She Asked a Stranger to Hold Her at JFK Then Learned Who He Really Was

Then I opened the photograph I had taken of the presentation slides and worked until midnight.

Anger turned out to be excellent for proofreading.

By Monday morning, I had corrected three forecasting errors, rewritten my opening, and slept approximately four hours.

I dressed in navy trousers, a cream blouse, and the blazer I saved for meetings where I needed people to assume I was more confident than I felt.

Sterling Capital occupied twelve floors of a glass tower overlooking Boston Harbor.

Our agency had spent seven months trying to win its national communications account.

If we landed it, I would probably be promoted.

If I failed badly enough, there would be no promotion and possibly no lead strategist position to return to.

That was why I was in Boston instead of sitting on my kitchen floor interrogating the empty spaces where Preston’s belongings had been.

My boss, Marianne, met me in the lobby.

She looked at my face for half a second too long.

“You okay?”

“Fantastic.”

“You look terrible.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean tired.”

“That saved it.”

She handed me a visitor badge.

“Sterling himself is sitting in.”

I clipped the badge to my blazer.

“Who?”

Marianne stared at me.

“Adrian Sterling.”

I waited.

“Sterling Capital.”

“Oh.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Did you prepare for this meeting?”

“For the company, yes.”

“Apparently not for the founder.”

“I don’t generally memorize billionaire headshots.”

“You might consider starting.”

The elevator doors opened.

Marianne walked in.

I followed her.

On the thirty-eighth floor, an assistant led us through a corridor so quiet that my shoes suddenly seemed cheaply loud.

There were six people waiting inside the conference room.

Then I saw the seventh.

He sat at the head of the table in another immaculate black suit.

For one second, my mind refused to connect the man in front of me with the stranger at JFK.

Then his gray eyes met mine.

My stomach dropped.

Adrian Sterling looked at me, glanced once at my blazer as if checking for airport damage, and smiled.

“Hello, Eve.”

For one disastrous second, Eve considered pretending she had never seen him before.

Marianne was already moving toward the table, extending a hand to a silver-haired woman from Sterling Capital’s legal department, and there was nowhere for Eve to go without making her escape more memorable than her entrance.

So she did the only thing available to her.

She smiled back.

“Mr. Sterling.”

The amusement in Adrian’s eyes deepened by a fraction.

No one else in the room seemed to notice.

Marianne began introductions, and Eve forced herself to listen while taking the seat assigned to her three places down from Adrian.

There was Daniel Cho, Sterling Capital’s chief operating officer, who wore no tie and had the expression of a man permanently fifteen minutes behind schedule.

There was Celia Ward from legal, who had already opened a thick folder and arranged three pens in a straight line.

There was the company’s communications director, Lena Morales, whose bright green glasses made Eve like her immediately for no logical reason.

Two members of the investment team sat opposite Marianne.

Adrian said nothing.

He did not need to.

The room seemed organized around his silence.

Eve placed her laptop on the table and discovered that her hands were trembling again.

Not heartbreak this time.

Mortification.

The man who controlled whether her agency won its largest account of the year had seen her blow her nose into his security guard’s handkerchief.

Worse, she had criticized his hugging technique.

She connected her laptop to the display.

Nothing happened.

Of course nothing happened.

Marianne leaned toward her.

“Adapter.”

“I have it.”

Eve dug through her bag.

Her fingers found lipstick, charger, notebook, mints, a receipt from Logan Airport, and no adapter.

She had checked for it twice that morning.

A small black device slid across the table toward her.

Adrian had pushed it with two fingers.

“Try this.”

She looked at him.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Daniel glanced between them.

“You two know each other?”

“No,” Eve said.

“Yes,” Adrian said at exactly the same time.

The room went still in that uniquely professional way people became still when they sensed information but were too well paid to react openly.

Eve looked at Adrian.

He looked entirely comfortable.

Marianne looked less so.

Adrian leaned back.

“We crossed paths at JFK.”

“Briefly,” Eve added.

“Memorably.”

Lena’s eyebrows rose.

Eve plugged in the adapter.

The presentation appeared on the wall.

“We should probably begin.”

Celia clicked one of her pens.

“I support that.”

Eve silently loved her for it.

The first two minutes were terrible.

She heard every weakness in her own voice.

Her mouth was too dry.

She rushed one statistic and almost said Preston when she meant projected.

Then Lena interrupted with a question about audience segmentation, and Eve answered without looking at her notes.

The answer led to another question.

Then Daniel challenged one of the proposed regional strategies, and irritation replaced embarrassment.

Eve knew the work.

She had spent two months studying how Sterling Capital’s reputation differed between institutional investors, small business owners, municipal partners, and ordinary people who mostly associated private equity with television villains.

She stopped thinking about Adrian.

She stopped thinking about Preston.

For thirty-five minutes, there was only the argument in front of her.

When Daniel called one of her recommendations too cautious, she disagreed.

“You’re assuming visibility automatically creates trust.”

“Doesn’t it help?”

“Not if people already suspect you’re trying to manage what they think.”

“That sounds like an argument against communications.”

“It’s an argument against bad communications.”

Marianne shifted slightly beside her.

Eve knew that movement.

It meant perhaps do not accuse the prospective client of being bad at the thing they are hiring us to improve.