CHAPTER 6 #2
“When you’re on time, you’re late.” She pushed a manila folder across the table. She was dressed in what I secretly called her get-shit-done outfit—crisp white shirt, diamond studs, and her lucky gold elephant pendant. Her hair draped over one shoulder in a thick, glossy braid.
Some things never changed.
I yawned. “Sorry, not everyone lives by your personal rules, Sal.”
She leveled me with a cool look. “Is this how you want to kick off our partnership? Because trust me, I’d be happy to argue with you all day long, but we’ll be much more efficient if we actually work together. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can go our separate ways.”
My eyebrows winged up. I assessed her, trying to gauge whether she was sincere or fucking with me.
I’d come prepared for war, and she was initiating a quasi-truce? Her apology was one thing. Her (albeit reluctant) willingness to work together without saying something snarky first was another.
Then again, the passive-aggressive Post-it note was classic Maya Singh, so maybe she hadn’t gotten a personality transplant. Perhaps she’d hit her head so hard her personality had split in two, and she was now forced to switch back and forth between them like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
“You’re right,” I said. “Let’s get this done.”
“Thank you.” Maya gave me a sweet smile, and I had the sense that I’d somehow lost a battle I hadn’t known was being fought. “Our first task is the announcement plan. We have to nail the messaging from the start, or we’re fucked.”
“Language.”
“Fuck off.”
I laughed. Much better. Her niceness freaked me out.
Maya huffed out a sigh, but I swore her mouth twitched before she flattened it into a straight line. “Shh. You’ll get us kicked out.”
She tilted her head toward the librarian, who was indeed glaring at us from behind her desk. She was only here once a week since the Valhalla library operated more as a networking hub than an actual library, but judging by her scowl, you’d think I’d killed her cat instead of merely laughing.
“I’d like to see her try.” I smiled at the librarian. She didn’t smile back. “She’s what, eighty? I can take her.”
Maya shook her head. “Of course, you wouldn’t see anything wrong with tackling a nice old lady.”
“I didn’t say anything about tackling, and she doesn’t look so nice.”
“That means she has discernment. Unlike other people, she doesn’t fall for your Euro charm bullshit.”
A slow smile crept across my face. “Did you admit I have charm?”
“Bullshit charm. Don’t cherry-pick my words.” Maya’s cheeks appeared a shade redder than usual as she opened her laptop. “Now stop talking and start working. I don’t have all day.”
I chuckled, but I acquiesced and flipped open the folder she’d handed me. She’d printed out my response to her proposal and given me notes on my notes. Typical.
I skimmed them without analyzing every comment the way I would if she were anyone else. I didn’t need to micromanage her; I trusted her to get things right on her own.
That said, we did have a ton of work to do. A project of this magnitude involved a thousand moving parts, and our tight timeline meant we both needed to be at the top of our game.
“We need a big marquee chef to handle the recipes and be the face of this collaboration,” I said. “I emailed you some names. If you don’t have any objections, I’ll start reaching out to see if any of them are interested.”
“Perfect. I’ll draft the press release and leave a placeholder for their name and bio.” Maya highlighted something in her notebook. “Can you finalize it by next week?”
“Of course.” It would take some arm-twisting, but the Laurent name went far in the culinary world.
We worked quietly for a while, our conversation lapsing into the scratch of pen on paper and the rhythmic clacking of our keyboards.
The library bustled with activity, but the noise seemed muted somehow, the other patrons barely noticeable despite their proximity to us. It was as if an invisible bubble insulated us from the rest of the room.
I glanced at Maya, who was typing furiously on her computer.
Light streamed in through the stained-glass windows behind her, settling softly on her hair and highlighting the stubborn set of her mouth.
A tiny crease dug in between her brows, and she muttered something under her breath as she paused typing to underline a sentence in her notebook.
We hadn’t worked side by side like this since college, when we’d kept getting thrown into group projects together.
We’d pulled countless all-nighters in the library, both of us refusing to be the one to bail first, but I’d forgotten how laser-focused she got.
How she radiated intensity, and how she tackled every task with a military-grade precision that left little room for error.
I’d made a game out of trying to distract her. I’d succeeded a number of times, but I’d kept those victories to myself. They were a secret indulgence, and I hoarded them the way dragons hoarded treasure, away from the prying eyes of those who wouldn’t understand.
Sometimes, I didn’t understand either.
“If you stare any harder, I’ll have to start charging you,” Maya said without looking up from her screen. “I’m not here for your entertainment.”
I hadn’t said a word, and I’d already distracted her. One point for Team Laurent.
