Sold to the Doctor

1. Chapter 1

Christina

My phone rings through the car speakers on the second level of the parking ramp, and I'm still in third gear when the dash lights up.

MOM.

I pick up before it rings twice.

"Hey. You're up early."

I know what's coming. I've known since the first ring.

"I'm almost at the garage. What's going on?"

"The electric bill came. They added a fee from winter that I didn't know about, and I'm a little short this week."

"How much?"

"A hundred and sixty. I get paid in two weeks, I can put it right back—"

"Text me the account number. I'll pay it at lunch."

"You're sure? Because I can—"

"Mom."

She goes quiet. Then: "You're my favorite child."

"I'm your only child."

"Still counts."

She's still laughing when she hangs up. I pull into my spot on the third level, grab my coffee from the cupholder, push my sunglasses into my hair.

The Audi chirps behind me and I take the elevator down and back up to three, because that's the kind of building this is, the kind where you can't go straight anywhere.

Vivian Marsh Events takes up the whole third floor. You smell the coffee before the elevator opens, and today you can also smell that someone already burned popcorn, which at 8:40 in the morning is impressive.

My office is second from the end. White desk. A glass jar of ranunculus I buy myself every Monday from the shop downstairs, because no one else is going to. A corkboard packed with fabric swatches and table diagrams from the Reyes Foundation dinner.

I drop my bag and start refilling the candy dish with lemon drops from the bag in my bottom drawer, because if I don't, Bree from accounting starts leaving me sad little sticky notes about it.

"Did you see her this morning?" Kate materializes in my doorway, tea in hand, lanyard already twisted around her wrist like she's been here since six.

"See who?"

"Rachel." She leans against the frame. "She's got the new business cards. The ones that say Senior Event Director. She gave one to the FedEx guy."

"What did he do with it?"

"Said congratulations. He's a genuinely kind person." She sips her tea. "Vivian put a meeting on everyone's calendar for nine-thirty this morning. No subject line."

I set the lemon drop bag down. "Good something or bad something?"

Kate raises an eyebrow. "She ordered the nice bagels."

"Good something then," I say.

"I want the cinnamon one." She points her mug at me. "If you get there first, save one for me."

At 9:28 I carry my notebook into the conference room.

The nice bagels are real, a whole board of them by the window, and I put a napkin on the cinnamon one and slide it to the empty seat beside mine for Kate.

Most of the floor filters in over the next two minutes, everyone checking their phones, pretending they don't want to be the first one talking.

Rachel comes in last.

She's in a black dress that costs real money, the kind of money she's been making sure we all know she makes now, and she takes the chair directly across from me, which she always does, which I have never once decided was an accident.

She sets her phone face up on the table.

Then, beside her coffee, a small stack of business cards.

Just sitting there. I watch her straighten the stack with one finger and don't say anything.

"Christina." She looks up at me with a half-smile that doesn't move the corners of her eyes.

"Rachel."

"How's the Reyes dinner?" She already knows. She's asked three people on this floor already, I'd bet my parking spot on it. "That was what, ninety people?"

"A hundred and forty," I say.

"Cute."

Kate drops into the chair next to mine and pulls the cinnamon bagel across the table without even glancing at it.

Vivian comes in with a folder and the room does the thing it always does when she walks in, everyone sitting up a quarter inch without realizing it.

She built this company out of her kitchen twenty-six years ago and the building knows it.

She doesn't sit. She sets the folder on the table and stands at the head of the room, reading glasses pushed up on her silver bob, and just looks at us for a second.

"Lakeshore Memorial called me last night at nine o'clock." She lets that sit there. "The Carver Group lost the gala."

Somebody's pen stops mid-click.

Lakeshore Memorial. The biggest hospital account in this city. Their fall gala is four hundred guests, a live auction, every donor with a wing named after them somewhere in the building. The Carver Group has run it for eleven years.

"Lost it how?" Kate asks.

"Carver's owner is being sued. Two vendors, a bank. The hospital walked. They want a new firm and they want the same date." Vivian pauses, and everyone in the room does the math at the same time. "Which is in two weeks."

The intern across the table puts his pen down very quietly.

