Chapter 3: The Earring

“Sit down, Mina, I have eleven minutes,” my father said, without looking up from his papers.

I sat in the leather chair across his desk, in my longest gray sweater, with my glasses on and one hand pressed flat against my stomach under the table, because for three days I had known I was carrying Kade Voss’s baby, and I had told nobody except Zola.

“Is something wrong, Father?” I asked.

“Yes, Hale Living is bleeding money, the Harbor Towers project has lost forty million dollars since spring, and you did not tell me,” Gordon said.

“I was going to fix it, I have a plan, I have worked on it every night,” I said.

“You have worked on it every night for six months and it is still bleeding, so your plan is not working,” he said.

“Then give me more time,” I said.

“There is no more time, the bank calls on Friday, so I made a call of my own, Voss Group will buy half the project and merge it with Hale Living,” Gordon said.

My hand went cold on my stomach. “Voss Group?” I asked.

“Kade Voss, the youngest billionaire in town, three companies and every one of them tops the chart, he is exactly what this project needs,” Gordon said.

“No, Father, anyone but him, please, we can find another investor,” I said, too fast.

“Why not him, do you know him?” Gordon asked, looking up for the first time, his eyes gray and flat like a winter lake.

“No, I only know his reputation, they say he changes girls like he changes shirts,” I said, and my face went hot.

“I do not care who he sleeps with, I care that he signs, you will meet him tomorrow at nine in his boardroom, and you will smile and be useful,” Gordon said.

“I am always useful,” I said quietly.

“Then be useful tomorrow, and Mina, for once in your life wear something that does not look like a curtain,” he said, going back to his papers.

“Yes, Father,” I said, and I left the room the way I always did, without a sound.

~~~

“I cannot do this, Zola, I cannot walk into his office, he does not even know I exist,” I whispered into my phone the next morning, in the elevator of Voss Group, forty floors up.

“You exist, and you are going to walk in there like the chief executive you are, and if he gets rude, spill hot coffee in his lap,” Zola said.

“I do not have coffee,” I said.

“Then use words, you have plenty, and he will not know your face, you wore a red dress and no glasses, you were a different woman,” Zola said.

In my blazer pocket the lone silver earring from that night clicked against my phone, the twin of the one I had lost in a hotel bed, and I kept meaning to throw it away and I never did.

The boardroom had a glass table as long as a runway and six men in dark suits, and at the head of it, with his back to the window and his feet on an empty chair, sat the man I had last seen when the lamp went out.

“You are two minutes late, I hope the Hale family does not run its company the way it runs its clock,” Kade said, without looking up from his phone.

“The elevator was slow, I apologize, I am Mina Hale, chief executive of Hale Living,” I said, and my voice came out steadier than my knees.

He looked up then, and his eyes moved over my glasses, my gray sweater, my flat shoes, and slid away as if I were a chair.

“Hale, of course, I expected someone older, or at least someone with more color,” Kade said, going back to his phone.

“Is color a requirement for the job?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

A board member coughed, and Kade finally looked up again. “No, but it would improve the view, do you always talk back to the people you need?”

“Only to people who insult me before they say hello,” I said.

“Then you will be talking back all day, I insult everyone before hello, it saves time,” Kade said.

I stood there with my heart pounding, because three weeks ago this man had held my face in both hands and told me I had no idea how good I was, and now he did not know me at all.

“Good morning, Miss Hale,” a voice said from the corner of the room.

Dean stood against the wall with a notepad held to his chest and a slow smile spreading across his face, the smile of a man holding a card he had not played yet.

“Dean is my assistant, he goes where I go, is that a problem?” Kade asked.

“No, it is not a problem,” I said, though my fingers had gone cold.

“We know each other, sir, a long time ago,” Dean said.

“Do you know everyone, Dean?” Kade asked.

“Only the interesting ones,” Dean said, and his eyes slid to me and stayed there.

“Sit, Hale, you have ten minutes, my day is full and so is my patience,” Kade said, pointing to a chair.

I sat and opened my folder, and my hands did not shake, because numbers had never once betrayed me.

“Harbor Towers is a hole in the ground with your family name on it, give me one reason I should fill it,” Kade said.

“Because the hole is not the problem, the contractor is, he has been billing you for steel he never ordered, I found it three weeks ago, and I have every invoice,” I said.

The room went quiet, and one of the board members leaned forward.

“Show me,” Kade said, and for the first time his voice lost its bored sound.

“Page four, the highlighted lines, forty million dollars, and if you fix that, Harbor Towers makes it all back in two years, I have the plan,” I said.

Kade read page four, and he read it again, and then he looked at me, really looked, for a long moment.

“Your voice, have we met before?” he asked slowly.

“No, I do not think so,” I said, my mouth dry.

In the corner, Dean coughed, and it sounded a lot like a laugh.

“Strange, I feel like I know it,” Kade said, still watching me. “Fine, you have a plan, give me the rest.”

I reached into my bag for the second folder, and something small slipped out with the papers, bounced once on the glass table, spun, and rolled, and stopped against his hand.

It was a single silver earring, shaped like a tiny drop of rain.

Kade picked it up and held it to the light.

“What is this, Hale?” he asked quietly, and his eyes narrowed.

He looked at the earring, then at my bare ears, and the room went so quiet I could hear Dean smiling.