She always loved that moment.

“Hi, I’m Anna Gardiner,” she said. “Are you the rest of Ben’s team?”

The guy in charge obviously did not enjoy being characterized as on Ben’s team. She wondered if Ben would have done the presentation if they hadn’t been delayed. If this was his understudy in the spotlight moment, he was taking full advantage of it.

“We’re the rest of the team from Legendary. Wonderful to meet you, Ms. Gardiner. I didn’t . . . We didn’t . . .”

“I decided to come along today at the last minute. Nice to meet you, too.”

There was a flurry of introductions, and then the rest of the Legendary team sat down on the other side of the table. The guy in charge started to stand up, but the woman whispered to him, then nodded at Ben. Ben smiled at everyone in the room again and kept going.

“One thing we really noticed as we watched the ads of your competitors was how often women are an afterthought—they’re around in the ads, but so many of their concerns aren’t.”

Mr. Guy in Charge couldn’t keep quiet for even a full minute.

“What Ben means to say is that we’ve seen a real gap that we can fill here, and we think Ms. Gardiner—as relatable and . . . confident as she is—is the person to fill it.”

That long pause, that look he’d given the tech dudes—by “confident” he’d clearly meant “fat.” Did he realize she was still in the room?

“Ben, what do you mean by ‘so many of their concerns aren’t’ around in the ads?” she asked. She preferred to just pretend she hadn’t heard that dude talk.

Ben looked right at her.

“I’m so glad you asked that, Anna.” He smiled at her, a little crinkle in his eyes. She could tell he knew she’d cut his boss off on purpose. “I did a lot of research about how and why women feel like they’re being ignored by phone companies, and there was a lot they had to say.”

He’d been so careful to say “we” the whole time, but she noticed that “I” slip out just then. It made her like him even more. She smiled back at him. She had to flirt with this guy a little. She needed to have some fun with this, after all.

“Thanks so much, Ben,” she said when he’d finished answering her question. “That was very thorough. I can tell you’ve done your research on the concerns of women.”

He shot her a grin before he turned back to his PowerPoint.

For the rest of the time they had, the company people peppered Ben with questions, and he answered them all well, though his annoying boss felt the need to jump in repeatedly, too.

When they were done, they all passed around their business cards.

“Thank you all,” Chad—or whatever his name was—from the tech company, said. “We’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you, it was great to meet all of you,” Anna said. Ben and Vanessa both smiled at her—the one friendly, the other shy—on their way out the door. She didn’t pay attention to what anyone else on Ben’s team did.

She sat through the rest of the presentations, and they were all fine, but none impressed her as much as the first one. However.

She looked around at the group from the tech company.

“I liked the plan from Legendary the best. But if they get it, I want that first guy . . .” She flipped through the stack of business cards in front of her. “Ben Stephens, I want him to take the lead.”

They all nodded at her, but she couldn’t tell if they were nods just to pacify her or if they actually agreed with her.

“I liked him the best, too,” the guy who hadn’t said a word so far piped up.

“We have to take this upstairs for them to make the call,” Chad said, “but we want to make this decision quickly, because we know you have a relatively short window for filming.”

She nodded and stood up.

“Excellent. Please let my reps know as soon as possible. It was lovely to meet you all today.”

She stood up to go, leaving the stack of business cards on the table.

On second thought . . .

She slipped the top card into her purse.

Two

Anna texted her parents from the back seat on the way from Silicon Valley to Oakland.

I’ll be there in time for a late lunch!

 

Her parents’ house was out of her way, but she tried to never go to the Bay Area without seeing them. Her mom—a school principal—was off for spring break this week, and her minister dad had said he would come home for lunch to see her. It was still a slight sore spot for him that she wasn’t coming home for Easter this year, but she hoped he didn’t harp on that today. She’d used work as an excuse, but the real reason was that visiting her dad’s church was too hard these days. Everyone made a big deal out of her—she had to say hi and take selfies and sign autographs for the whole congregation. And she was used to all of that, it was her job, but when she was with her family, she wanted to just be with her family. She wanted to be Anna Rose, not Anna Gardiner.

The car pulled up to her parents’ home an hour later. The front door was open before she’d even made it to the porch.

“Anna!” Her dad had a huge grin on his face. “It’s always such a treat to get to see you, even for only an hour.”

Anna couldn’t keep the tears from welling in her eyes as her dad pulled her in for one of his big bear hugs.

“Great to see you, too, Dad. Where’s Mom?”

She walked with her dad into the kitchen, where her mom was exactly where she’d expected her to be—standing behind the stove.

“There’s my girl,” her mom said, and came around the counter to give her a hug. “Are you hungry? I made soup! Black bean and kale.”

Anna pretended not to see her dad’s grimace. Ever since his heart attack a few years ago, her mom had forced him onto a mostly vegetarian diet and a new exercise regimen. Ten years ago, that black bean soup would have had a big ham hock in it, and definitely no kale. But kale or no, Anna knew it would be delicious.

“Sounds great, Mom.”

Anna walked around the counter to take down the soup bowls from the cabinet. She kept trying to buy her parents a new house, but at times like this, she was kind of glad they kept refusing to let her. This was still the same old kitchen where she knew where everything was. It was nice to come home to that.

They ate outside in the backyard. Her parents had let her pay for their backyard to be redone, at least. Her brother, Chris, had helped her spin that to them: she was doing her part for her dad’s recovery, giving him a place to be outside, and not wanting him to dig around the garden by himself anymore, and her mom had said yes without consulting her dad. He’d been annoyed, but he’d gotten over it.