"Two weeks," Vivian says again. "Four hundred and twenty guests, seated dinner, bachelor auction benefiting the pediatric cardiac unit.

If we deliver, we're first in line for their entire calendar.

The heart walk, the donor dinners, the spring luncheon.

All of it." She opens the folder. "I need a lead on this. "

"I'll take it," Rachel says.

"I'll take it," I say.

The room goes very still, and I watch Rachel's jaw tighten across the table.

She turns to me slowly. "You've never run an auction."

"I've run three galas this size."

"The Reyes dinner was a hundred and forty people."

"The Children's Literacy ball was three hundred and eighty. Band, seated dinner, a venue with one freight elevator." I hold her eye. "You were there."

Across the table, Bree stops typing. The intern looks at his bagel.

"I supervised guest services," Rachel says, and her voice has gone smooth, the kind of smooth that takes practice. "And I've been here three years. You've only been here two. I was just promoted, which I don't think is a minor—"

"You've mentioned it eleven times. I keep a tally in my desk."

"Vivian." She angles her whole body away from me, toward the head of the table. "This client is coming off a firm that embarrassed them. The optics of who we put in front of them matter. They need senior leadership."

"The optics," I say. "It's a two-week build.

They don't need a title, they need somebody who's going to be at that venue at six in the morning counting chairs.

When the linen order comes in wrong with four hours to doors—and it will—they need the person who knows how to fix it. " I lean back in my chair. "That's me."

"When have I ever let an order come in wrong?" Rachel asks.

"You wouldn't know if it did. You're normally preoccupied," I say.

"At least I photograph well."

"Enough." Vivian doesn't raise her voice.

She takes her reading glasses off her head, folds them, and sets them on the folder.

That's all. The room gets quiet like a held breath.

The intern has not picked his bagel back up.

"Every single quarter. You do this in front of my entire staff, and I keep calling it passion.

" She looks from Rachel to me and back. "I'm done calling it passion. You're both on it."

Neither of us moves.

"Both," Rachel says finally.

"Co-leads. Rachel, you have the program.

Talent, auction lineup, printing, AV, run of show, everything that happens on that stage.

The hospital's development director will send you the bachelor list directly.

" She turns to me. "Christina, you have the build.

Venue, design, florals, catering, layout, load-in.

You report to me every evening. Separately.

" A pause. "So I get two versions of the truth. "

She slides the folder down the table. It stops exactly between us, and neither of us touches it.

"The Alderley is holding the date until end of business today. I'll arrange for a car to take you both over at eleven to walk the space."

"I'll drive myself," we both say.

Vivian closes her eyes for three full seconds.

"I have errands after," Rachel says.

"I have the florist after the venue," I say.

"My car's better in traffic," Rachel says.

"I need to stop at the gas station," I say.

Vivian opens her eyes. She picks up the folder—hands it to me, because I'm closest—and walks out without another word.

Kate waits until the room clears. Then she reaches over, takes the tally from my coat pocket where she knows I keep it, and adds a mark without looking up from her tea.

I'm barely back at my desk when knuckles hit the doorframe.

Rachel stands in the opening, coffee in hand, scanning my office. Her eyes move across the corkboard, the ranunculus, the photo of my mom, and I can see exactly when she catalogs it and moves on.

"This is cute," she says. "The end offices have this cozy little thing going on.

" She comes in without being asked. "Mine's been chaotic since they moved me.

Boxes everywhere. The new one is just so much more space than I'm used to.

" She picks up my mom's photo, looks at it, sets it back down a half inch from where it was.

"Two windows. On a clear day I can see the river. "

"Past the parking garage," I say.

"The garage and the river." She sets her coffee down and takes a lemon drop from the dish.

The last yellow one. "You know what Vivian said to me when she gave me the promotion?

She said, Rachel, you have earned this." She rolls the candy between her fingers, not eating it yet.

"The money's nice too, obviously. Going from ninety to one twenty is—honestly?

Life-changing. But it's really the recognition.

" She looks at me and smiles the smile that's never once been warm.

"You'll get there. Three years in. Four maybe. Everyone has their own pace."

"You've mentioned your salary four times since the promotion."

"I'm motivating you."

"Is that what this is?" I ask.