DIVORCE HIM THEN HE BEGGED

Chapter 3: A Stranger's Test

The plane touched down in a city Amara had never seen, under a sky the color of wet slate.

She stood in the arrivals hall with one suitcase, one coat, and Julian Reyes's business card worn soft from being turned over in her fingers a hundred times. Nora had made the call the morning after the divorce. Two days later, here she was, walking out into the rain with the strange, dizzy feeling of a woman who had jumped off a cliff and hadn't hit the ground yet.

Her phone buzzed once in her pocket.

She didn't take it out. She knew what it would be. Or rather, who.

Kane hadn't called again after that night. But three times since, a message had appeared on her screen, deleted before she could read it. Three times, she'd watched the little word typing… flicker and vanish.

Don't, she told herself. Don't hope. Hope is how she wins.

She hailed a cab and gave the driver the address on the card.

Reyes Global occupied the top eight floors of a glass tower that seemed to have been designed by someone who despised clutter. Amara stepped out of the elevator into a lobby of white marble and warm wood, and felt, absurdly, underdressed. She wore her plainest gray dress, the one she'd worn to her own grandmother's funeral. It was the only thing she owned that didn't remind her of Kane.

"Ms. Lane?"

A young man in a rumpled suit hurried toward her. He had a headset around his neck, a tablet clutched to his chest, and the wild-eyed look of someone who had not slept since Tuesday.

"I'm Theo, Mr. Reyes's assistant. He's expecting you. Sorry, sorry, please excuse the chaos. It's just, we're having a bit of a situation."

"What kind of situation?"

Theo laughed, high and slightly hysterical. "The kind that ends careers."

He led her down a glass corridor toward the corner office. Through the walls, Amara saw people rushing, phones pressed to ears, a woman in the conference room actually pulling at her hair. Somewhere, someone was shouting the word Halvorsen as if it were a curse.

The corner office door swung open.

"Ms. Lane." A man rose from behind an enormous desk. "Thank you for coming on short notice. Please forgive the mess."

Julian Reyes was nothing like Kane.

Where Kane was cold, Julian was warm. Where Kane was sharp lines and gray silence, Julian had an easy smile, rolled-up sleeves, and dark eyes that seemed to find something funny in everything. He looked about thirty-two, with the loose-limbed confidence of a man who had never once been told no and made a point of not abusing it.

But his eyes, when they rested on Amara, were sharp as a scalpel.

He's reading me, she realized. Every detail. My posture. My shoes. The way I'm standing.

"Nora Whitfield speaks very highly of you," Julian said.

"Nora is biased. She's my friend."

"That's exactly why I believe her. She wouldn't risk her name on a friend unless it was deserved." He gestured to the chair. "I'll be honest, Ms. Lane. Your résumé is..." He glanced at the blank sheet in front of him. "Thin."

"It's blank."

"It's blank," he agreed, with a small, delighted smile. "Three years of no employment history, a marriage certificate, and a recommendation from a divorce lawyer. In any other office, I'd be calling security."

"I understand."

"But I've learned," Julian went on, "that the people who did the most invisible work often have the most valuable skills. So instead of an interview, I want to run a test. If you fail, I'll walk you to the elevator and no hard feelings. If you pass..." He shrugged. "We'll see."

Amara folded her hands in her lap. Her pulse was racing, but her voice, thank God, stayed steady. "What's the test?"

Julian nodded at Theo, who was hovering by the door looking like a man watching a bridge collapse.

"Tomorrow night, we host a dinner for the Halvorsen Group. Forty guests. If this dinner goes badly, we lose the biggest investment in the company's history." Julian's tone was light, but his eyes were not. "As of this morning, the venue double-booked us, half the guests have conflicting dietary needs, and the guest list contains at least three people who are currently in a feud."

Theo made a small, wounded sound.

"You have ten minutes," Julian said. "Fix it."

He slid a folder across the desk.

Amara opened it.

Forty names. A seating chart already bleeding with red pen. Notes in three different handwritings. A venue confirmation that had clearly been rewritten four times.

For one second, her heart stuttered.

Then something strange happened.

The panic went quiet. The noise in her head, all the grief and guilt and the endless echo of a man saying sign it, dropped away. Her eyes moved down the page and the pieces began to rearrange themselves, the way they had for three years of dinners and galas and charity boards where a single misplaced guest could mean a social war.

She picked up a pen.

"Mr. Harlan and Mrs. Osei cannot sit at the same table. The papers ran their divorce settlement last spring. Put Harlan at table two, with Ms. Adeyemi, who is friendly with both sides. Mrs. Osei goes at table five, near the window. She hates being on display, but she hates being ignored more."

Julian's eyebrows lifted. Theo's mouth dropped open.

"Dr. Brandt is on the list twice under different spellings. Combine them. That's your missing chair." Her pen flew across the page. "The venue's private dining room holds forty-four, not thirty-six. Whoever confirmed it read the wrong floor plan. Call the events manager directly, not the booking line, and ask for the terrace room instead. It's usually held for VIP overflow. Tell them Halvorsen's assistant requested it personally. They'll say yes."

"That's..." Theo began.

"The Halvorsen chairman is on a low-sodium diet for his heart. That's public. It's in a three-year-old interview. Don't announce it. Just quietly change his menu. If he notices, he'll feel respected. If he doesn't, no one is embarrassed."

She turned the page.

"And you put the two co-founders who hate each other at opposite ends of the same table. That's a mistake. Seat them side by side, and put the dessert wine between them. Nobody starts a fight over a two-hundred-dollar bottle."

She capped the pen and slid the folder back across the desk.

"Six minutes," Julian said softly.

Amara blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"You did it in six." He was looking at her with an expression she couldn't read. "Theo, how long did it take Marcus's team to produce that seating chart?"

"Two days, sir," Theo whispered. "Two days."

Julian leaned back slowly. For a long moment he said nothing at all. Then he began to laugh, low and genuinely delighted, and it transformed his whole face.

"Ms. Lane, you've never held a job in your life, and you just did the work of my entire events department before your ten minutes were half gone." He shook his head. "Whoever let you go from wherever you were was a fool."

The words landed strangely in her chest, half comfort, half wound. Amara looked down at her hands.

"Thank you."

"I'm offering you the position. Operations director, reporting directly to me. Start Monday." Julian named a salary that made her breath catch. "And before you say anything, don't. I'm not being charitable. I'm being selfish. I want the best person in the room on my side."

"I accept," Amara said quietly. And meant it more than she'd meant anything in weeks.

Julian stood and offered his hand. She took it.

Then he paused.

"Just one thing," he said. "I looked into you before you arrived. Standard practice." His thumb rested over her knuckles, and his smile changed, growing sharper and more knowing. "Your name on the marriage certificate was Amara Ashford. As in, Kane Ashford."

Every drop of color drained from her face.

"I was," she said, barely a whisper. "I'm not anymore."

"I know." Julian released her hand. "That's what makes this interesting."

"Mr. Reyes—"

"Julian." He walked to the window, hands in his pockets, and stared out at the gray, rain-washed skyline. "You should know, Amara. I've spent six years trying to beat Kane Ashford. He's taken three of my biggest deals, cost me two of my closest partners, and he doesn't even remember my name."

He turned back to her.

"And now the one person who's spent three years inside his life has walked through my door."

The smile came slowly, and it was not entirely kind.

"I think we're going to get along very well."