It was all very frustrating. Compounded by the fact that I had struck out in my quest for decent wall art and still had nothing to hang on my walls. If I didn’t find something that clicked within my price range soon, I would have to invest in some art supplies and do the paintings myself. A part of me was seriously jazzed by this option so I wondered if my inability to find anything suitable had to do with my own desire to do some painting. Maybe a portrait of a handsome man staring out a window at a young woman in a garden. Small wonder what inspired that. The image of the man in Daire’s house flashed through my mind but I shut it down.

I was not going to become obsessed with a stranger. Really, I wasn’t. On Monday, I would casually check in with my friends, Miguel and Sophie, and see if they knew who the man I’d seen at Mr. Daire’s was. They probably would, and then it would be over, because a guy that good looking simply could not be single, which was a good thing, because I would never want to date a man who was that handsome. He was likely conceited or had scores of women chasing after him and who needed that? Not me.

And so it was on Monday that I arrived at work early. Other than when I first started working a regular job after college, this had seriously never happened to me before. I blew through the office, the second one to arrive after Nyah. She was at her desk in front and greeted me with a grin, humming a bar or two of “Danny Boy,” which made me laugh.

“Thanks again for inviting me,” I said. “That was a lot of fun.”

“It was,” she agreed. “Mark your calendar. This Friday, same bat time, same bat channel.”

“I’ll look for the bat signal,” I joked. She grinned. Her phone rang, and she rolled her eyes and said, “And so it begins.”

I strode through the meeting room and communal work area, and arrived at my office. At a glance I knew I had gotten in earlier than Miguel and Sophie and so I sat down at my desk and fired up my computer. I figured I could get a cup of coffee from the break room and read my email while I waited.

I was just settling back into my chair when Miguel appeared in my doorway.

“Good morning, Annabelle,” he said. “Could you stop by my office when you get a chance?”

“Sure,” I said. I resisted the urge to do a fist pump on being seen already at work nice and early. “Ten minutes okay?”

“Perfect,” he said. He turned and left, and it hit me then that he hadn’t smiled once while he’d been standing there. Uh-oh.