Wrong Inbox, Right Heart

Chapter Two

Marcel's POV

I didn't tell anyone about the wrong number text. There was nothing to tell, technically. A stranger had messaged me by accident, I'd responded, we'd talked briefly and signed off. End of story.

Except I found myself thinking about it the next morning.

I was in my car, the black Bentley I'd bought two years ago and barely noticed anymore, being driven through downtown toward the Bouska Group's main tower. Rain slicked the windows. My assistant, Petra, was talking in my ear through my earpiece about the eleven o'clock with the Singapore delegation and the acquisition documents that needed my signature before noon, and I was nodding in the right places, but part of my brain was somewhere else entirely.

Hey, still need someone to cover Sunday? I'll take it. I need the hours.

There had been something naked about that message. Not in a dramatic way. Just in the way that exhausted people are naked, stripped of pretense because they're too tired to hold it up. She'd been talking to her coworker, someone she trusted enough to say I need the hours to without embarrassment, and she'd sent it to me by mistake. And then she'd apologized, quickly, like she was used to taking up too much space and correcting herself.

I didn't know why that particular detail stuck with me.

I'd met hundreds of women. Dated several. Been engaged once, briefly, before I learned what Catherine really thought of me or rather, what she thought of my family's money and how conveniently she'd confused the two. Since then I kept things simple. Short. Transactional in the cleanest possible sense. It was easier and I was under no illusions about what I was.

But I kept thinking about Holly.

Not romantically. I told myself that firmly. I didn't even know what she looked like. All I had was a handful of texts and a first name and the impression of someone who was tired and careful and a little bit funny in the driest possible way. That wasn't enough to be thinking about.

And yet.

"Mr. Bouska." Petra's voice sharpened. "The Singapore file, do you want it sent to your tablet before the meeting?"

"Yes," I said. "Send it."

The car moved through the grey morning and I watched the city slide past the window. I'd built half of what this skyline had become in the last decade. Towers, hotels, commercial developments with my name on them or my family's name, which amounted to the same thing. I was thirty four years old and I had more money than I would ever meaningfully spend and an apartment that looked like a showroom and a calendar that had not had a free Saturday in four months.

I had everything, by most definitions of the word.

Last night a stranger had talked to me about shift work and bad Tuesdays and it had been the most honest conversation I'd had in six months.

I picked up my phone and looked at the thread. Her last message: Goodnight, Marcel.

I should leave it there. I knew I should leave it there.

My thumbs moved before the rational part of my brain could catch up. Morning. Did Tuesday get better?

I sent it. Then I looked at it. Then I put the phone in my jacket pocket and stared out at the rain and the skyline and told myself it was just a polite follow-up. Nothing more than basic human decency.

The phone buzzed six minutes later.

Little better. Got the shift. And my son ate his breakfast without a negotiation, which is practically a miracle.

Her son. She had a son.

I read that twice. Reread the original text from last night. I need the hours. A single mother, then, probably, working at a diner, covering shifts at midnight to make rent, and she still had a sense of humor about it. She'd called her kid's eating breakfast without negotiation a miracle, and despite myself, I smiled. An actual smile, not the boardroom version, not the charity gala version. The real one, which hadn't made an appearance in longer than I could easily remember.

A negotiation, I typed back. How old?

Four. He has very strong opinions about the crust on toast.

Sounds exhausting.

You have no idea, she wrote, and then: Why are you texting me again? You could have just left it at goodnight.

It was a fair question. Direct, no games. I liked that.

Maybe I wanted to know if Tuesday got better, I wrote.

A pause. Then: That's either very sweet or very strange.

Probably both, I replied.

Another pause, longer this time. I watched the typing indicator appear and disappear twice before her message came through.

Probably both, she agreed.

The car pulled up to the tower. Petra was already on the pavement with an umbrella. I had twelve minutes before the Singapore meeting and forty years of careful control behind me, and I was sitting in the back of my car smiling at my phone like an i***t.

I put it away. Got out. Walked into the building.

But I thought about her all morning.