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“Does it seem more romantic that way?”
“Just more natural, organic, I guess. Like you and Tom.”
It’s fairly typical of Taylor to act a little too familiar, and per usual, Emma shrugs it off. Taylor plays a key role for Tom, and Emma wants to stay on good terms with her. She offers a smile. “Well, yes, it’s nice when it can happen that way.”
“I mean, you two must have felt an instant connection at dinner. You don’t get that from swiping.”
Emma cocks her head. “Tom and I did meet pretty organically, but it was here at Halliday, not at a dinner.”
Taylor shrugs. “Oh, I always assumed it was in Miami.”
“Miami?” Emma is even more perplexed now.
“Yes, at that dinner you spoke at a couple of years ago. I remember it was about how young women’s interest in sustainability was affecting what they purchased.”
Okay, shedidspeak at a dinner in Miami to about forty or fifty people on that very subject. Avignon, the handbag company hosting the event, had wanted a short talk—no slides, just interesting revelations to engage their senior staff and guests toward the end of the meal. But she has no idea how Taylor knows about it.
“I’m not following,” Emma says. “What’s your connection to that dinner?”
“Avignon’s a client of ours. I was there that night along with some people from Halliday.”
“Small world,” Emma says. “But I don’t see what that has to do with me and Tom.”
“He was with us. I assumed that’s where the two of you met.”
Emma’s brow furrows as she tries to make sense of what she’s hearing. Taylor can’t possibly be right. If Tom had been there, he would have mentioned it to her at some point. The event had been in January, she remembers, about five months before she started at Halliday.
And, she thinks, with ballooning unease,two months before Derrick’s murder.
