She Hugged a Stranger at JFK Then Discovered Who He Really Was

The stranger reached into his pocket.

Eve backed away.

“No, please, I’ve already destroyed one handkerchief and one suit.”

He produced a packet of tissues.

“Oh.”

“I learn from experience.”

She accepted one.

Her phone vibrated again.

This time the screen showed Preston’s name.

Not a message.

A call.

Eve stared until it stopped.

A moment later, a text appeared.

Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.

Heat climbed into her face.

The stranger had looked away, giving her privacy while standing barely two feet from her.

That small courtesy nearly undid her again.

She locked the screen.

“Was that him?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You don’t have to answer.”

“I know.”

But the embarrassing truth was that she had almost answered.

She had spent three years answering Preston.

His questions, his moods, his doubts, his last-minute changes of plan.

She had become good at arranging herself around him and calling the arrangement compromise.

Another announcement echoed through the terminal.

Boston passengers were being asked to proceed toward security because of increasing wait times.

Eve swore under her breath.

“My flight.”

She reached for her suitcase.

The stranger got there first, lifting the handle upright after it had collapsed.

“Boston?”

“Yes.”

“Work?”

She nodded.

“Presentation.”

The word brought another kind of nausea.

For eight months, Eve had been part of a small consulting team advising a Boston investment firm on an affordable-housing acquisition strategy.

Today’s meeting was supposed to decide whether Sterling Capital expanded the pilot nationally.

If they did, Eve’s firm probably kept thirty-two people employed.

If they did not, her managing partner had already used the phrase necessary restructuring twice.

Eve had spent six weeks preparing the final presentation.

Preston knew that.

He had listened to her rehearse it in their kitchen.

He had chosen this morning anyway.

“Important?” the stranger asked.

“Only if I enjoy paying rent.”

Something passed through his face.

“Then you should probably make the flight.”

“Probably.”

She wiped her cheek.

“I look insane.”

“You look like someone had a bad morning.”

“That is a very diplomatic way to describe this.”

“I practice.”

A woman in an airline uniform approached from behind him.

“Mr. Sterling?”

The stranger turned.

“The car is downstairs whenever you’re ready.”

Eve heard the name.

Sterling.

It brushed against something familiar, but her brain was too crowded to catch it.

The man with the red notebook checked his watch.

“We need to leave in four minutes.”

Mr. Sterling ignored him.

“What’s your name?”

“Eve.”

“Eve what?”

She hesitated.

“Mercer.”

He nodded once, as though committing it to memory.

She waited for him to offer his.

He did not.

That struck her as slightly arrogant.

Considering she had just used his chest as an emergency tissue, she decided they were even.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For not calling airport security when a crying woman grabbed you.”

One of the security men looked toward the ceiling.

Mr. Sterling’s mouth shifted.

“I considered it.”

“I knew it.”

“Briefly.”

“Still rude.”

“Take care of yourself, Eve Mercer.”

The gentleness in his voice landed harder than it should have.

She tightened her grip on her suitcase.

“You too, Mr. Sterling.”

His expression changed at that.

Just slightly.

As though she had said something unexpectedly funny.

Eve turned before she could embarrass herself again.

She made it twenty yards before realizing she was still carrying the handkerchief.

She looked back.

The four men were walking in the opposite direction.

The stranger glanced over his shoulder at almost the same moment.

Eve lifted the handkerchief.

He raised one hand.

Keep it.

She shoved it into her pocket and hurried toward security.

By the time she reached the gate, she had received six texts from Preston.

The first two were defensive.

The third was apologetic.

The fourth explained that he had been unhappy “for a while,” which made Eve furious because apparently his unhappiness had possessed the remarkable ability to coexist with letting her renew their lease three weeks earlier.

The fifth asked whether she had landed.

The sixth said he hoped someday she would understand.

Eve deleted none of them.

She hated herself a little for that.

On the plane, she bought Wi-Fi she did not need and opened their shared photo album.

She made it through eleven pictures before closing it.

Then she opened her presentation.

Slide one read STERLING CAPITAL: COMMUNITY ACQUISITION INITIATIVE.

Eve stared at the words.

Sterling.

Her fingers stopped above the keyboard.

“No,” she murmured.

The elderly man beside her looked over.

“Everything all right?”

Eve opened the client briefing document.

Sterling Capital had been founded by Charles Sterling in 1987.

Its current chairman and chief executive was his son.

Adrian Sterling.

A photograph loaded beneath the biography.

Gray eyes.

Dark hair.

A face that looked colder in the corporate portrait than it had with Eve’s mascara drying on its shoulder.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

The elderly man looked at her screen.

“Know him?”

Eve closed the laptop so fast she nearly caught her finger.

“No.”

That was technically true in every way that mattered and false in the one way currently making her want the plane to turn around.

For the rest of the flight, she tried to convince herself Adrian Sterling would not attend her presentation.

Billionaire chief executives had better things to do than sit through consulting decks about mixed-income housing portfolios.

By the time she landed in Boston, she had almost succeeded.

Three days later, Eve stood outside the forty-second-floor conference room at Sterling Capital with her laptop under one arm and Preston’s final unread message still sitting on her phone.

Her boss, Martin Hale, adjusted his tie beside her.

“You look nervous.”

“I am nervous.”