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Chapter 2
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2026-04-26 02:21:46Isla was on her knees on the fourteenth floor, unpacking the last crate of framed prints, when her phone rang.
She almost didn't answer. Her hands were full and her hair was in her face and she had seventeen things left to do before the afternoon walkthrough with the building's events coordinator. She answered anyway. "Isla." It was Marcus, her boss at Hartwell Creative. His voice had that particular energy it got when something unexpected had happened — not bad unexpected. The other kind. "Are you sitting down?" "I'm on the floor actually." "Close enough." A pause. "Cole Global just contacted us. They want to extend the installation contract. Three more months. Full rate." Isla sat back on her heels. "Sorry?" "Three months, Isla. Full rate. They want additional work done — expanded installation across two more floors apparently. The request came directly from the executive office." She looked around the fourteenth floor gallery space. At the work she'd spent four days carefully hanging, spacing and perfecting. "Did they say why?" "Does it matter?" Marcus laughed. "This is Cole Global. This is the kind of contract that changes what we are as a firm. Whatever you're doing in that building — keep doing it." She opened her mouth. Closed it. She hadn't done anything. She'd hung artwork and avoided eye contact and apologised to a door frame yesterday like a complete idiot. "Okay," she said slowly. "Okay. Three months." "Three months." The smile in his voice was audible. "Well done, Isla." He ended the call. She sat on the floor of the fourteenth floor of Cole Global Industries and looked at her phone and thought about the elevator yesterday. About the cold grey eyes meeting hers for exactly one second through a narrowing gap. She shook her head. Coincidence. Obviously. She pushed herself to her feet, tucked her phone into her back pocket and picked up the next framed print. She had work to do. She was still working three hours later when she heard footsteps that didn't belong to anyone on her team. She knew because everyone on her team wore soft soles. These were leather. Deliberate. The kind of footsteps that expected the floor to answer them. She turned. Zachary Cole stood at the entrance to the gallery space with his hands in his pockets, looking at the work on the walls the way people looked at things they were genuinely assessing rather than politely acknowledging. Isla straightened. Her heart did something inconvenient. He hadn't noticed her yet — or if he had, he gave no indication. His eyes moved from panel to panel, unhurried, expression unreadable. She cleared her throat. He looked at her. Something moved across his face — brief, barely there. Gone before she could name it. "The spacing on the third panel is off," he said. She blinked. Looked at the panel; then looked back at him. "It's intentional. The asymmetry creates visual tension that draws the eye across the whole wall rather than stopping at individual pieces." He said nothing for a moment. "Who approved the concept?" "I did." "You designed this?" "I designed all of it." She kept her voice even. "Is there a problem with the installation, Mr.—" "Cole." His eyes were back on the wall. "Zachary Cole." "Mr. Cole," she started. "The asymmetry works." He said it simply, still looking at the wall. Then he looked at her. "What's your name?" She almost said you already know it. Something in his eyes made her think he did. "Isla Simmons." He nodded once. Like he was filing it away. Then he looked at the wall one more time and turned and walked out without another word. Isla stood very still for a moment. Then she turned back to her work and told herself very firmly that her hands were not shaking. She was packing up at six when her phone buzzed. An email from the building's events coordinator. Ms. Simmons — Mr. Cole has requested a brief meeting tomorrow morning at nine to discuss the expanded installation scope. His office. Fortieth floor. Isla read it twice. Then she looked up at the ceiling and exhaled slowly. His office. She typed back a confirmation before she could think too hard about it and gathered her things and headed for the elevator. The regular one this time. She was not making that mistake again. What she didn't know — couldn't have known — was that upstairs on the fortieth floor, Zachary Cole was at his desk reading the confirmation email from her with something that on any other man's face might have looked like satisfaction. He closed his laptop. Nine a.m. He had exactly fourteen hours to decide how much of himself he was willing to show her. He already knew the answer. Not enough to keep her. Just enough to make her stay.
