The first reaction I had to my brand-spanking-new office was to squeal and jump like a lunatic. It was a corner office in a New York City sky-rise. Never in a billion trillion years had I dreamed I’d ever be able to call a place like this mine. Well, sort of mine. It was Prim’s, but as the new creative director of the U.S. offices, it was kind of mine. I squealed again, which had Chloe bursting into laughter.

“This place is heaven.”

“I know, right?” I was smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. “I have to bring Miles one of these days. Hell, I have to bring Celia, Freddie, and my grandma one of these days.”

Chloe was still laughing as she walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, but then she sighed dreamily. “My god, this view.”

“How am I supposed to get any work done here?” I asked. “I mean, real talk, how?”

“Hell, if I know.” She pressed the side of her face to the window and looked at me. “Is this weird? Because it feels so good and you can’t hear any noise.”

I ran to join her and pressed my own ear against the window. “Nope. Not weird at all.” We were definitely acting like children, but it didn’t matter. When Yamina gave me the news that I’d gotten the promotion and would be opening the position as the very first creative director in the New York office, I’d cried, and cried, and then begged to take Chloe with me. Not just because she and Sam had started this long-distance relationship that was making even me suffer from anxiety, but because she was a kick-ass assistant, and I knew one day she’d be so much more than that for this company. Chloe backed away from the window and held her phone up so she could take a selfie as she made a silly face before looking at me.

“Stand behind the desk. I need to send Sam a picture of this.”

I laughed and obliged, adopting the most boss-like poses I could summon—both my fists on the desk with a serious face and then my arms crossed with a smile on my face.

“I feel like I’m doing Glamour Shots,” I said between laughs. Chloe was laughing equally as hard as she fired away the texts.

“He’s going to flip out.”

“Miles is going to flip out.” My smile widened as I thought of him.

“When are you going to bring him?”

“I’m not sure.” I looked around the office again, taking note of the electrical outlets I’d have to plug before his visit. He wasn’t a tiny baby anymore, but he loved those outlets.

Chloe’s phone vibrated in her hand. She laughed as she answered. “Babe, did you see? No. No. That’s Tessa’s new office! Yes! Yes! Hold on.” She walked over and handed me her phone before telling me she would be right back.

I lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello, peasant.”

Sam chuckled. “I hope you know I’m moving into that office.”

“We’ll have to be roommates because I don’t ever want to leave.”

“When are you bringing Miles? I wanna be there when he sees it.”

“I was just saying that to Chlo. I don’t know. Maybe Friday after I pick him up from school?” Calling his daycare a school wasn’t a stretch of the imagination since he really was in a school-like environment.

“Text me and I’ll be there. Did you find babysitting for next Saturday?”

“For the bar opening? You know it.”

Sam’s friend was opening up a bar in Brooklyn and Sam had designed the entire concept. I was more than a little excited to see it come to fruition.

“Fantastic. I have to run, but your office is amazing. Tell Chloe to call me when she leaves.”

“I will. See you Saturday.”

We finished the call and I set the phone down, smiling at the picture of Sam and Chloe that she had saved as her backdrop. They were in front of the Eiffel Tower. Her pretty blonde hair was covering half his face as she kissed his cheek, her arms thrown over his shoulders.

The phone screen went to black right as Chloe walked back in with three white tubes tucked under one arm. I shrugged off the navy-blue blazer I had on and tossed it on the sleek gray couch beside my desk before turning back to Chloe, who was back to looking around with a goofy smile on her face.

“Show me what you got, mon cherie.”

“We have a few projects happening at once,” she said, opening the first tube and unrolling the blueprint on the table.

“What—” I blinked rapidly and looked at Chloe. “Are you sure this is the right thing?”

“It has your name on it.” She turned over the tube to show me.

“It’s a car.”

She chewed on the tip of her fingernail, looking at the blueprint. “I know. Yamina didn’t say anything about this to you?”

“No.”

