Chapter 3. Morning After

Diana woke to sunlight and an empty bed.

For one confused second, she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw the wall of windows, the city glittering far below, and her dress lying where it had fallen by the glass. Every memory of last night came back at once, along with a pleasant ache in places she hadn’t known could ache.

And one word. Diana.

She lay still for a moment, checking. Her skin felt ordinary. The sunlight didn’t hurt, and the city below was only the city, its sounds softened by the glass. She remembered the washroom with an embarrassment that would have been easier to explain.

Breathe. Easy. She could recall the voice more clearly than the last lines of Leo’s vows. It sounded like somebody waiting for her to listen. Now there was nothing, no matter how hard she listened.

She sat up, clutching the duvet. “Hello?”

A knock answered her. An older woman in a gray uniform appeared with fresh towels and stopped just inside the door.

“Good morning, miss. I can come back later.”

“No, it’s—sorry. Is he…?”

“Mr. V left early. There’s coffee, and a note in the kitchen.”

Mr. V. So much for no names. Diana waited until the door closed, then scrambled for her underwear and pulled on the dress, wincing at the zipper.

The note sat on the marble kitchen island beside a still-warm cup. The handwriting was sharp and deliberate.

There’s a driver downstairs. He’s yours if you want him. You don’t owe me a ride or a phone call, or a thing. — G.

She read it twice. It was a good note, considerate and polite. And it was signed by a man who had promised her no names, then used hers, but not in the note.

Diana drank half the coffee because she wasn’t a monster, rinsed the cup, and took the elevator down.

The driver was waiting by a polished black car. He opened the rear door. “Where can I take you, miss?”

“Nowhere, thank you.” She smiled so he’d know it wasn’t personal. “I’ve got a bus.”

The bus ride cost her two dollars and a little dignity. She sat by the window in last night’s dress, ignoring the looks, and felt oddly proud of herself.

At home, she checked her temperature. Normal. A brief flush returned as she hung the dress on the wardrobe door, but it passed before she filled a glass of water. By evening she felt herself entirely.

She still caught herself smiling at the memory of him nearly hitting the doorframe. Then she remembered the name, and the smile went. Wanting to see him again was apparently going to be complicated.

⁂

By Monday, she had two problems: an unfinished presentation and marks on her neck that concealer couldn’t hide.

She wore a turtleneck. It was July. Eva spotted the sweater before Diana reached her desk.

“Absolutely not,” her best friend said.

“Good morning to you, too.”

“I get two sentences about your entire weekend, and then you arrive wearing that? That’s Leo’s apology sweater.”

“The sweater didn’t cheat on me. I’m trying not to hold a grudge.”

Eva opened her mouth, but Helena’s office door opened first.

“Bennett. Conference room. Bring the Valenti deck.”

Diana picked up her laptop. “Lunch.”

“With details,” Eva called after her.

Trevor Finch was already seated beside Helena, his golf tan immaculate. He moved his papers aside to give Diana a fraction of the table.

“Valenti Development moved the pitch to Thursday,” Helena said. “Trevor will co-present.”

Three days. Diana had spent three weeks on the flagship tower proposal, calling suppliers on her lunch breaks and building slides late into the night. It was the biggest interiors contract Hans had pursued in years.

“Happy to give it some senior presence,” Trevor said.

She put her laptop between them. “Then we need to fix your materials budget.”

His smile stopped.

She brought up two supplier quotes. “Their rates changed in the spring. You used last year’s figures. The bid is about one point two million short.”

Helena leaned forward. For a moment all Diana could hear was the ventilation above the table.

“Are you certain?”

“I checked on Sunday night.”

She had needed something to do with her hands besides picking up her phone to call a man whose number she didn’t have.

Helena studied the figures. “Use Diana’s numbers, Trevor.”

That was Helena’s way to say Thank you.

Trevor shut his folder a little too hard.

Diana ought to have enjoyed that. Instead, she was thinking of another man going still, his fingers closing on the back of a chair when she told him what she’d heard.

She made herself look at the screen.

At lunch, in a clothing shop two blocks away, Eva held a blouse against Diana’s chest and demanded the story.

Diana gave her the short version: the wedding, the cousin thing, the stranger with the tattoo, the penthouse.

“And I nearly passed out during the ceremony,” Diana added. “Ten minutes in the washroom, then I was fine. Mostly.”

Eva lowered the blouse. “You’re fine now?”

“Yes. I checked.”

“If it happens again, you get it checked by someone who isn’t you.” Eva held the blouse against Diana again, but her attention had moved elsewhere. “I’m still trying to get past the part where you left your ex’s wedding with a stranger.”

“So am I.”

Eva looked torn between horror and pride. “Who are you?”

“I don’t know. A woman with a turtleneck problem.”

“Does this stranger have a name?”

“We didn’t do names.” Diana hesitated. “But he knew mine.”

Eva stopped adjusting the sleeve. “Diana.”

“I know.”

“No, Diana. How did he know your name?”

“Maybe he heard Leo say it.”

Eva looked skeptical. 

“If that happens again, get it checked. Properly.” Then her expression softened. “Do you want to see him again?”

“I don’t know.”

Eva waited.

“Yes,” Diana admitted. “Which is annoying.”

“Wanting him isn’t the annoying part. Not knowing who he is is the annoying part.” Eva handed her the price tag. “If he turns up, you get a name. You send it to me. Before the next penthouse.”

“You’re leaving this afternoon.”

“Compliance training, Diana. Not witness protection. They have phones up north.”

Diana bought the blouse. When she came out of the shop, she had one hopeful, ridiculous moment when she thought the black car at the lights might be his, and she resented herself for checking.

At six, she left the office with her laptop digging into her shoulder and the corrected budget still turning over in her head.

A black car moved slowly along the curb behind her.

She first noticed it in a shop window. It stopped when she paused beside a man selling phone chargers. When she started walking, it moved again.

The warmth she’d felt at lunchtime disappeared.

Her heart pounded, but something hot and stubborn rose beneath the fear. Thirty people were within shouting distance, a traffic cop stood at the corner, and she had spent two years letting things happen to her. She turned, walked straight back to the car in full view of the entire bus line, and rapped her knuckles on the tinted window.

The glass slid down.

Dark eyes. A mouth that remembered exactly how she tasted. The serpent’s tail curled under his jaw.

He looked pleased to see her, and that somehow made it worse.

“Diana.”

“How did you find me?”

His smile faded. “I wanted to see you.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Someone behind her swore at a late bus. Diana tightened her grip on her phone.

“You knew my name. Now you’re outside my office.”

He looked toward the people beside the shelter, then back at her. She waited for a story about a chance meeting or a familiar neighborhood. Some small lie she could decide whether to accept.

“I knew where you worked before Saturday,” he said.