Zach: Stella
Dex: Who?Have I met her?
I roll my eyes, before explaining.
Zach: The fashion house.I’m at their VIP event
Dex: Fishing again, huh???
Asshole.I’m about to put my phone away, when it vibrates again.
Dex: If you don’t catch anything, come over.
I slip my cell phone away and look up, just in time to see a young woman, of medium height and thin and graceful get on the stage alongside Cecil.Her dark glossy hair tumbles around her shoulders in waves, framing her olive-gold skin.
She must have more than a hundred pairs of eyes on her, and yet she’s calm and cool under pressure.She fiddles with something on the laptop, then says something to Cecil, before walking away.
I sit up, then sit forward.I’ve only seen her for a few seconds, but my heart is beating like I’ve run a mile.Something jolts deep in my chest.She looks familiar, and yet I’ve never seen her before.I don’t understand why my body reacts the way it does.
Cecil pats down his bald head, and resumes the presentation.The slideshow moves to the next slide.
“Ah, very good.Thank you.”He says it over his shoulder, but the woman has disappeared out of sight.“Maya, she’s wonderful.Fixes everything.Coming back to our new line ...”His words trail away.
Maya.
Her name lands like a bomb.Like someone’s thrown a grenade at me and I’m waiting for it to explode.An odd, familiar feeling sweeps over me.
Maya.
That’s what he said, and that woman ...isher.I just know it is.
The girl who vanished one day, without a word, so many years ago, when she was fifteen, and I was a year older.
My unexpected friend, confidante and counselor.
Maya.
The housekeeper’s daughter, and the girl I’ve never forgotten.
And the one who’s kisses I never forgot.
Chapter 3
MAYA
My insides hollow out.
It was bad enough the presentation deck being accidentally set to auto—advance, but at least we discovered and fixed that before Cecil went on stage, but this?A hardware problem live, in front of our VIP guests?
We must look so amateurish.So unprepared.And none of this is my fault.This is something Tom should be dealing with but I had to go out and fix it because he wasn’t around.
I head back to my temporary desk and look around with trepidation.Although Katherine is nowhere in sight, I know she noticed.That woman has eyes in the back of her head and there’s going to be hell to pay when I see her.
Not for Tom.Forme.To make matters worse, Cecil praised me in front of everyone.
The wonderful Maya, she fixes everything around here.
That’s going to piss Katherine off.
