Page 47 of Challenge Accepted

The streets were fairly dead compared to a few hours ago. Once the cruise liners gathered their herds of people, the locals came back out to shop. The Expo was in a hotel at the end of Old Street. The colorful houses and shops went by in a blur as she scooted through people and darted around vendors.

The huge flags of the hotel were dead ahead.

Her stomach flipped the nearer she got to the lobby. She wanted to go in there, but part of her wanted turn right around. If she didn’t see, didn’t know just what kind of work was out there, then she didn’t have to think about just how badly she wanted her pieces to be among them.

The foot traffic at the exhibit was light. It would be ending around six o’clock and unless people were booth owners, most of them would have cleared out to get dinner or see some of the island.

“You should have seen the tanzanite booth. I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t even know tanzanite was that lovely. I’ve only seen watered down stones in department stores.”

Presley turned to the two women talking. “I’m sorry, where did you see that display?”

“Aisle G, I think. It was either F or G.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

Tanzanite was her stone. Well, it wasn’t her stone exactly, but she’d made her collection with the stone as the showpiece gem. She’d fallen in love with the gemstone from coming to St. Thomas and St. Maarten on trips with her mother. It was mined right there in the area.

She had to see the display.

A man with a clipboard was walking down the aisles with a younger woman at his side, furiously tapping on a tablet. He was heading toward the same aisle she was.

She came to a stop as she recognized the Chinese screen that she’d re-purposed as a way to display her logo and high-resolution pictures of her center pieces.

Her displays.

Her work.

Her tanzanite.

She slowly walked toward the crowd. They were clustered around a flat screen monitor set in a portrait position so it was long, like a smartphone. A slideshow was running of her work, her bio from her website, and a Q code to download her app.

She didn’t have an app.

Who was talking?

Between the people, she caught a glimpse of a dark-haired woman in a purple suit. The purple was about as close to the tanzanite as was possible without match dying.

Natalie?

Vance’s eyes widened as he spotted her. He came around the booth and pulled her into the crowd. He was wearing a tailored suit in jet black with a pristine white shirt and purple tie. Ofcourse it was purple. “Ladies and gentleman, this is Presley Warren.”

“Hi. Um, thank you for stopping in at my booth.”

A woman in a beige Stella McCartney linen dress flipped a card out. “I was going to leave this with your assistant, but I’d rather give it to you.”

Presley glanced at the card then back up at the woman and back at the card.Holy shit.“Um, yes. Thank you.”

“Excellent. We hope to hear from you.”

Dazed, she let Vance push her around behind the booth just as the man with the clipboard came up to her panel. The crush of people scattered, whispering behind hands as they went.

“Miss Warren, is it?”

“Yes. Presley Warren.”

He slipped a number four on her placeholder and gave her a stiff smile as he sailed by to the next table. She swung around to Natalie nearly vibrating out of her Jimmy Choos.

“What is all this?”

---