Page 3 of Like First Love, Again

“Yeah, well.” Larissa smirked. “No one quite fears me as they do the woman who hires and fires.”

At Larissa’s feigned envy, Tori rolled her eyes. “Like you have any interest in management.”

“You’re right. I’m much more of thefrom behindtype.” She wiggled her brows.

Tori laughed. “Pretty sure you meanbehind the scenes.”

With a devilish grin, Larissa tipped her head to the side. “Do I?”

Tori led the way to her office while they talked. Intentionally minimalist, the curated space had its own small seating area and a partial view of the Biltmore Golf Course. As the managing broker, she had the fourth most coveted office. Only Larissa knew she had her sights set on the huge corner suite.

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing I made my own backups despite reassurances that data couldn’t be lost when we switched.” Tori dropped her bag on her uncluttered glass desk and went for a locked cabinet under a series of floating shelves across from a round table and four chairs.

Tori slapped a bandage on the CRM issue and was walking with Larissa back to the kitchen when she heard the front door chime. She glanced down at her smartwatch.

Three minutes late is still late, Mr. Aster.

She might’ve been impressed that the prospective agent was tenacious enough to show up anyway, probably to plead his case. But defiance of a clear directive was too close to insubordination. There was a lot she could teach new hires about the job, but she couldn’t change their character. She’d learned that the hard way.

Tori started toward reception, intending to give the young man a few minutes of her time and impart some valuable lessons, when a voice she hadn’t heard in nearly fifteen years flash froze her in place. Standing behind the ornamental wall separating the office from the reception area, Tori couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

“Hi, um, I’m looking for Victoria Cruz.”

Mia. Her heart thumped the syllable like a sledgehammer smashing through bone.

Her voice was still silk and sandpaper. Honey-sweet and whisky-warm. It made the air too thin, like Tori was standing on Everest without supplemental oxygen.

The sound reminded her of a thousand secrets whispered in the dark. Of laughter and hope and more talking than Tori had ever done. It transported her to another life against her will. To a time when she had been riddled with insecurity and self-doubt. When she had no control over anything. When she’d let a stupid and hopeless and forever-unrequited crush control everything she did. When she’d been embarrassing and pathetic.

“Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist asked politely, despite having a copy of Tori’s calendar and knowing the answer.

“No. I’m her…”

Mia’s chuckle was a nervous rattle in her throat. It made Tori’s mouth go dry and her heart kick into a terrifying flutter. She curled her hands into fists like that might stop the cold sweat. Like it might conceal the tremble.

“You okay?” Larissa’s usually carefree tone bore a concerned edge.

Tori couldn’t respond. Couldn’t look up from the slate flooring. She didn’t want to know what Mia looked like now. Didn’t want to know what it would feel like to see her again. In all these years, she’d never once given in to a late-night urge to look her up. To see what she was doing. She couldn’t stand to know.

A million questions rushed through Tori’s mind at once. The most urgent centered on what the hell Mia was doing in her office. The most pitiful focused on how Mia was going to describe their relationship. They were nothing to each other now. A fact that turned Tori’s racing heart to stone and sent it plunging into her clenched stomach.

“We’re old friends,” Mia explained after a beat. “My name is Maria Falcon.”

Friends? It was an interesting way to describe people who hadn’t spoken to each other in fourteen years.

Larissa breathed a curse in Portuguese that conveyed the same shock turning Tori’s skin to ice. “Is that her?” she whispered.

Tongue glued to the roof of her dry mouth, all Tori could manage was a nod. Despite the ligature tightening around her lungs and muscles that had turned to jelly, Tori made herself move. The old Tori might have frozen in place—hiding and cowering—but she wasn’t that person. She hadn’t been her in a long time.

Tori straightened and put every ounce of her infamous resolve into killing the whirlpool of feelings swirling in her chest. She wasn’t some stupid teenager with a misguided crush anymore. She was a grown woman, successful and secure.

Striding out to the reception area, head held high, Tori slipped a hand into her trouser pocket to project a confidence she didn’t yet feel. She kept her legs moving, even if it was like trying to sprint through chest-deep mud. Fear of what it would be like to see Mia again wrestled with excitement for a moment she’d thought would never come. The conflicting emotions warred within her until she stepped into the lobby and exhaled.

There she was. Mia standing in her office like it was the most normal thing in the world. Curvier than she’d been in high school, Mia was unfairly attractive in jeans and a simple T-shirt. Her straight auburn hair was in a low pony, loose strands framing her heartbreaking face. Beneath the veneer of adulthood, Mia still wore the mischievous glint that could convince Tori to do anything. Though Tori couldn’t help but notice that she’d penciled in the scar in her eyebrow.

Tori tried to look past her, but her attention snagged on Mia’s hazel eyes, green and gold and forcing Tori back through time and space. She was back on the roof. Back in her bed. Back to a heart tired of pounding at the smallest provocation.

“Tori?” Mia’s eyes widened before they swept over Tori from top to bottom and back again. “I don’t know that I would’ve recognized you on the street.”

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