp. "What do you want from me? I thought we agreed to stay out of each other's lanes."

He didn't answer right away. He just looked at me, and something in his expression shifted - a fraction, barely perceptible, gone as fast as it arrived - and he took one more step forward. My traitorous, stupid, weak heart absolutely skipped a beat.

I actually forgot what I was saying. I stood there, breath caught somewhere behind my ribs, painfully aware of how close he was, of the faint ghost of expensive cologne under the coffee, of the sheer unfairness of a man being built like that while also being the worst person I'd spoken to all week.

For one mortifying second I thought I might actually sway toward him.

"Excuse me," he muttered instead, and sidestepped neatly past me - past the fluttering, humiliating thing my heart just did - and pushed open the boardroom door behind me like I was never anything more than an obstacle between him and where he needed to be.

I stood there, blinking, feeling like an idiot.

What was wrong with me?

Was it him? After everything - after all those years and the elevator - was some pathetic leftover part of me still susceptible to Malcolm's jawline? Or was it just leftover static from last night, from a different man entirely, from a mask and a couch and knuckles brushing knuckles in candlelight? I genuinely didn't know which was worse.

And then, belatedly, staring at the door he just walked through, reality finally, cruelly caught up with me.

He had just walked into the boardroom. My boardroom. The one where I was supposed to meet with Claire's fiancé.

"No," I whispered to absolutely no one. "No, no, no. Please, God, no."

I stepped inside anyway, because apparently I hated myself, and found him standing at the far end of the room, hands shoved back in his pockets, staring out through floor-to-ceiling windows. His ruined documents and phone sat abandoned on the long table behind him.

He turned.

"I'm guessing," he said, flat, unreadable, already reaching some private, unpleasant conclusion, "that you're the wedding planner my fiancée hired."

Something in my chest went heavy and cold at once, like the floor had been quietly removed from under me.

"That's…" My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. I cleared my throat, tried again. "Yes. Erica Vandell. Vandell Weddings."

He didn't say anything else. He crossed the room in two unhurried strides, picked up his phone off the table, and dialed without a shred of hesitation. It rang once. Twice.

"Claire." His voice was perfectly cold, like the man who was just screaming at me in an elevator had been replaced by someone entirely more dangerous. "I'm sorry, but I can't work with this wedding planner." A pause, brief and merciless. "Get a new one."