Chapter 2 The handkerchief

I stared at the handkerchief as if it might bite me. It was pure white and neatly pressed, with tiny dark initials stitched in the corner: A.B. Who even carries those anymore? "Mr. Blackwood," I said, my voice scratchy from crying. "What are you doing here?" "Passing by." "In a park." "It's a public park." His expression didn't change. He looked at me the way he looked at everything, like a quarterly report he had already found disappointing. I should have been polite. He was the CEO of Blackwood Group, the man who signed my paycheck from several floors above. But yesterday he had sat at the head of the conference table, flipped through my campaign proposal for Blackwood Haven, the group's new line of warm, family-friendly boutique hotels, for exactly ten seconds, and said, "This is forgettable. Start over." In front of everyone. I had gone home and stabbed a pillow. "I'm fine," I said, lifting my chin. "You can go." "You're not fine." "I'm fine enough that I don't need my boss watching me." Something flickered across his face, too quick to name. His hand stayed out, still holding the handkerchief. I snatched it, mostly out of pride, and wiped my face. It smelled of cedarwood, clean and warm, and it was annoyingly soft. Of course a billionaire's handkerchief would be soft. "His name," Adrian repeated. "Why do you care?" "I don't." He glanced away. "I'm curious." "You're lying," I muttered. His jaw tightened. "Do you always insult people who lend you things?" "Do you always show up uninvited and demand names?" For a second, we just glared at each other. A leaf drifted down between us. Somewhere behind the trees, his black car purred like a patient animal. I hated that he was so tall. I hated that the evening light caught his sharp cheekbones. Most of all, I hated that even in my worst moment my stupid heart gave one small, traitorous flutter at the sight of him. Get a grip, Ella. You just got cheated on, not hit on the head. "Look," I said, standing and smoothing my skirt. "I appreciate the handkerchief. I'll have it washed and returned to your assistant. But my personal life isn't company business." "Everything about you is..." He stopped. I frowned. "Is what?" "Nothing." He cleared his throat and slid his hands into his coat pockets. "You're too loud when you cry. People were looking." "There's one old man, and he's asleep." We both turned. The old man with the newspaper was, in fact, snoring. I swear I saw the corner of Adrian's mouth twitch. Then it vanished as if it had never existed, and I wondered if I had imagined it. "Ella!" The shout tore across the park like a battle cry. Tessa came sprinting down the path in sneakers and her work uniform, her curly hair flying, a half-melted iced coffee in one hand like a weapon. "Where is he? Where's the cheating rat? I will end him! I will..." She skidded to a stop three feet from us and went completely silent. Her eyes moved from my red face, to the handkerchief in my hand, up to the tall man in the charcoal coat. "Oh," she whispered. "Oh, no. You're Adrian Blackwood." "Tessa," I hissed. "The Adrian Blackwood. The one who made you rewrite the whole proposal three times and said your color palette looked like a children's hospital." "Tessa!" "What?" She didn't even lower her voice. "I'm just confirming my enemies." I wanted the earth to swallow me. But Adrian only looked at her, calm as stone. "Your friend needs to go home." "I know that," Tessa snapped. "That's why I'm here. Did you do something to her?" "Tess, he just gave me a handkerchief." "That's what a villain would do. Make you trust him with something small." "I'm standing right here," Adrian said dryly. "I know," said Tessa. "I'm being brave." I pressed my fingers against my forehead. My day had started with a cupcake and was ending with my best friend threatening a billionaire. "I'll call a car for you," Adrian said to me, ignoring Tessa completely. "My driver can take you home." "No." "It's getting dark." "I take the bus every day, Mr. Blackwood. I know what dark looks like." "Ella..." My name. He had said my name. Not Miss Monroe, not the assistant from marketing. Just Ella, low and quiet, as if it had been sitting in his mouth for a while. My stomach did a strange little flip. "I said no," I repeated, softer this time. "Thank you. But no." He held my gaze for a long moment. I couldn't read him at all. He had the kind of eyes that gave nothing away, dark as wet slate, and yet I felt, absurdly, that he wanted to say something much longer than what came out. "Fine," he said at last. "Then at least go home and eat something. You skipped lunch." I blinked. "How do you know I skipped lunch?" His expression went carefully blank. "You look like someone who skipped lunch." "That's not an insult I've heard before." "It wasn't an insult." He turned toward the path. "Good night, Miss Monroe." Just like that, he was formal again. The wall slid back into place. Tessa waited until his footsteps faded before she grabbed my shoulders and shook me gently. "Okay. What. Was. That." "I don't know." "Why was the CEO of Blackwood Group ⁷standing behind your bench like a creepy romantic hero?" "I don't know, Tess." "And why does he smell like money?" She sniffed the handkerchief in my hand and widened her eyes. "Oh my goodness, it even smells like money." I laughed weakly, and it turned into a hiccup, and the hiccup turned into tears again. Tessa wrapped her arms around me, iced coffee and all, and held me while the sun sank behind the trees. "You're going to be okay," she said fiercely into my hair. "I promise. And that boy is going to wish he had never been born." "I just want to go home." "Then we're going home." We were halfway to the gate when I heard it: a faint, expensive click of a car door closing somewhere behind us. I looked back. Adrian was standing beside his black car at the far edge of the park, one hand on the open door. He wasn't getting in. He was just watching me leave, and for one second his guard slipped completely, and I saw something in his face that did not belong to an arrogant boss. It looked like worry. Then he said something to his driver, too far away for me to hear, and the car door shut. They drove off. I turned back around, confused and exhausted, and bent to pick up my bag. That was when I noticed what lay on the path near the bench, half-hidden beneath a leaf. It was a small paper bag, slightly crushed. A Café Lumière bag. My cupcake bag. The one I had dropped on the pavement across the street, almost half a block away, before I ever walked into the park. My heart began to pound. The bag was no longer on the pavement. Someone had picked it up, carried it here, and placed it carefully beside my bench. Tucked on top of it, in neat, slanted handwriting, was a folded note. I opened it with shaking fingers. "You deserved better than chocolate-hazelnut. A." Tessa leaned over my shoulder. "Ella... who knew the flavor?" I stared at the note, cold prickling down my spine. "Only two people," I whispered. "Daniel and me."