Bab terbaru
Cursed To Love You Paris
The apartment sat above a bookshop on a narrow street in the 11th, nothing grand about it, nothing designed for tourists, which was exactly right for both of them."There are twenty-two stairs," Isla announced, halfway up on the first evening, one hand braced against the wall. "I counted.""You could have told me that before I let the movers unload the crib on the fourth floor.""It was a discovery in progress."Paris in February wasn't performing for anyone — grey sky, cold air, the city just being itself in winter light, and Isla loved it immediately, standing at the kitchen window that first morning looking down at the street below."There's a bookshop right underneath us," she said. "I didn't even plan that.""You picked the apartment.""I picked it for the light. The bookshop's a bonus."The gallery team had been cautious at first — Céleste had warned her, gently, before they arrived. "They have strong opinions." But within the first week, the French curators had shifted from pro
Cursed To Love You All The Way Forward
Isla woke early, the room still grey, Zachary asleep beside her, and lay there for a while just thinking.Her father, choosing to go out anyway. Not recklessly. Deliberately.She thought about the elevator, the door frame, the second she'd almost said no to Hartwell's contract entirely, back when the timing had felt wrong and she'd talked herself into yes anyway.She thought about standing outside Connor's hotel room years ago, hand raised to knock, and turning around instead and walking home in the cold.She thought about the first time she'd asked Zachary directly if he was sick — the way her voice had shaken asking it, the way everything good that came after had depended entirely on her asking that terrifying question instead of staying quiet and safe.She'd been living all the way forward this whole time. She just hadn't known her father had a name for it.Over breakfast, she told Zachary the whole thing again, slower this time, the fisherman, the feeling, her father's choice.He
Cursed To Love You Paris Preparation
The apartment had turned into a kind of organized chaos three weeks out — commission boards stacked against the studio wall, fabric samples pinned to a corkboard that hadn't existed a month ago, and baby things arriving in waves that seemed to have no schedule of their own."Another box," Zachary said, carrying one in from the hallway. "This one's from Caden.""We didn't order anything from Caden.""I'm aware."He opened it on the kitchen counter. Inside was a mobile shaped like tiny hot air balloons, a stack of onesies in three different sizes, and a card that read *saw these and thought of you both, no occasion needed, love C.*"That's actually sweet," Isla said."It's also the fourth unrequested delivery this week.""I know. I've stopped questioning it."Sloane's package arrived the next day — no card, no explanation, just a single item wrapped in plain brown paper that neither of them could immediately identify."What is this," Isla said, turning it over in her hands."I have no i
Cursed To Love You What Wren Is Afraid Of
They met most Tuesdays now, when schedules allowed, a small standing lunch that neither of them had officially named but both quietly protected.Wren was settling into the booth carefully, one hand braced on the table, ten weeks behind Isla now, just starting to show, still wearing the faintly astonished expression of someone who kept forgetting and then remembering."You okay," Isla asked, watching her lower herself down."Fine. Everything just takes longer than it used to. Sitting. Standing. Deciding what to eat.""Welcome to the second half."Wren ordered tea instead of her usual coffee, and for a while they talked about nothing important — the Paris trip, Reid's schedule, a mutual friend's baby shower neither of them had strong opinions about.Then Wren went quiet, turning her cup slowly on the table, and Isla recognized the shift immediately."What," Isla said."I'm afraid of becoming my mother," Wren said. No preamble. That was how Wren said things now, when it mattered.Isla se
Cursed To Love You February
She waited until dinner, plates between them, before she said it plainly, the way she'd learned to say difficult things now — no cushioning, no managing his reaction before he'd had a chance to have one."Paris pushed to February," she said. "They need me there four weeks minimum. Final installation oversight."He set his fork down. "February.""I'll be eight months."He didn't say anything right away. She watched his face carefully, the way he went still — not the alarmed kind of still, the thinking kind, the kind she'd learned to read correctly over two years of watching him process instead of suppress."What do you want to do," he asked finally."I want to go," she said. "I know how that sounds. I know the timing is—""What does your doctor say.""I haven't asked yet. I wanted to tell you first."He nodded slowly, turning that over."Ask her," he said. "If she says it's safe, we go.""We?""Obviously we."She studied him across the table. "You'd come to Paris for a month. In the mi
Cursed To Love You The Name
Morning came grey and soft through the curtains, and Isla was already awake, one hand resting on the curve of her stomach, listening to the city start up outside.Seven months now. The pregnancy had stopped being an event and become the texture of every day instead — the way she shifted her weight getting out of bed, the way she'd started sleeping propped on three pillows instead of two, the way the apartment's temperature had become a subject with exactly one acceptable answer."It's cold in here," she said, when Zachary came in from the kitchen with two mugs."It's seventy-one degrees.""It's cold."He adjusted the thermostat without argument, which had become his standard response weeks ago, and set her coffee — decaf, always decaf now — down beside her sketches.She was already bent over the table, pencil moving across a lighting plan, and she said, without looking up, "I keep thinking about Niamh."He turned around from the counter. "What?""For a girl. Niamh. It's Irish. It mean
Cursed To Love You Chapter 6
Isla's team left at six.She stayed.There was still the ceiling anchor on the north end that wasn't sitting right — a fraction of a degree off, nothing anyone else would notice, everything she would notice every single time she walked into this room for the next three months. She changed into the
Cursed To Love You Chapter 5
Theo's message came at 8:14 a.m.“Reid mentioned you're working in the Cole Global building. I have a consultation there Tuesday. Lunch after?”Isla read it on the subway, one hand on the overhead rail.She smiled and typed back.Tuesday works.I'll find you, he replied.I'll be on the fourteenth f
Cursed To Love You Chapter 4
Reid's dinner parties were never actually dinner parties.Isla figured that out within the first ten minutes.The food was real — properly cooked, properly served, the kind of meal that required actual effort — but the people were too carefully chosen for it to be casual. Everyone in the room knew
Cursed To Love You Chapter 3
She arrived at 8:58 am.Zachary's PA, a composed woman named Diana who had worked for him for seven years and prided herself on being unshockable, did a very subtle double take when Isla Simmons stepped out of the elevator — portfolio under one arm, slightly windswept from the New York morning, loo
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