Page 3 of His Obsession
For one horrible second, the party disappears. I’m not in Beverly Hills anymore. I’m in an expensive Manhattan penthouse with marble floors. A man’s voice echoes off those perfectly polished surfaces, and my pulse spikes before his fist even reaches my face.
My body reacts before my brain catches up. I go cold.
“Val?”
Gia’s voice reaches me from too far away. The man turns just enough for me to see his face, and I can see he’s not the man from my nightmares. Not even close.
“Val.” Gia is beside me now.
“I need a minute.”
She takes one look at my face and nods. “Go.”
I move through the service doors without another word, past the prep kitchen and into the back corridor where it’s quieter. The hallway smells like linen spray and bleach and hot kitchen air. My heels click too loudly against the floor. I keep walking until I hit the storage alcove near the extra rental racks, then stop with one hand braced against the wall.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Repeat.
I hate this part the most. Not the fear itself, exactly, but the humiliation of it. The anger. The fact that after all this time, after all the distance, he can still get inside my head without even being here.
I moved across the country. I built a life and entire business for myself. I’m a badass boss bitch who can handle anything.
Except the memory of him.
Except the fear.
My phone buzzes in my hand and I jerk so hard I nearly drop it. It’s just an email notification. I laugh once under my breath, but there’s nothing funny about it.
A shadow falls across the doorway a second later.
Gia leans against the wall and crosses her arms. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, squaring my shoulders and heading back toward the party. “Just got dizzy for a second.”
She knows I’m lying. That doesn’t mean I’m going to talk about it here. This is neither the time nor the place to relive the horrors that caused me to flee across the damn continent.
When I step back onto the rooftop, I’m all business. I replace the missing sponsor plaque three minutes before Mr.Reynolds takes the podium. Once he’s done, I steer him through a slew of reporters to keep him on time so he can sit down and we can serve dinner.
By the time dinner starts, the hard part of my job is over. Candlelight glows over designer gowns and expensive suits. Everyone is at least two drinks in, and convinced the event is flawless. As long as the waiters don’t mix up the vegetarian and vegan dishes, all that’s left is to coast through the next hour and hand things off to the cleanup crew.
A little after midnight, the last of the important guests begin to leave. Mr.Reynolds is thrilled with how the event went. Mrs.Reynolds hugs me twice. One of the beauty editors tells me she’s passing my name to someone at a luxury hotel group, which fills me with a sharp, bone-deep pride. The venue manager squeezes my elbow on the way out and tells me my team was a pleasure to work with.
By the time the final vendor has loaded out and I’ve signed the last invoice, all I can think about is collapsing on my couch with a very large glass of wine.
“You’re kind of a rock star,” Gia says, grinning at me. “I’ve been to a lot of events in this town, and they rarely go this smoothly.”
“I’m an expert at chaos,” I say wryly.
“Well, now you can be an expert at shots.” She laughs. “I’m buying, bitch.”
I roll my eyes and follow her downstairs to the hotel bar. My couch will have to wait.
Three lemon drop martinis later, we’re giggling like schoolgirls, debriefing the event and all the near disasters we narrowly dodged.
“I can’t believe a bird actually flew into that woman’s hair,” she cackles. “How did you not burst out laughing?”
