Chapter Five

Isolde's POV

The lobby of the silver tower was colder than the hospital and ten times quieter. The floor was so polished I could see my own tired face in it, and the sight made me want to turn around and walk right back out.

I didn't. I walked to the long marble desk where a young woman in a gray blazer was typing without looking at the keys.

"Good afternoon," I said. "I saw the sign outside. For the secretary position."

She looked at me from my shoes to my hair, and I watched her decide what I was worth. "Interviews are by appointment only."

"The sign said walk in."

"The sign is outside. We are inside." She said it politely, which somehow made it worse. Then her eyes dropped to the clipboard beside her phone, and she sighed. "Fine. Fill this in. Take the elevator to the fourteenth floor. Ask for Mrs. Pell."

The form wanted a resume. I wrote my name, my age, and my address on Marlowe Street, and left the rest empty. Under marital status I wrote divorced for the second time that day, and my hand still did not like the word.

Mrs. Pell turned out to be a small, brisk woman with glasses on a chain and a pencil behind each ear. She read my form for about eight seconds.

"No experience."

"No, ma'am."

"No references."

"My grandmother, but she's seventy four and lives on a pension."

Mrs. Pell almost smiled, then caught herself. "We have forty candidates today, Miss Laurent. Some of them have master's degrees."

"I understand."

"Then why are you still sitting there?"

I thought about lying. I'd had five years of practice smiling over things that hurt, and I could have said something polished about passion and growth. Instead what came out was the truth.

"Because I need this job more than anyone you've seen today."

She put down her pencil and said nothing for a moment. Then she picked up the phone. "Send her to the glass room. Mr. Hale will sit in."

The glass room was a meeting room on the corner of the floor with walls you could see straight through. A man in his forties with sharp cheekbones and a sharper tie was already waiting inside, a tablet on his knee. Marcus Hale, he said, chief of staff. He did not offer to shake my hand.

"Tell me about your last position," he said.

"I was married."

His eyebrow lifted. "I mean employment."

"I ran a household. Five years. Menus, accounts, schedules, staff, guests. I kept a calendar for a family of five that visited every other weekend."

"Which software?"

"A notebook."

"A notebook." He typed something. "Typing speed?"

"I don't know."

"Languages?"

"A little French. I haven't used it in years."

"Why do you want to work for Knight Holdings?"

"I don't. I want to work. Knight Holdings had a sign."

His pen stopped. I realized I had said it aloud, and my face went hot. "I'm sorry. That came out wrong. I mean that I would work hard here. I just don't have the right words for it."

"No," Marcus Hale said, "you don't."

The door opened behind me.

I felt it before I saw him. The air changed, the way it does when a storm is about to break. Marcus stood up so fast his tablet slid off his knee.

"Sir. I didn't know you were joining."

"I wasn't." The voice was low and even. "Sit."

He walked around the table without looking at me and took the chair at the far end. Tall. Dark suit, charcoal shirt, no tie. Black hair cut close. His eyes were a gray so pale they looked like wet steel, and they settled on my face and stayed there.

I had seen that face in magazines. Dacre Knight, the man who built an empire out of an old shipping firm. The man who, according to every article I'd ever skimmed, did not smile.

"Go on," he said to Marcus.

Marcus cleared his throat. "Miss Laurent has no experience, sir. No references, and no knowledge of our systems."

"I heard."

"She has also told me that she does not want to work for us."

"I heard that too."

I wanted the floor to open. Dacre Knight leaned back, and for a long, ridiculous moment he just studied me, the way you study a document in a language you used to speak.

"Miss Laurent," he said. "Can you keep a secret?"

My heart stopped. I could not have answered if my life depended on it. My hand slipped to my lap, then flattened over my stomach, and I turned it into a smoothing motion over my dress, just in case.

"Yes," I said. It came out as a whisper. "I'm good at it."

"What did you do for five years that you are not proud of?"

"I waited," I said.

Nobody moved. Outside the glass, a printer hummed somewhere on the floor.

"Type something," he said, and pushed a laptop across the table.

I typed his name, then the address of the tower from the glass behind him. Marcus Hale watched my fingers with open disappointment. It took me almost a minute.

"Twenty two words per minute," Marcus said. "At best."

"She'll improve."

"Sir, with respect, there are people downstairs who type eighty."

"I did not ask for typing." Dacre stood. "Miss Laurent starts tomorrow. Eight o'clock sharp. Mrs. Pell will send her the paperwork."

"Sir..."

"That is all, Marcus."

I couldn't breathe properly. "I'm sorry. I don't understand. You're hiring me?"

"I am."

"Why?"

He didn't answer. He only looked at me with that same steady gray look, and something in it was almost gentle, which frightened me more than if it had been cold. Then he walked to the door and held it open.

I stood. My knees were shaking. I said thank you three times, and he nodded once.

I was in the corridor, nearly at the elevator, when his voice came from behind me.

"Miss Laurent."

I turned. He was standing in the doorway of the glass room, one hand in his pocket, the late sun cutting across the side of his face.

"I know whose wife you were," Dacre Knight said quietly. "That is not why I hired you."

The elevator doors opened behind me, and I couldn't move.