Chapter 4

Erica's POV

The line disconnected with a soft, final click, and then Malcolm turned that same cold, deadly stare on me. "Get out of my hotel."

My hotel.

The words landed like a second hammer on a nail I didn't even know had been driven halfway in already.

And that's when it hit me - really hit me, all the way down - because I'd been so busy drowning in the shock of his face that I'd completely blanked on his last name. Vale. Malcolm Vale. How does a person forget the surname of their own high school nemesis? How is that even possible? And yet there it was, arriving minutes too late to save me any dignity at all.

I must have looked exactly as stricken as I felt - rooted to the spot, mouth slightly open, doing quiet, catastrophic math in my head - because he had to say it again, louder this time, with all the patience of a man addressing a nobody.

“I said get out."

That did it.

Whatever thread of composure I had left snapped clean through, replaced by pure, scalding embarrassment. I grabbed my bag, my tablet, whatever dignity I could physically carry, and stormed out of that boardroom without a backward glance, without another word, without letting him see my face crumple the way it wanted to.

I held it together.

I held it together through the hallway, through the elevator, through the lobby, through the valet, through every single polished, gleaming inch of Vale's Hotel.

I lost it the second I was sealed inside my car. "What the fuck!!!" I screamed, both hands slamming against the steering wheel, "what the actual fuck just happened!?"

Because let's tally it up. In the span of one single morning, I had: found an old flame standing in an elevator, baptized him in scalding coffee, discovered he was the groom I was contracted to work with, discovered he was the owner of the hotel we were standing in, which meant - and my stomach actually dropped at this part - he owned every single property under the Vale name across North America. He was the man behind the empire. The reclusive billionaire the tabloids had spent years trying to unmask, the one whose face nobody outside his own boardrooms had ever confirmed, the one they whispered about - formidable, they said, devastatingly good-looking, if the rumors were even half true - because the man had clearly spent a small fortune making sure his own face stayed a mystery. And God, the irony of that wasn't lost on me, not even in the middle of my own meltdown. What was almost more shocking, was remembering exactly what he was back then in high school. Malcolm Vale wasn't old money. He wasn't even new money. He was just a beautiful, charming nobody who'd talked his way into the orbit of the rich and popular kids because his face opened doors his bank account never could. And now he owned half the doors in North America. His rise was, objectively, an incredible story. And I could not possibly have cared less, because how dare he. How dare he humiliate me inside an empty elevator like I was nothing, like I'd planned to scald him on purpose, like an apology and an offer to cover every last cent of the damage wasn't more than generous. Did he think I wanted this assignment? That I begged to be in that boardroom? His fiancée had been nothing but lovely to me - a woman, frankly, I didn't think he deserved in the slightest - and he'd treated me like an inconvenience to be scraped off his shoe.

I sat there fantasizing, just for a moment, about exactly how much a tabloid would pay for the true identity of the infamously faceless Malcolm Vale. It was a delicious thought. I didn't act on it. But it was delicious.

I turned the ignition hard enough to protest and drove home like the road personally insulted me too. At least, I consoled myself the whole way back, I'd finally get some of the sleep that garage-obsessed lunatic next door had robbed me of last night, before I had to pull myself together for tonight's Saturday session.

When I pulled into my driveway, blessed silence greeted me. No grinding metal. No screeching machinery. For one small mercy in an otherwise catastrophic day, my neighbor had apparently decided to let the world rest. I stormed inside anyway, out of pure momentum.

Heather was in the kitchen, spatula in hand, hair piled on top of her head, humming to herself over a pan of eggs. She took one look at me and her eyebrows shot straight up.

“Whoa. Calm down, lioness." She set the spatula down like she might actually need both hands for whatever was coming. "What's got you storming in here like the building's on fire? Please don't tell me I was right and one of your night clients turned out to be an organ harvester. Did you escape from a dungeon, because I didn't hear you come in last night."

I dropped into the kitchen chair with a groan that came from somewhere deep in my soul. I was about to answer when my phone started buzzing against the table.

Claire.

I stared at it, felt a fresh wave of anger, and let it ring straight through to voicemail. "You gonna get that?" Heather asked, sliding eggs onto two plates.

"No. I need to process what just happened to me before I talk to anyone else about it." The phone rang again almost immediately. I flipped it to airplane mode with more force than the screen actually required.

"You know you'll have to actually answer whoever that is eventually," Heather said, sliding a plate in front of me and sitting down across the table, arms crossed, patient as a woman settling in for a show.

"I know. Just… not yet." I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. "Let me just tell you what happened first." "Okay."

She leaned forward. "Tell me everything."

So I did.

I told her about the impromptu meeting, about running for the elevator, about the coffee cap popping and the documents ruined and the fury in a stranger's face when I looked up. I told her about recognizing him, and about the emotions that came flooding back the second I did. Heather already knew the shape of what I went through in high school, even though she wasn't there for it. She knew about the size of the cruelty I faced as a fat kid, and her face shifted as I talked, softening into something protective.

"So who is he?" she asked, quieter now. "And how exactly did he make your life miserable?"

"Malcolm Vale."

Heather physically stopped chewing. "Wait." She set her fork down very slowly. "Please tell me you don't mean Vale as in… Vale."

"Yes. That Vale."

She actually shrieked, loud enough that I flinched and glanced toward the window like the neighbors might hear.

"Erica! You met the single wealthiest, most eligible, most mysterious man in the whole of DC, and you went to high school together? How is this only coming up right now?"

"That is genuinely not the important part of this story, Heather."

"Is he as hot as the rumors say?" She was leaning fully across the table now, eyes lit up like Christmas morning. "Because the internet has theories, Erica. There are whole forums."

"I am not discussing his looks right now. Weren't you even listening to what I just told you? The man humiliated me in an empty elevator and threw me out of his own hotel…"

"Okay, okay, fine, fine." She held up both hands in surrender, then, not even three seconds later: "But is he hot, though. Yes or no."

Just the mention of it - the memory of him standing too close in that hallway, that stupid jawline, the ridiculous, unfair way he filled out that ruined suit - sent heat crawling straight up my neck and into my face before I could stop it. Heather didn't even need me to answer. She pointed at my face, triumphant, delighted.

"There it is! Oh my god, you're blushing. I didn't even say anything and you're blushing."

"I am not…" "You are one hundred percent blushing, Erica Vandell, and I am going to enjoy this for the rest of the…"

The doorbell rang, and I had never in my life been so grateful for an interruption. I was out of my chair and moving before Heather could get another word out, desperate for literally any excuse to escape this conversation.

I pulled the door open, already halfway composed.

And my heart - my poor, exhausted, thoroughly abused heart - skipped for the third time in under twenty-four hours. Third man. Third time. I was starting to think something was medically wrong with me. Because standing on my porch, sunlight doing something unfair and golden across his face, was quite possibly the single most beautiful man I had ever seen in real life. Tall. Broad. Forearms that suggested he did not get that build sitting behind a desk. A jaw that looked like it was carved by someone with a personal vendetta against my composure.

Who, I thought, staring, mouth slightly open, is this actual Greek god, and why is he on my porch?

He grinned - easy, warm, completely unbothered by the fact that I was currently gaping at him like an idiot - and said, "Hello, neighbor."