Chapter 21
Where the fuck is the home office?
My head is still spinning from getting up too quickly, when I open a door to a bedroom, then a powder room, then—hallelujah!—a room with a desk facing the view over the river.
On the desk, there’s a laptop with a sticky note on it that reads, “For Hannah!”
Shit, I can’t believe I’ve already missed two meetings. This is fucking terrible. I’m never late for anything. Yet here I am screwing this up and letting down Tom, making his company look like a disorganized mess that can’t even get its act together for a bunch of casual chats.
I slam myself down in the black leather chair and open the laptop. There’s another sticky note on the screen, “Password is your boss’s surname!”
With an uppercase D, or lowercase?
The perky person with the exclamation point habit needs to be more specific. I can’t risk getting myself locked out of this thing by trying too many times.
Actually, there are only two alternatives, and I’m sure getting it wrong once won’t lock me out. My brain is spiraling out of control and feels like it’s a thousand miles behind my body somewhere over the mid-Atlantic.
I’ll go with a capital D.
Yes.
I’m in.
I open my company email account and look for the call schedule I emailed myself before we left yesterday.
Thank the Lord I was organized enough to do that.
I copy and paste the email address of the first person into a new message and type the subject, “Technical Difficulties!” Exclamation points seem to be the order of the day.
“Hi, Rhona. Sorry to leave you hanging for so long. We’ve had connectivity issues on our end. Would it be okay if we rescheduled for…”
I need to move her to the bottom of the list. What time is the last person?
Four o’clock.
“...four thirty? Apologies again for the inconvenience.”
I repeat the process for Veena, the person who was scheduled at two-thirty, but ask her if she can do five o’clock.
As I hit Send, Rhona replies. “No worries. Whatever it takes to have the opportunity to work alongside Tom Dashwood. See you at four-thirty!”
Well, she already fits right in with her exclamation point.
And Veena responds almost immediately. “Hi Hannah. Yes, I can juggle things around to make five o’clock work. I’ll await your call then.”
And she has a totally different vibe.
This is going to be an interesting afternoon.
I take a giant breath to try to calm my racing heart and waft my top to fan my sweaty everything.
Disaster averted.
But now I have just fifteen minutes before the three-o’clock person to wash my face, slap on some fresh makeup, do something with my hair, which probably looks like something even a desperate homeless bird wouldn’t want to live in, and make myself some coffee strong enough to stand a spoon up in.
I push the chair back from the desk.
Now, where the hell is the bathroom?
Phew, that was an intense two-and-a-half hours.
Just one last thing to do. I click Send on the contact form on the Choc Full of Love website and fire off a message to Delia, asking her to request permission to share Katie’s contact info with me.
I can’t for the life of me figure out what Tom wants it for.
Not that I’ve had much time to think about it amid the panic and the back-to-back video calls.
I stretch my arms over my head and tick-tock my neck from side to side. As comfortable as this chair is, after this long sitting in one position, my back and neck are stiff. It probably didn’t help that it took me until halfway through the third chat for the stress of being late to fade enough for me to get into my groove and for my shoulders to drop below the level of my earlobes.
For the first time since I flew into this room in a wild frenzy, I look up from the laptop and out the window. This office is two rooms down from the living room and has a similar spectacular view over the river.
The dark green walls are calming and kind of make me feel smarter just by being in here. They’re lined with similar shelves to the living room, except these are full of books, not records. The spines bear mainly non-fiction business titles and biographies of entrepreneurs. And over in front of the window is a chaise longue—dark gray, armless, with strong curved lines.
Into my mind pops an image of Tom lying there, reading one of these books, his coffee on the small round table next to it, every now and then pushing his talented fingers through that sexy hair and looking up to watch the boats on the river.
What a thing of beauty that image is.
Of course, it’s way more likely he has no time for any book reading, coffee sipping, or chaise lounging at all. I mean, this office is almost as pristine as the kitchen and looks barely more used. Does he ever even work in here?
I slide open the top left desk drawer. A few pens roll around next to a couple blank notepads. The next one down has a pile of fresh envelopes, a phone charger, and an unopened roll of tape.
In the third are two large yellow envelopes addressed to Tom, with a stamp across the top of them that reads “Slate, White Associates. Creative Solutions for Your Legal Issues.” They’ve been opened and are thick with paperwork. Divorce documents?
There’s something underneath them, though. A picture frame, face down. Unable to resist, I lift out the envelopes and flip over the frame.
My stomach drops to the luxurious thick carpet under my feet, and my fingers and toes turn ice cold.
Staring up at me is a head-and-shoulders photo of Tom looking ridiculously handsome in a suit, the happiest of happy smiles on his face as he looks down into the eyes of the bride smiling back up at him.
The bright blue sky and sun-dappled green leaves behind them give the impression that nature could never consider raining on such joy.
Shit.
Of course I knew Louisa existed. And I even knew what she looked like. When I’ve taken the odd five minutes here and there over the years to search Tom’s name online, pictures of them looking cute together always popped up.
But the image of her, even though it was upside down and at the bottom of a drawer, is still in Tom’s home. And suddenly I feel like I’m standing in another woman’s warm shoes.
Tom said he’d had this place a few years. But was it just his? For when he was in town working? And she lived at the big house in the country? Or did she live here? Sit in this chair I’m sitting in?
My backside springs from the seat like it’s suddenly scalding hot.
My glorious fantasy just got invaded by a cold, hard shot of reality. Not just because this is a photo of her. And not just because this is a photo from their wedding. But because of the way he’s looking at her. There’s real love in his eyes.
He’s looking at her the way any woman would want to be looked at on their wedding day. The way I’ve dreamed of being looked at on my wedding day.
Has my brain already run a far-fetched scenario of a wedding in which Tom looks at me exactly like that? Maybe.
But he’s already looked at someone like that. Already felt that way about someone. And that someone wasn’t me.
My feet take me out of the room and to the bedroom I’d seen in my frantic search for the office.
I push the door fully open, but don’t go in. My eyes are drawn to the bed.
My stomach clenches, threatening to expel all its airline food contents.
Is this where he slept with her? Did she snuggle up to him on that huge bed, with the dark gray buttoned headboard? Did he go down on her in those sheets the way he did with me in the back of the car?
Is this where I’m supposed to be sleeping with him tonight? In the exact same spot? On the exact same mattress? In the exact same sheets?
The bing-bong of the elevator doors chimes down the hallway.
Fuck. I still have the photo in my hand.
Heat flashing through me and my pulse pounding in my head, I yank the bedroom door shut and race back to the office, drop the picture face down at the bottom of the drawer, shove the envelopes back on top, and slam the drawer shut.
“Hey!” And around the doorway appears the dreamy, smiling face of the man who fell in love with the woman in the photo.