I put a hand up. “It’s alright. I’m still not seeing anyone, need to catch up on a lot of work. And please, August, if you don’t mind.” I offered her a small smile.

Her expression was empty as she blinked. “August.” She shook her head as if that wasn’t going to work well for her.

I handed her the bag Finn packed for me. “Grilled chicken salad and ginger ale.”

She nodded sharply. “Okay where is this going?”

“It’s for you, Debbie.”

She took the bag tentatively. “Thank you. I’ll put a do not disturb note on your door, and again, I am so sorry about the lady who—”

“It’s fine. And…” I wanted to tell her that if this lady came back, to show her right into my office even if I was in there with the CEO of Google.

But I knew better.

Harper wasn’t coming back.

I felt her slip away permanently the minute she walked out of my office. And the look on her face—the look that was far worse than the one I remembered from five years ago that daunted me—made me think I might have made a colossal mistake.

“I’ll be working out of the conference room at the end of the hall. In the meantime, I need you to—can you please find me a new office?”

She blinked again, glancing across the hall at my double doored office. “There are two empty offices, but they’re not—”

“Can I see them after you have lunch, please?”

Thirty minutes later, Debbie found me in the conference room and showed me to the first empty one. A small, unpainted single door opened to a miniature office. It had one modest window facing another building, an empty desk about half the size of mine and two guest chairs. There might have been room for a two-seater sofa if I so chose, but not elegant enough to see big clients.

“This’ll do. Please have maintenance move all my stuff in here by Monday.”

She was quiet as I walked around the space, getting situated.

“Sir, is there something wrong with yours?”

“Yes.”

It’s where I broke her heart.

28. Harper

28

I must have gotten a total of three hours of sleep last night. Packing for an unknown number of days or weeks was no simple task.

Frankie and I met in his office for two hours on Friday morning. He’d taken the liberty of drafting up a contract for our management agreement and provided me with a list of newspapers, magazines and other agencies to which we would routinely submit my work to.

We would use miniature versions of it with watermarks, some standard sketches that could be used day to day, and others would be event-specific that we would start with high bids for. Those would need to be quick—Frankie stressed “day-after-event” kind of quick.