She falls back onto the floor, speaking to me from the grave, with her arms crossed over her chest. “He gave you underwear and a plane ticket, and you’re not even going to call him?”
“That’s the best part,” I say, and lean over the edge of the bed to give her a wry grin. “We didn’t exchange numbers.”
For about an hour, my brain is too full for me to be very productive in writing anything up. The pharma meeting feels like a gray hum of boredom in the background. And Jupiter feels like a confusing jumble in my thoughts: too many faces and details and overlapping timelines. Alec penetrates everything—the sharp angle of his jaw, the heat of his body, and the quiet, deep rumble of his voice—but Spence is somehow there, too, his betrayal filtering in and out of my thoughts. It sends a confusing mix of anger and lust and horror creeping into my mood, making objectivity hard to find.
I know I should sleep some more before I dig into writing, but I now have just over thirty hours before I need to get both assignments to Billy for editorial. And one isn’t just a “story” but the first big chance I’ve been given since I started working at the Times. I can’t fuck this up.
I write the boring five hundred words on international pharma law, send the piece, and then work until nearly midnight on Jupiter. I sleep until four, when I drag myself out of bed to finish what I know is a very shitty draft.
With only half a day left to finish, I immediately begin edits.
But because journalism follows Murphy’s Law, just as I get into a rhythm—with my notes compiled and organized, fingers flying over the keyboard reworking entire paragraphs, my mind slotting the myriad pieces together into a clear narrative—a text pops up from Billy with a request to meet a verified Jupiter source at a hotel on Wilshire at 9 a.m., which will eat at least an hour and a half of my deadline time. But he’s marked it as URGENT, and I know what that means.
It means I don’t have a choice.
Six
A strikingly tall woman meets me in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria and seems to identify me immediately. “Georgia?” Her clipped British accent matches the severity of her coppery-red hair pulled back in a tight knot at the back of her head. “Yael Miller. This way.”
Before I can reach to shake her hand, she’s already turned and taken two long strides toward the elevator bank.
I’m uneasy about the lack of information, but not overly so. Billy knows where I am, knows who I’m meeting. He wouldn’t send me into a shady situation. And it’s obviously important if he agreed to give me a twelve-hour extension on my deadline.
Yael Miller presses the button for the penthouse, and we ride in the elevator in silence. Finally, the elevator doors open and we step out into a small alcove with only a single door ahead of us. She swipes a keycard and opens it, gesturing for me to step inside.
I do, but she doesn’t follow me in. The door sweeps closed with a heavy whoosh, sealing me inside.
And then my heart falls from my mouth and straight through the floor. Standing in front of the windows, leaning back with his hands braced on the sill, and looking very much like he did on the elevator up to his room only two days ago is Alec Kim.
The first words out of my mouth are simple reflex: “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He straightens immediately. “Don’t walk out.”
My shoulders are angled away already, and I’m sure the instinct to flee is written all over my face. A sour thought hits me like a pill dissolved on my tongue. “Wait. Was that your assistant?”
“Yes.”
“The one who got me the underwear?”
Alec nods.
“Well, remind me to thank her on the way out. I’m sure she loves running that particular errand.”
“It was a first,” he admits.
“She must have been pretty displeased,” I say, looking around. “She didn’t say a word to me the entire ride up.”
“That’s just how she is.” His brows flicker up as he interprets my meaning another way. “There’s no jealousy happening. I don’t appeal to Yael in that way.”
I exhale slowly, looking to the side. I now have no idea why I’m here. Does Alec really have something to tell me about Jupiter? And if so, why did he give no indication that he knew something when we were together in Seattle?
“Well,” I say, staring at the art on the wall. It looks expensive. I don’t remember even noticing the art in his last suite. “I’m here. What did you want to tell me?”
He inhales sharply through his nose, nodding slowly. “The way you left the airport, I couldn’t tell for sure… but it’s hard to miss the anger in your tone right now.”
“I’m not angry, Alec. I’m annoyed. I shared a really intense night with someone who lied to me about who he was, and now I’ve been summoned—while on deadline—and I have no idea why.”
“It was intense for me, too,” he says, ignoring the rest of what I’ve said. “But we both know it wouldn’t have been anything like that if I’d told you more about myself.”