The Art of Almost

Chapter Two

Wren couldn't sleep.

She sat cross-legged on her office floor at 2 a.m., surrounded by sketches she wasn't even looking at.

Her phone remained pressed against her ear while her CFO, Marcus, delivered the kind of numbers that made her wish champagne hadn't been involved earlier in the evening.

"I'm not saying it is time for panic mode," Marcus said, in the tone of a man who absolutely wanted her to panic. "All I'm trying to say is that our two biggest investors have separately asked me, this month, whether NOIR has a five-year plan beyond Wren's instincts."

"Is that meant to be a bad thing? I mean, my instincts built this company."

"Yes, your instincts built the first five years of this company. Now, they want to see the next five look less like a gamble."

Wren pressed the heel of her hand against her eye. "And Maison Lumière…"

"Would be the single biggest thing to happen to this brand since launch," Marcus said. "Which you know. Which is why I'm confused about why you and Verrall's golden boy nearly torched it up in front of a reporter."

"He started it, why blame me?"

"I don't care who started it. All that I care about is the fact that Camille Dubois just handed you the exact validation this company needs to survive the next funding round, and you have until Friday to not blow it."

After he hung up, Wren sat in the dark a long time, staring at a sketch she had drawn a month ago and abandoned. It was a coat with structured shoulders bleeding into something soft and unstructured at the waist, heritage tailoring dissolving into something new. She hadn't known what to do with it. She hadn't been able to build it alone.

She thought, unwillingly, of grey-blue eyes and a mouth that only ever said the exact right thing to make her want to scream.

—---

Across the city, Adrian was not sleeping either.

He sat in his father's study, which was technically his study now, in title, though nothing in the room had changed in fifteen years and neither, really, had the balance of power going over the same quarterly report he'd already memorized.

It was down by four percent. Down four percent for the second consecutive quarter, in a year the board had been promised would be the turnaround.

His father's voice came from the doorway before Adrian heard him approach, which meant Julian had been standing there longer before Adrian noticed, watching.

"I heard about the gala."

Adrian didn't look up from the report. "I am fully aware of that. Nothing gets past you, especially not a huge one as this."

"Camille Dubois." Julian said the name like he was tasting something. "Maison Lumière doesn't extend offers like this twice, Adrian."

"I know what the offer means, father."

"Do you?" Julian strolled into the room, and even now, even at fifty-eight in a robe instead of a suit, he filled it the way he had always filled every room Adrian had ever stood in.

"Because from what I heard, you nearly cost us the only lifeline that has come our way in two years over a public spat with a woman who sells overpriced streetwear to people who have never and probably would never hold a Verrall garment in their hands."

"She is not…" Adrian stopped. Started again, more careful. "Wren Collins has managed to build a nine-figure company in six years with no family name behind her. I'd think you would respect that, given how much you value what a name is worth."

Julian's eyes narrowed, just slightly, the look he gave when Adrian said something he hadn't expected.

"Fix it," Julian said finally. "Whatever it takes. I don't care how you manage Ms. Collins, or Ms. Dubois, or your own temper. This house does not survive another failed quarter, and I will not be the generation that is remembered for losing what my father and his father built."

He turned to leave, then paused in the doorway; without looking back, he added, "Do better than your face at that gala, Adrian. Everyone in that room saw you rattled. Verralls are not rattled."

The door closed.

Adrian sat alone with the report, the low hum of the city outside, and the uncomfortable, unwelcome truth that his father was right about exactly one thing: he had been rattled. Not by the insult about market shares, though that had landed harder than he wanted to admit.

He had been rattled by the half-second, right before Camille interrupted them, where Wren Collins had looked at him like she could see straight through every careful thing he had built himself to be, and he had wanted, for one insane, dangerous heartbeat, to let her.

His phone buzzed on the desk. An email, subject line short and clinical:

"Maison Lumière — Friday Deadline, Terms Attached.”

He opened it, read the terms twice, and felt something in his chest go very still.

They didn't just need to prove they could be professional.

Camille wanted a joint public appearance. Thursday. Before the Friday deadline. A test.

He had less than forty-eight hours to figure out how to convince the sharpest, top fashion brand and most unforgiving executive in luxury retail that he and Wren Collins were capable of being anything other than exactly what they had displayed before her and the public tonight.

He was still staring at the email when a second one landed, forwarded from his assistant with a single line: “She has already called three times. Ms. Collins wants to talk. Tonight and she won't take no for an answer.”