Celeste
I stare at the dark charcoal letters sitting neatly across the cream cover. My attention settles first on the name—Ashford Atelier. It had been a long time since I had last seen it. The memory arrives uninvited. A man in black standing near a cemetery on a rainy afternoon. Eleanor’s funeral. The day I lost one of my closest friends. A quiet clearing of a throat pulls me back.
Vivian Hart—my assistant—was staring at me the way I had been staring at the file moments ago: with quiet confusion. It drew a small chuckle out of me. I had seen Vivian confused only as often as she had seen me distracted—which was to say, never. We worked in business. Distraction was expensive.
“Why did you stop speaking, Vivian?” I ask, amusement slipping into my voice.
It was bait. An invitation for her to point out that I had been distracted and had not heard half of what she had said. But Vivian Hart had always been too disciplined to indulge me.
“What about the proposal, ma’am?”
My eyes fall to the folder again.
Ashford Atelier- A heritage luxury fashion house established three generations ago, known for refined tailoring, ready-to-wear, and dressing the sort of people whose surnames were older than most institutions.
On paper, the proposal was more than satisfactory. A limited global collaboration between Ashford Atelier and Vale Maison would be strategic, profitable, and impossible to ignore. The difficulty was not the deal.
The difficulty had a name- Adrian Ashford.
My childhood crush. My closest friend’s husband. The man I had last seen standing in black beneath a grey sky.
The question, then, was simple: was I really foolish enough to turn away a deal of this scale over a feeling I should have outgrown years ago?
I closed the folder.
“Set a meeting with Mr. Ashford.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
Vivian gave a small nod before slipping back into her office.
