It was hard to let go of that nagging voice telling Maddie that maybe all of this was Elena toying with her, and she was playing a long game Maddie hadn’t yet figured out. And yet, just when her distrust had reached its peak of paranoia, she found two emails while cleaning out and sorting Elena’s secondary email account.

Dear Ms/Mr E.B., Your donation of $10,000 is making a difference. Campaign: Ramel Brooks Lawyer Fund. Thank you.

The next email, issued less than two minutes later, announced that the Ramel Brooks Lawyer Fund had reached, and exceeded, its target amount. It was dated the day Elena had fired Maddie. She stared at the email for a good five minutes. Gratitude washed over her. Her boss had transformed the young man’s life. Any quality lawyer could crush the prosecution’s feeble case, so Ramel would be off to college as planned. He’d even have plenty of money left over for textbooks.

Yet no one would ever know who did this.

That donation wasn’t a unique event, either. Maddie had so far stumbled across paperwork for anonymous donations to a women’s shelter, a Polish inner-city community centre and its youth basketball team, and a receipt for bail money to free a group of transgender activists in North Carolina who’d been arrested protesting prohibitive bathroom laws.

If that wasn’t unexpected enough, there was the incident last week. On Maddie’s birthday, a cupcake was sitting on her desk when she arrived at work. Red velvet. No card. No note. Just that. It looked eerily familiar. She sniffed it. Oh. No wonder. She smiled and made a call.

“Hi, Mum, I just wanted to thank—”

“Darling! Happy birthday! I was just going to call to check you’re still coming over tonight. Simon will be here and your brother, too. I’ll be cooking that Moroccan dish you love. And my famous sponge for your cake. Yes?”

“Definitely.” Maddie was drooling all over her desk. “I mean if I get out of work on time.”

“Pssh, don’t worry about that. You will.”

Maddie stared at her phone in confusion. Then she remembered her reason for calling. “Thanks for the cupcake. Red velvet—my fave! Looks as delicious as ever.”

“Don’t thank me, I just took the order.”

“What?”

“Of course we don’t normally take orders for a single cupcake, but when she said who it was for, well, you’re a special case. Your brother dropped it off on the way through. Chris had to go into the city anyway.”

“Um, she who?” Maddie felt baffled by the entire conversation. “Who ordered it?”

“Your boss, of course. Didn’t she say? She rang to find out your preferred cake and order it for your birthday.”

Maddie was definitely hearing things. “Elena? Elena Bartell ordered this? For me, personally? And she knows it’s my birthday? I never told her.”

“Oh yes. And she knew—wouldn’t it be in your file or something? Anyway, she obviously appreciates you, and she sounded lovely. We talked a little bit. Bonded over dogs, of all things. You know how I love rare breeds. She has a Cirneco dell’Etna, did you know that? I’d love to see it one day.”

“Dogs.”

“Anyway, I explained tonight’s plans for you, and she promised not to keep you. She said she’d make sure you’d be free. So, seven?”

“Free.”

“Maddie, focus, darling. Seven? I hate to rush, but I have the Fredericks luncheon to prep for.”

“Sure.” She’d felt light-headed. “Seven.”

“All right, then. Until tonight. Bye, honey.” Click.

Maddie looked at her phone, the cupcake, and then over at Elena. She scrambled shakily to her feet and walked to Elena’s desk until she was staring at the impassive face of her boss.

Elena didn’t look up. “Problem?”

“No. I just… I wanted to say…for the cupcake. Thanks!”

“Mm. Consider it payback.”

“Payback?”

“I did appreciate many of your evening offerings.” Elena glanced up, her gaze half-lidded. She nudged a pile of folders across her desk. “These need filing.”

Maddie returned to her desk, arms overflowing, trying to understand what had just happened. Had Elena actually made mention of their time together in New York? That was a first. She hadn’t been any closer to figuring out what it all meant when, at six on the dot, Elena called her in.

“Go home,” she said, sounding annoyed. “You’re chewing the lid of your pen too loudly, and it’s ruining my concentration. So go. Now.”

Maddie hadn’t been using her pen.

Which was in her drawer.

And had no lid.

Such discoveries were both endearing and maddening. One moment Elena was a shark who shredded whole companies; the next she was the wry, smart, occasionally thoughtful woman Maddie had caught glimpses of in New York. Elena Bartell defied definition. She was impossible to pin down.

A blush warmed Maddie’s cheeks, as she imagined pinning the woman down in a very different way. She shook her head in annoyance and forced herself to focus on the work at hand. This, this…crush…would soon pass, and she could get on with life.

She hit Enter on her order for flowers and then winced at how high the total cost was. Oh well, Elena had wanted that Duchamp woman’s attention. She’d certainly get it for that price.

CHAPTER 11

The Truth Bet

Elena Bartell was not a woman who liked to be denied. Which was why when Véronique Duchamp not only rejected Elena’s floral tributes but denied her an interview on the grounds that journalists were all lowly cafards, Maddie slammed on her metaphoric hard hat.

“Cafards!” Elena hissed as she spun her chair away from the window and raked Maddie with a cold glare that lowered the temperature at least ten degrees. “She calls me a cockroach!”

“Well, to be fair, uh, Elena, she calls everyone that,” Maddie said in her most reasonable tone. “All of us. All journalists.”

“Us?” Elena eyed Maddie with deliberate care, voice silky.

Uh-oh. She was in a worse mood than Maddie had thought. “Yes.” She lifted her chin.

“Mm.” Elena spun her chair back to the window. “I tried to get an interview with that woman when I was a junior writer at CQ, and then off and on over the years since. This year, I thought, maybe, because there are succession talks. Her daughter may be taking over. Véronique will want to explain the changes and how they affect her dynasty. I sent a roomful of flowers on that ungrateful creature’s sixtieth birthday. Now this! Cafards!”

No kidding. Maddie had been there for God’s sake. Véronique hadn’t even sent an acknowledgement. Maddie thought she knew why. Flowers were the only thing everyone knew that the mysterious designer liked. So, Elena had joined a queue of every other hopeful wellwisher, from Vogue and Elle to CQ, using floral tributes to vie for favour with her.

Elena glanced back, catching Maddie mid-thought. Her shapely eyebrow lifted. “Something to add? You have some contrary thought in that fevered brain of yours?”

“What?” Maddie said, startled. Her boss’s mood had degenerated from irritated to full-on bitch mode.

“Your face.” Elena waved her hand. “It speaks volumes. What is it?”