She Does Not Save Numbers
780 Words
The hotel room was everything Elyn needed it to be.
Quiet. Cold. Nobody in it except her.
She dropped her bag on the chair, kicked off her heels, and stood in the middle of the room in her blazer and bare feet for exactly thirty seconds doing absolutely nothing.
She did this after every high stakes meeting.
Thirty seconds of nothing. No thoughts. No strategy. No next move.
Then back to work.
She counted to thirty. Rolled her shoulders. Picked up her phone.
Fourteen new emails. Two missed calls from the board. One text from Dana that said how did it go followed immediately by another that said don’t say fine I know your fine means something happened.
Elyn stared at the second text for a moment.
She typed, It went well.
Dana replied in four seconds. FINE. Got it. Call me tomorrow.
Elyn set the phone down.
Walked to the window.
Harlow City had stopped raining. The skyline was wet and dark and glittering in the way cities did after rain like they were pretending the whole thing had been intentional all along.
She stood there for a while.
Not thinking about the meeting.
Not thinking about the acquisition.
Definitely not thinking about the way Rhys Calder had said dismantle across a corridor window like it was something worth admiring out loud.
She went to the bathroom. Removed her makeup with the focused efficiency of someone completing a task. Washed her face. Looked at herself in the mirror for a moment.
She looked tired.
She was not tired.
She went back into the room, sat on the edge of the bed, and reached for her jacket to hang it up.
The card slid out of the pocket and landed face up on the white duvet.
Eleven digits. Clean black print. Nothing else.
Elyn looked at it.
It looked back.
She picked it up between two fingers the way she had on the plane. Examined it like it contained information she hadn’t already memorised in the first three seconds of reading it.
She had memorised it in the first three seconds.
She put it on the nightstand.
She was going to throw it away in the morning.
Obviously.
She got into bed. Opened her laptop. Pulled up the acquisition report to document the day’s negotiation while the details were fresh. She was thorough like that. Always had been.
She typed for forty minutes.
Closed the laptop.
Lay in the dark.
The city hummed quietly outside the window.
She picked up her phone.
Opened her contacts.
Stared at the blank new contact screen for a long moment.
Put the phone back down.
Picked it up again.
She was not doing this.
She was absolutely not doing this.
She was Elyn Crest. She had eleven years of iron discipline and a personal rule about men that had served her perfectly and she was not going to compromise either of those things over a business card left by a man who hadn’t even bothered to write his name on it.
The audacity of that actually.
No name.
Just a number.
Like he already knew she’d remember exactly whose it was.
Her jaw tightened.
She typed the number.
Did not type a name above it.
Saved it as, Don’t.
Put the phone face down on the nightstand.
Stared at the ceiling.
Thirty seconds of nothing.
She counted to thirty.
It didn’t work.
Three floors down in room 1408 Rhys Calder sat at the desk by the window with his laptop open and a glass of water he hadn’t touched and was doing something he almost never did.
Waiting.
Not impatiently. He didn’t do impatient. But waiting nonetheless. With the particular awareness of a man who had placed something carefully and was giving it the space to either land or not land without interference.
His phone was on the desk beside the laptop.
He was not looking at it.
He was working. Reading through the acquisition counter position his team had drafted on the flight. Making notes in the margins. Thinking three moves ahead the way he always did.
His phone lit up.
Unknown number.
One message.
He looked at it for a moment.
Then he smiled. Slow and quiet in the empty hotel room with nobody watching.
He typed back.
Put the phone down.
Went back to work.
On the nightstand in room 1711 Elyn’s phone lit up.
She had sent one word.
Unprofessional.
He had replied with two.
You called.
Elyn stared at the screen.
Put the phone face down.
Pulled the duvet up.
Closed her eyes.
Her mouth did something in the dark that she was grateful nobody was there to see.
- Writer