I stared at it for a couple of beats longer before pulling the binder that accompanied it toward me and leafing through it. In my time working at Prim, I’d mostly focused on high fashion with the exception of a luxury jet I’d helped design last year, which was not in any way ordinary for me. The company had many branches, but high fashion and interior design for luxury spaces were the two we focused on most. Luxury spaces meaning homes for the rich and famous and sometimes boutique hotels. Cars weren’t something we saw often. I looked at the other binder on the desk and noticed that it was a hotel. The third binder was more my style—the spring line for a popular designer.

“A car and a hotel.” I let out a breath. “No pressure.”

Chloe let out a nervous laugh. “I know.”

I opened the fourth binder, which was much smaller and contained some amateur-looking sock designs. “I don’t get it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whose designs are these?” I glanced at the bottom of the page and saw RHS Designs. “Never heard of them.”

“Me either,” Chloe mused, frowning. “Actually, they sound familiar. Maybe we worked with them in Paris? I have to check my notes.”

“Do they want us to pick their fabrics? Design more? I’m so confused.”

“I’ll get more details. What I have so far is that they want us using the same textiles company for all of the projects,” she said. “The car is for Fashion Week. They want to put it in the middle of a runway show.”

“Sounds . . . interesting?”

“Yeah. The hotel is a project we need to put a bid on. Best design for the lobby and downstairs bar wins and gets to design the entire hotel, rooms included. It’s a small boutique in BK.”

BK. She said it the way people spoke about the food chain.

“I’m glad one of us is hip enough to say BK when talking about Brooklyn.”

“You’re hip.” She smiled. “Besides, my college roommate was from BK, and that was all I heard for the four years I roomed with her. I’m going to finish pulling the information for the meeting with the textiles company. Do you want me to have Seth and Tommy work on some of these designs?”

“Send them the car and the boutique. Both companies know exactly what look they’re going for, so that shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ll keep the socks and the spring collection for now. I assume they want designs that match the two they sent us. I think I can come up with ten more.”

“Perfect,” she said before grabbing the paperwork for the two projects I was delegating and walking out of the office.

I pushed off the table and walked behind my desk, pushing the button on my phone that would speed dial the Paris office, specifically Yamina’s.

“Bonjour, Cristophe. Je dois parler à Yamina.”

---

“Cristophe, bonjour! May I please speak with Yamina if she’s available?”

“Of course,” he said, switching to his heavily accented English before he put me on hold. Three songs later, Yamina picked up the line.

“Tessa, are you calling to tell me how much you love the new office?”

I laughed. “Well, I don’t think the view is quite good enough, but it will do. I actually have a question about the upcoming projects.”

“Ask away.”

“I’m staring at a blueprint of a car and another of a hotel,” I said. “This isn’t my department.”

Yamina let out a throaty laugh. “Everything is your department now, dear. It’s creative, and you’re the director.”

“But it’s a car,” I said quietly. “And a hotel.”

“And I trust you’ll know how to delegate those tasks to others. What I will not allow is for you to sell yourself short. Do you remember why I put you in that position?”

“Because I’m the best.” She’d told me that so many times that I’d started to believe her along the way.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” I nodded to myself. She was right. I’d worked on different things that didn’t only include dresses. I could do this. “So, we’re working on a boutique hotel, a car, a spring collection for Vue, and socks?”

“We’re bidding to work on a boutique hotel, the car is a definite yes, they want Prim-level talent.”

“No pressure,” I said. “What about the socks?”

“The textiles company we’re using is giving us the biggest discount I’ve ever seen for the other projects as long as we help them design those socks.”

“That is—”

“Business,” Yamina said. “Just do the same thing you do when we work on handbags or couches or carpets for private jets.”

“This is insane.”

“It is. Go make me proud and send everyone my best. Call me if you need anything.”

For a few long seconds after she hung up, I stood there speechless. Then I set the phone back on the cradle and sighed. A boutique hotel, a car, spring dresses, and socks it was.