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Subject: Minutes for meeting – Weds 4 p.m.
Millie,
I wonder if you are free to take down minutes at our 4 p.m. meeting, Wednesday, when the team are all back from Italy? Please let me know and I’ll forward more details when I land.
I was very impressed by your diligent and hard work at StoneX. Especially on the screen display .?.?.
Thank you,
Jack
Jack Shurlock
Operations Manager and Chief of Staff (cover)
*
I am sitting in what is probably about to be the most boring meeting ever conducted, with me, thanks to Jack, instructed with the most boringjobever. But despite how much I’m trying to pretend to myself that I’m chill, that I haven’t eventhoughtabout him since that moment in the cloakroom at the party, or those texts, and that email that made my cheeks ache, thank you very much, I am actually buzzing with excitement. Because Jack is coming to this meeting, and I haven’t seen him in over a week. It was like Christmas Eve last night, or something. Cate, Ralph and I watchedNotting Hill, in our pyjamas, as Cate read our tarot cards (Ralph, apparently, has a secret wild inner animal he must set free, and I have ‘justice’ on my horizon), and we all placed giggly, silly bets on when (or if) the ‘when you least expect it’ kiss might happen.
And I keep thinking about that party. I keep thinking of those eyes on mine, the heat of Jack against me, the way hewantedto kiss me, that gruff, sexy, ‘when you least expect it’ .?.?. I stifle the smile wanting to spread across my face, light me up like a spotlight in this stuffy meeting room, and this feels so .?.?.nice.This glimmer amongst everything. It feels new. But it reminds me of a time before, too. Not just the time before the emails, but before everything got so complicated and grown-up. Dates, and crushes, the flirting, the feeling of ‘what might happen next?’ Of course, the too-sensible, too-cautious, keep-your-eye-on-bad-things-you-might-need-to-dodge part of me has its arms crossed and shaking its head, saying, ‘What are you even doing? He is leaving. Literallyemigrating.Leaving with a capital fucking L.’ But it’s as Cate said, last night. ‘Nobody’s telling you to marry him. OK, I did, but also, can’t it just be a kiss? A single date? Why does it need to have a linear beginning to perfect, happy end? This isn’t one of my romance novels, Millie.’
Colleagues file into the meeting room, coffees and teas placed one after the other on the table, scattered around two dinner plates of biscuits in the middle of the table that I’d arranged into a nice fan shape but which now look all jumbled, like something from a cub-scouts meeting. It’s one warm box of coffee breath, perfume and warm ink in here.
A chair scrapes along the carpet.
‘Millie?’
I look up to find Michael. He drags the chair, takes a seat ahead of me, casually cool and grumpy, as always but a version of him, in my memory that will likely refuse to never die, dances madly (and seriously) like he did in the HTG Summer-ween dance-off.
‘Are you using highlighters?’ he grumbles over his shoulder.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Petra explained.’
‘It’s just – it helps us single out subjects, projects .?.?.’
‘Totally.’ I nod, although what I actually want to say is, ‘Yes, I know, Petra is fully capable of explaining something without your aid, thank you very much, you big sexist.’
Naturally, he continues to mansplain. ‘The green is for the immediate issues that need to be addressed—’
‘Blue for non-urgent .?.?.’ Although I’m tempted to say ‘and pink for all the football players I think are hot. Right? Five doodled hearts for the hottest?’
Michael nods. ‘Yes, yes,’ he says, almost astonished. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
And really, I can’t complain. I wanted this, didn’t I? To do extra tasks, put myselfout theremore, show people, like Dancing Michael Waterstreet, that Ilikethis company and don’t want to destroy it with email bombs. That I’m .?.?.morethan what they might think I am.
A warm hand lands on my shoulder; squeezes gently. Electricity fizzles through my body.
‘And she even saved me a seat, I see,’ says a voice, deep and familiar.
I turn to see Jack – meet his warm, playful eyes. And it almost feels strange seeing him. I’ve thought so much about him, talked about him with Cate and Ralph, about that moment at the party, tried to ‘logic’ my way through the whole he’s-leaving-the-country-and-what-if-I-get-hurt? issue over and over in my own mind, that he’s almost become someone a little –fictional.One of Cate’s romantic heroes, from her books and Hallmark movies.
Jack takes a seat next to me, swipes open an iPad in his lap, holds it with one hand. He smiles at me – a secret, what’s-this-silly-little-meeting-going-to-matter-anyway-once-we’re-all-dead? smile. The area on my shoulder he touched with his hand still buzzes beneath my dress.
‘Hello, Mr Spain and Italy,’ I say.
‘Hello, Miss Millie P Chandler?’
‘P?’
