Chapter 8: The Bullet-Point Proposal

That evening, sitting alone in the sterile, high-tech silence of his downtown penthouse, Evan made his very next catastrophic mistake.

He opened his secure corporate email client and sent Mara a direct message.

His brain, entirely hardwired for extreme corporate efficiency and aggressive restructuring, completely failed to translate into basic human romance. He typed out the message with the grave concentration of a man drafting a legally binding peace treaty.

The subject line read: Proposal for Dinner Conversation.

The body of the email included four heavily formatted, numbered items. 1. Apology continuation regarding workplace disruption. 2. Clarification of non-work-related intentions. 3. Mutual food selection (no dietary restrictions on my end). 4. Optional dessert.

He hit send, feeling a brief, absurd flash of pride at his clear communication skills.

Mara’s reply pinged into his inbox exactly eight minutes later.

Rejected. Too many aggressive bullet points. Also, labeling dessert as ‘optional’ is emotionally suspicious and frankly, a red flag.

Evan stared blankly at the glowing monitor in his dark office for a full, uninterrupted minute. Then, for reasons he could not adequately defend to a board of directors or even to himself, he threw his head back and laughed.

The next morning, Mara arrived at the Bright Line Media office and immediately noticed something out of place.

Sitting directly in the center of her keyboard was a neatly folded piece of thick, expensive stationary. There was absolutely no corporate letterhead. It hadn’t been delivered by an executive assistant, and there was no calendar invite attached to it.

It was just stark, elegant handwriting in black ink.

Would you like to have dinner with me? No agenda. Dessert is strictly mandatory if you want it.

Mara read the short note twice, feeling a sudden, traitorous flush of heat rise in her cheeks.

Owen peeked cautiously over the cubicle divider, his eyes darting toward the note. “Are you getting written up?” he whispered.

Mara blindly grabbed a metal paper clip from her desk organizer and threw it directly at his head without even looking up. “Mind your own business, Owen.”

But she smiled.

It wasn’t quite enough of a smile to officially mean yes. But it was absolutely enough to make Evan Pierce, who was currently watching her from the glass conference room like a man desperately pretending not to watch her, nearly walk face-first into a leather chair.

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