Page 102 of The Frog Prince

How could whoever did this—Olivia, or Sara, or both of them—think anything has been achieved?

And will David believe me when I tell him this fiasco isn’t my fault? Will he listen when I point a finger in someone else’s direction?

I doubt it. I’m low man on the totem pole. Olivia represents power, success, clout. I’m… nothing.

I roll off the couch, grab my cell phone from my purse, and call Josh again. He answers this time.

“I was just about to call you,” he says. “What happened?”

I tell him in as few words as possible, and he’s silent a moment before exhaling in a lowwhoosh, “This is bad.”

“I know.”

“This is Kid Fest.”

“I know.”

“Let’s go to the office,” he says. “Check out your computer and files—”

“I don’t have access.”

“I do. I’ll come by and pick you up in thirty minutes.”

Inside the dark, cavernous loft of City Events, my cubicle looks very small, and Josh and I stand over my desk with just its individual desk light on, poring over my file fat with notes, contracts, and event details.

I rummage through the papers, and everything in the first contract looks fine—right date, right numbers, right event description—until I check the location for delivery. It’s been changed.

I look up at Josh, hand the paper to him. He takes it, scans it, hands it back to me, but I’m already on to another contract, and this one is altered, too, but the event date is different, postponed to June.

Another contract reads. “Canceled.”

Another one, for the caterer, is simply missing.

“Josh…” I open my mouth, close it. I don’t know what to say, and I glance down at the contract in my hand, read through the changes again. “I’m screwed.”

He’s silent a moment before he clicks off the light on my desk. “Just hope those photos theChronicletook this morning don’t land on the front page.”

*

I don’t sleepat all that night, tossing and turning, praying and then fearing my cell phone will ring. If Olivia should call me back…

But she doesn’t call, even though I leave both phones on the nightstand next to my bed, and finally at four thirty I give up on sleep and climb out of bed, go for a very early morning run, and on the way back to my apartment I buy the MondaySan Francisco Chronicle, leafing through the pages as I enter my front door.

And there it is. A photo and an article: “Kid Fest Travesty.” The story and picture isn’t on the front page.

But it does land on page three.

*

I’m in theoffice at ten after six, and Olivia is the first person I see. She’s tall, slim, still and watchful, and I’m reminded of a cobra before it strikes.

She’s going to strike. And it’s going to hurt. Worse than it’s already hurt.

I approach her. I have to force, the issue; I can’t wait anymore.

She watches me walk toward her, her gray-green eyes intense, speculative, dangerous.

But she preempts me by speaking first. “I wondered if you’d come today, Holly. After your fiasco yesterday.”