Page 3 of An Enchanted Spring

Emma felt the threat all the way to her soul, and she choked back a sob. This was not the Ben she’d known, the Ben she’d loved for so long.

This was a monster.

She nodded, unable to form words, and he pushed her to the floor, where she fell in a heap. He opened the door and stepped over her, then turned and looked down at her in disgust. In a low voice, he added, “You’ve made things very difficult, Emmaline. If you run, I will find you. And it will be deemed an accident. I’ll make sure the payout happens quickly and efficiently.” He smiled coldly. “You’ll have a lovely funeral. Not that anyone would show up. I’m all you ever had.”

He pulled the door shut, and Emma lost her stomach.

Emma was shocked back to the present when someone knocked on the conference room door. “I have this booked for a client meeting!” a voice called apologetically.

Emma swallowed hard and stuffed the incriminating images back into the envelope. She would get them to the shredder immediately.

Ben had been sentenced to a year and some months in jail, and Emma had hoped when he came out she’d have a plan.

A glance at the unexpected envelope in her shaky hand had her wondering if she might want to start planning.

At some point,her wineglass emptied itself.

Emma gave it a small frown. It had been doing that all night, but she refused to be bothered by it. She just refilled it from the bottle that was sitting obediently next to her on thesmall table on her tiny little terrace, in her tiny little corner of New York City.

She squinted at the bottle before she put it down. It was mostly empty—when did that happen? She must’ve swigged—er,sipped—more than she thought. She couldn’t bring herself to care, though. After the day she’d had, coupled with not taking a night off in forever, she deserved some down time.

Her clients’ social lives had replaced her own years ago. She put every ounce of herself into being a great publicist. She could smooth over any situation her clients found themselves in. Her years of dedication (okay, not taking a vacation or a full weekend in the entire seven years she’d been at Price Publicity) gave her contacts all over the city—reporters, journalists, magazine editors, restaurant owners—but her biggest successes came from social media. Her coworkers always turned to her for the best ways to spin something in 140 characters or less, inventive hashtags to offset negative press, and clever social media statuses that made light of serious situations. And she also possessed a good ear for warning bells, which helped her notice the bad vibes before a disaster struck.

However, as she sat on her little terrace, looking out over the crowded street below, she wished she were anywhere else, for the first time since she had arrived in the city years ago. It was a never-ending barrage of busy lives, all colliding in a few square miles. And her job never let her go—“regular business hours” was code only for one’s physical presence within the Price building, because the clientele at Price Publicity tended to make rather serious mistakes at all hours of the night.

She took another swig of wine as her phone rang.

“’Lo?” she answered, peering into the wineglass.

“Emma—we have a crisis.”

Emma took another swallow of her wine beforeanswering. Her tongue felt a little fuzzy. “Josh, I’m not working tonight.”

“Are you drunk?” her boss asked. Emma could almost see his brow furrow, as if he couldn’t possibly fathom the prim and proper Emma Perkins getting drunk. By herself.

On a Wednesday night.

“Nooo,” Emma snorted.

“Oh my God. Youaredrunk.”

“Why are you calling me, Josh?”

“Because you need to be in the office tomorrow morning at seven. I was checking my email—”

“You really do work too much,” Emma interrupted.

“So says the pot to the kettle,” Josh snickered. “Listen, a hi-pri came into our inboxes almost an hour ago. We’ve all been waiting for your response.”

Emma’s fuzzy brain tried to snap to attention at the mention of a high-priority email, but it just wasn’t working right. “From who?” The only client who would warrant a high-priority email was the one in the incriminating photos.

She took another large sip to block out the memory.

Josh’s voice was serious. “Mr. Price.”

Emma stood up quickly, choking on her wine. Putting a hand over her eyes to stop the spinning, she managed, “Mr. Price, as in, Mr. Price, the CEO?”

“That’s the one.”

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