~Maria's POV~
It was the sterile, predictable culmination of a successful week. My business trip to Frankfurt had wrapped up, netting a seven-figure deal for the firm, and now I was settling into my window seat in the business class cabin of the overnight flight back to New York.
The luxury was routine: the cashmere blanket, the chilled glass of Perrier, the sound-canceling headphones. I needed eight hours of quiet solitude to decompress, mentally running the checklist of next steps.
Then I saw him.
The gate agent escorted the last passenger down the aisle, and my breath hitched, the little bubble of professional calm popping like cheap plastic.
Tariq.
He hadn’t changed much, which was a ridiculous thought given that it had only been two years, but in the realm of messy exes and
