Page 3 of Rise

“Are there any departments left for you to move to?”

He remembered that she’d been moving from department to department, learning everything she could about the company before getting an office on the executive floor.

“Yep. Just manufacturing. Then it’s the C-suite all the way, baby! I can’t wait to steal my brother’s coffee mug every day.”

“You won’t be sad?” Grace said. “Seems like PR is a good fit for you.”

“Oh, well.” She smiled big. Her personal feelings didn’t matter on this one. She was moving in a month, and that was that. “Let’s get back to you, Alessandro! Are you really in trouble? And where’s Nicola?”

According to the fashion blogs Megan followed, Nicola was his girlfriend. As blond and bubbly as Alessandro was dark and brooding, they made a great couple on the red carpet.

“She went home, too. Back to Poland.”

“That’s a shame.” Why hadn’t they holed up in some random city together? Why hadn’t he gone to his native Italy? Why wasn’t he with his family if he couldn’t be with Nicola?

Why had he come back to Boston?

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “It will blow over.”

Megan frowned for a second but cleared her expression. It was none of her business, no matter how hard he was staring at her. That was just his movie-star quality shining through his no-good, very bad day. Making her feel like she was the only person in the room. He’d always been like that. No one could say “mocha latte extra foam” like he could. Like it was a love language. A promise. Three-quarters of the people who came into the shop had to have been in love with him.

“Here’s your coffee, Megan,” Grace said.

What? What was coffee? “Oh, yes.” She came back to herself, gave Alessandro the big smile she used to disarm any hint of confusion, and turned away to pick up the cup and the bag containing her Danish. The mixed scents of coffee and caramel made her mouth water. “Life-giving elixir,” she said, bringing the cup to her nose and taking a deep sniff. “Well, guess I’d better get to work.”

“And I should go,” Alessandro said, looking at the huge clock installation on the wall beside him. “Before the crowds descend.”

“You were very well camouflaged, by the way,” she said. She kept the cup by her face, as though it could stop him from noticing that she had trouble looking away from him. “I would never have known it was you until you spoke.”

“Noted,” he said. “It was good to see you.”

“Um,” she said. “Yep! You too!”

And she walked out without saying goodbye to any of the others.

♦

“Hi!” she sang at the security guards at the front desk of Fielding Paper. “How were your holidays?”

They beamed at her. “Great. And yours?”

“It was beautiful. Annoyingly beautiful. I could never match it.”

“You’re getting married too?” one asked, eyes wide.

“Ha. No, thank you. Men are too much trouble.” She grinned to show she was joking. Men weren’t too much trouble. Making sure someone was happy twenty-four hours a day? Never being able to close the door and relax her iron grip on her smile? That was too much trouble.

She had the elevator to herself at this early hour. Getting back to her floor—what had been her floor for two years—was nice.

No, Megan. Nice wasn’t good enough.Be better than nice. She threaded her way through the open-plan area to the coffee room and coat closet. Once she’d put away her coat, scarf, and gloves, she checked the coffeepot and the refrigerator for milk and cream, took out a few more teabags from the storage closet for those who wanted them, and then took her purse and coffee to her desk, which sat in its unexciting spot, just like the others. Leo, the SVP of communications and her father’s best friend, had told her she could take an empty windowed office, but she’d smiled big and shaken her head. No one liked someone who jumped the line. Within a few weeks, she’d convinced him to set it up as a pumping room for a new mother who’d just returned to work. Leo was pretty easy to convince. He just hadn’t thought of it because he was her father’s generation and thoughts like that didn’t come organically to him. It was Megan’s pleasure to see the gaps in what the company offered and fill them. Now they had pumping rooms on every floor.

As the rest of her team arrived, everyone stopped by her desk to ask about the wedding and her trip. Incredible, she said over and over. Beautiful. Stunning.Isolating. Painful. Final.

“Must have sucked flying back into freezing cold Boston,” a saleswoman said.

“You forget we were skiing in Taos!” Megan laughed. “And I always love coming home, no matter how much fun I had.” No matter how empty Boston might suddenly feel.

“Hey, Meg,” Leo said, coming over and scattering the small crowd that had gathered. Megan liked him—genuinely, not just because she had to. She’d seen the support he’d given her brother, Kane, and while that support had finally turned Leo’s hair white and he hadn’t retired when he should have, he never complained and always came to work with a positive attitude. Megan appreciated that and learned from it.

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