Page 11 of Midnight Kisses

Sitting on my bed, chewing on the end of a marker pen, I remembered when I was twenty and had told my dad that I wanted to turn the potions I made for my friends in my bedroom into a real skincare business.

He’d nodded thoughtfully, but his expression had been sombre. ‘People who can afford to invest do so in their friends and sure things. If you can’t be a friend, be a sure thing.’

I had a lot of good contacts through modelling; makeup artists who used my products and set designers who would throw a bottle in the background of a shoot. Currently, Perry Skin was a cult fave for those in-the-know. It was a good position to be in—exclusive and high-end. But my goal was to be accessible to everyone, and for that I would need an investor. IknewI was a sure thing, and if I had access to some moneybags people I could convince them of that too. People like the guests at tonight’s party who’d been networking and making deals while I climaxed in the bathroom.

My eyes fell to the building access card Ginger had given me, sitting on my vanity.

When the clock struck midnight tonight, I’d been so stressed to be late to meet Tala, I’d left without looking for Ginger to return my swipe card.

With the beginnings of a daring plan forming, I pulled up the Sky Tower events calendar, available on their website.

Going forward, I wouldn’t be diverted from my dreams.

No matter how talented the tongue.

CHAPTER 5

MILES

The next hourin my calendar was blocked out to chat with Paul, head of Business Partnerships, who wanted to pitch a new client acquisition strategy—but I told my assistant Sadie to fob him off. What was the point in being the boss if you couldn’t take a lazy afternoon kip when the mood struck?

Except, reclined on the couch in my office, I didn’t actually sleep. Obviously. I couldn’t sleep at nighttime, let alone midday. Instead, I spent the reclaimed hour doing the same thing I’d been doing this morning while shovelling cereal into my face, and last night as I lay in bed half-watching a football game I’d already seen.

Attempting to cyber stalk my bathroom goddess.

Unlike Sadie and the majority of the marketing department at Elysian Wine Exports, I wasn’t deeply attached to social media. Sadie liked to call me digitally prehistoric because she thought it would annoy me. It didn’t—what annoyed me was having the woman from New Year’s Eve haunting my thoughts like this.

Home alone in the small hours of New Year’s Day, I’d thought if I knocked one out reliving the memory of her coming on my face, that would be that and I could put the memory of her behind me.

It hadn’t worked out that way.

For three weeks I’d thought about her constantly. No matter how hard I tried, the mystery of her was a fixation. Which grated.

The only reliable path to happiness was to avoid giving a fuck about anyone but yourself. And instead of living by my own values, I’d spent multiple nights staring at the ceiling wondering who the woman was, what her story was, and how she went from modelling to removing stains (or not removing, in my case) in a fancy bathroom.

A knock sounded at the door.

“Go away.”

The door opened and closed, with Sadie on the wrong side of it.

“You look like shit,” my assistant said cheerfully. “Do you want me to cancel the rest of your afternoon and make you a sleepy tea?”

“God no. The last one tasted like pickled beets.”

“Not the beets one, I found a new brand. This one tastes like laying in a meadow. You can practically smell the wildflowers as you look up at your lover who’s telling you he has the skin of a killer, Bella.”

That was the problem with Sadie. She wasn’t intimidated by me, which gave her zero qualms about voicing the incomprehensible shit that crowded her mind.

“How do I find someone on social media, Sadie?”

“You search their name and add filters like location or education. Is this a work thing?”

“If I say yes, will you help me with it?”

She shook her head. “If you sayno,I’ll help you with it. I’m bored, I’ve done all the fun tasks on my to do list.”

“You’re supposed to doallthe tasks,” I muttered, though there was very little point. Sadie would do whatever she wanted, and although I’d never tell her this, she was an excellent assistant. If she thought something could wait, it could.

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