I suppressed a smile. “Does my attention make you uncomfortable?”
“Everything about you makes me uncomfortable.”
“Yet here we are,” I drawled, taking great delight in the subtle flare of her nostrils. Two points for Team Laurent.
“Only because we have to be.” Her eyes flicked up to meet mine. They were dark with exasperation. “Have you looked at the draft I sent you yet? I’m meeting someone downtown in an hour, so I need to leave soon.”
“Yes. It’s fine.”
“Fine?” Maya looked like I’d told her she had a terminal disease and only two weeks left to live. “Our marketing timeline can’t be fine. It has to be perfect. What—”
“Who are you meeting later?” I interrupted. “Killian?”
Maybe Xavier had finally gotten a hold of the elusive bachelor and introduced them after I’d left the Vault. Killian did love his downtown haunts, though he was typically allergic to Monday-night gatherings unless they involved a bottle of whiskey, a pair of supermodels, and a threesome.
Maya gave me a strange look. “Killian Katrakis? Why would I be meeting with him?”
A twinge of heat crept over my cheeks. “No reason,” I said, silently kicking myself for the slip-up. Why the fuck was I bringing up Killian first? “But I talked to him earlier, and he said he had a meeting downtown tonight too.”
Fortunately, she was too distracted by my lukewarm assessment of her marketing plan to notice my blatant lie.
“What’s wrong with the timeline?” She flipped furiously through her notebook. “I guess we can move the ad campaign up a month, but if we do it too early, it’ll lose steam—”
“Maya.” I placed a hand on her wrist. “Relax. Fine is just a word. The timeline is perfect.”
She froze. Her eyes dropped to my hand before traveling to my face, and I realized a beat too late that I’d fucked up.
The invisible bubble around us shrank. My skin stretched too thin and too tight, like it wasn’t an adequate shield for the sudden blaze of panic inside of me.
My pulse thudded hard enough for her to feel it through my fingers, and I would’ve yanked my hand away if doing so wouldn’t have made things worse.
Instead, I lingered, even though I’d sworn I wouldn’t, and the light contact rekindled emotions that were best forgotten.
Her skin was softer than I remembered, and a pit opened in my stomach before I slowly withdrew, careful to keep my expression neutral.
“If it’s not Killian, who are you meeting?” I asked casually. I glanced around the room, trying to calm the irritating patter of my heart. “Some other poor sap your mom convinced to go on a date with you?”
Maya unfroze. She retracted her hand from the table, keeping it well out of my reach, and busied herself with packing up.
I had the distinct feeling that she was avoiding looking at me.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m meeting Vivian.
She’s helping me plan my birthday party.
” Her birthday was in two and a half months.
“So you are having a party.”
“Of course.”
“I haven’t received my invitation yet.” I placed a hand over my chest. My heart rate was starting to return to normal, thank fucking God. “I’m hurt.”
“Maybe you’re not invited,” she said, the picture of innocence. “Maybe I decided our competition isn’t worth having to share my favorite day of the year with you anymore.”
“Your birthday wouldn’t have much meaning without me, Sal.”
We’d been inviting each other to our birthday celebrations our entire lives. It was the perfect chance for us to one-up each other, and I looked forward to seeing her different themes—and planning ways to beat her—every year.
Maya snorted. “You think way too highly of yourself.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “But tell me I’m wrong.”
“You—”
“Mr. Laurent. Ms. Singh.” I didn’t realize the librarian had left her station until she popped up next to us with a disapproving frown. “Please. Keep your voices down. Other people are trying to work.”
Those “other people” were chatting at the same volume as us, but neither Maya nor I argued. We apologized, our gazes locked as the librarian huffed and left.
Without taking her eyes off me, Maya scribbled something on a Post-it note and slapped it on the table.
My mouth curled when I read it.
You’re wrong.
“You’re a bad liar, sweetheart,” I said, my voice soft enough for only her to hear.
Maya’s jaw tightened. The air pulsed between us, and I saw the indecision warring inside her—should she take my bait and respond, or should she walk away and let me have the last word?
I got my answer a minute later, when she hitched her bag onto her shoulder and brushed past me with a terse “See you next week. Don’t be late.”
I didn’t watch her leave, but a hint of her perfume trailed behind her. It smelled like a mix of amber and florals.
My smile faded, and I waited until the scent fully evaporated before I folded her note into neat thirds and slipped it into my pocket.
I stood, my gaze lingering on her empty seat for an extra beat before I, too, left.
Eight months, three weeks. That was the amount of time we had left in our partnership.
It wasn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things, but I had the unsettling feeling that it was just enough to drive me insane.