shoulder. In the past, she’d looked at that photo and felt comfort in seeing his solid grip. But now…now it felt like a padlock on a cage.
“Cora?” The other woman waved her hand. “Are you okay? You look like you’re somewhere else.”
“Sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m still waking up at odd hours.”
“That’s all right. I’m sure it’s going to take a little while to get fully caught up.”
“Does Dad have many meetings this afternoon?” Cora asked, glancing at her schedule on her laptop screen. “It would be good to debrief with him, too.”
“He hasn’t seen you yet?” The assistant frowned. “Strange. I put a two-hour meeting in his schedule three days ago so you could talk.”
And yet her father had brushed her off when she’d come back to the office, saying he had too many meetings. “Oh.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t tell me to reschedule. Oh well, he’s got a break now until the leadership meeting starts. If you go, you can catch fifteen minutes with him.”
Cora rose up from her chair almost as if pulled by some otherworldly force. She snapped the lid of her laptop closed and picked it up. “Thanks.”
Without waiting a beat, she walked out of her office, leaving the bewildered assistant behind, still sitting in the plush leather chair. The walk to her father’s corner office took mere seconds, and despite that, she could go days without talking to him.
With each step, her pencil-thin heels clicked against the polished boards. It was almost a strange sensation after a month of nothing but flip-flops slapping against her heels. Oh how she longed to have sand between her toes and the sun beating down on her shoulders and Trent’s arms sliding…
No, stop that. You will not think about him.
But how could she avoid it? The whole reason she had the email of a lifetime burning in her inbox was because he believed in her enough to risk her being furious with him. He believed in her enough that he said the difficult things and kept encouraging her even when she didn’t believe in herself. When she wasn’t strong enough to accept his love.
You think he loves you? Even if by some slim chance he did before, he certainly doesn’t now.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the shiny reflection of an ornate mirrored piece of artwork hanging on the wall in the main office area—Trent wouldn’t recognize her here, hair straightened to within an inch of its life so it hung around her shoulders in a glossy kink-free sheet. She had on red lipstick and pearl earrings, skyscraper stilettos, and a pencil skirt so tight she couldn’t eat more than a few pieces of sushi for lunch.
It was as if coming back to New York had transformed her back into her old self, not the carefree, happy person she’d been in Australia.
Cora paused outside her father’s office and observed him through the slight gap in the door. They shared some features—both of them had a tendency to bounce their leg while they worked, they shared a taste for coffee strong enough to punch you in the face, and they both hated cilantro with a passion. Growing up, she’d collected those similarities like baseball trading cards, filing them away and growing her collection as if it was a substitute for them having actual things in common.
She raised her hand and knocked on the door, the action nudging it open farther. “Dad?”
He waited one beat, then two, before looking up at her. There was no delight in his eyes, none of that blossoming warmth she got from the people in Patterson’s Bluff whom she’d started to consider her friends.
Watching him now was like watching a stranger.
“Yes Cora?” His tone, as usual, had a clipped sound. Time was money in New York, and niceties weren’t worth the energy.
“I saw you had a break between meetings and I was hoping we’d be able to catch up, since I got back from my trip almost two weeks ago.” She couldn’t keep the sting out of the last few words, her bitterness seeping onto her tongue like a foul-tasting liquor. “If you have time.”
“I’m busy, but come in anyway.” He waved her in, still looking at his screen. He was dressed sharply as always, with a sleek charcoal suit and crisp lavender shirt. He wore more vibrant shades these days since he’d walked out on her mother. Almost as if leaving her had brought life back into his body. “I’m sorry I’ve been