WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26

Naomi could have handled it over the phone, but in the end her curiosity got the best of her.

Which was stupid. She should have been packing up her office and her apartment, preparing for a double move. To say nothing of the fact that eventually she’d have to deal with the production company that wanted to turn her life into a prime-time special. And that wasn’t counting all the other stuff that came along with running your own billion-dollar company.

Instead?

Instead, Naomi quietly slipped out of the office at noon on Wednesday, and rather than grabbing her usual sushi lunch or favorite Niçoise salad at her favorite Lower East Side bistro, she found herself heading uptown.

To an apartment building she hadn’t thought about in years.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She had tried not to think about it for years. She’d been mostly successful—except for the times when her mom’s relentless bitterness had gotten under Naomi’s skin, forcing her to remember.

Naomi paused outside the building and studied the facade of 517 Park Avenue. It looked . . . the same. Which was probably the point. Here on the Upper East Side, prewar architecture wasn’t considered old; it was dignified. The highest praise in this part of town.

And just like that, as though a cloud had passed over her, Naomi felt herself change. It was as though the Stella McCartney dress, the shoes and purse that independently cost more than the rent on her first apartment, disappeared.

As though she were no longer Naomi Powell, the hotshot “girl boss” who had taken corporate America by storm.

Instead, she was Naomi Fields. The bony nine-year-old girl in hand-me-down clothes who didn’t belong in this part of town and had been reminded of it every damn day.

Grinding her teeth against the memory, Naomi straightened her shoulders and marched up the steps, chin held high.

The foyer smelled familiar, but she ignored the familiarity as she announced herself to the doorman and was pointed toward the small office to the right that she’d always darted past as a girl. The gray-haired woman behind the old-fashioned secretary’s desk was somewhere between middle-aged and senior citizen and probably had been for a very long time.

She peered at Naomi over her glasses. “May I help you?”

“I’m Naomi Powell. I have an appointment?”

“Yes, of course,” the woman murmured, turning toward a pile of manila file folders to her right and handing the top one to Naomi.

“Your interview is scheduled at twelve thirty. Have a seat in the office to your left, and take a moment to review your file. We received it by mail, which is why it’s a bit wrinkled.”

The censure in the woman’s tone was clear, but Naomi ignored it. What she should have asked was why she even had a file in the first place, by mail or otherwise.

Instead she nodded and took the file, going into the office indicated—a stuffy little sitting room with even stuffier furniture, and sat in a chintz chair opposite a large wooden desk. She opened the folder.

Her breath whooshed out. Not at the application itself—that was run-of-the-mill—but at the handwriting on the application. Her late mother’s penmanship had always been the most dignified thing about her. Elegant, swooping script that belied Danica Fields’s tattoos, chain-smoker’s hack, and coarse accent.

“Oh, Mom,” Naomi whispered quietly, running a finger over her name. “What did you do?”

A quick scan through the stack of papers confirmed Naomi’s fears: her mother had applied on Naomi’s behalf to live here, in the very building that her mother had mostly referred to as the Hellmouth.

Naomi’s gaze found the signature at the bottom of the page. As expected, it was her own name but written in her mother’s precise cursive. She looked at the date beside the signature: March 21.

Six months ago. And just two weeks before her mother’s death.

Swallowing around the lump in her throat, Naomi closed the folder, clasped her hands in her lap, and waited.

And waited.

After five minutes, she began watching the old-fashioned clock on the wall that ticked tauntingly at her. After ten, she began glaring at the clock.

Whoever was “interviewing” her was late.

Naomi stood, intending to tell the woman at the front desk that she didn’t have time for this. Heck, she didn’t even want it in the first place. Naomi didn’t need an apartment. Especially one that, given the date on her mother’s application, had a six-month waiting list.

And even if she did need a place to live, she wouldn’t have come to a stodgy place like this, which probably used the word pedigree when deciding whom to accept.

Although, if Naomi was honest with herself, the very thing she disdained about these people was the reason she was here in the first place. She had an almost-morbid curiosity to see if they’d accept her application.

Because although her pedigree was more mutt than pure breed, she was a mutt with a diamond collar. In the eight years since its launch, Maxcessory had gone from a tiny one-woman gig out of her East Village studio to a thriving business with seven-figure funding, hundreds of employees, and offices in New York and San Francisco and soon to open in Los Angeles.

If the co-op wanted to reject her application, she’d make them do it to her face, make them say out loud that her blood wasn’t blue enough. Because God knew her money was certainly green enough.

But before she could go tell the receptionist to shove it, she heard voices. The first belonged to the receptionist, Victoria, but the second was the gravelly rumble of a man’s voice. Her interviewer, perhaps?

Whoever it was, he was apparently unaware—or didn’t care—that the door was open a crack and she could hear every word of their conversation.

“Find someone else to do it,” the man demanded. “The co-op process is archaic.”

Naomi raised her eyebrows. She didn’t disagree, but it was hardly the attitude she’d been expecting.

“Don’t be a child,” the woman said in a bossy tone. “Get in there and interview the girl.”

“Have Doreen do it. She loves this stuff.”

“She’s in Miami with her latest boy toy. The Italian.”

Naomi’s eyes lifted. Well done, Doreen.

There was a soft curse. “What about Janet? Or Ned? They both get off on asking candidates who their ‘people’ are.”

“They’ve already done more than their fair share of interviews. We had hundreds of applicants, and more than fifty passed the initial screening. Everyone has to take a turn with the interviews, and they told me to give you this one.”

“Why?” the man grunted.

“I don’t have the faintest idea, but the poor thing’s been in there close to twenty minutes. Here’s her paperwork. Just pretend to consider her, and then we can all go on with our day.”

Naomi’s eyes narrowed. Pretend to consider her? How was she out of the running already?

Because you’re trash. And they can sense it.

Naomi closed her eyes against the voice. She thought she’d stifled that sliver of her subconscious years ago, but something about this damn building . . .

Naomi had just a split second to whip her head around and feign ignorance before the door was shoved open. She waited with her hands folded as the man entered, slamming the door shut again with just enough force to make it clear he did not want to be here.

Naomi crossed her legs, staring demurely ahead as the man walked around to the other side of the desk. She watched as he dropped a briefcase by his feet and slapped the folder onto the desk before lowering himself to the leather chair opposite her.

He impatiently flipped the folder open, scanning until he apparently found her name, because he said it out loud with gruff irritability. “Naomi Powell.”

Naomi inhaled ever so slightly and forced her expression into what she hoped was placid politeness and raised her eyes to his.

Her breath whooshed out again as her gaze collided with a searing one.

It wasn’t that the man was good-looking, although he was—distractingly so. Thick brown hair, a face with no hint of five o’clock shadow to better show off the masculine edge of his jawline, broad shoulders . . .

And light blue eyes she’d know anywhere.

Mostly in her nightmares.

And memories.

Naomi thought she’d come today prepared for anything. Anyone.

But never had she let herself consider the possibility that her interview would be with Oliver Cunningham. Never had she imagined that the boy who’d tormented her mercilessly during their childhood would once again hold her fate in his hands.