by Ava Miles
When they entered the dining room, each bearing a tray of coffee, he saw Aunt Clara had changed into the sapphire blue cocktail dress Caitlyn had gotten her.
“Clara, that looks wonderful on you,” Francesca said, approaching the first table and going from person to person to allow them to choose their cup while Quinn did the same at the adjoining table.
“I can’t wait to see what adventures you have in it,” Caitlyn said, but her smile dimmed before she finished the sentence.
Quinn knew what she was thinking. What adventures were they likely to have? Europe was talking about locking down, and the U.S. was sure to do the same.
“Tonight my adventure is being here, at the Wild Irish Rose Inn,” her aunt said, running her hand along the fine cloth. “In fact, I’m going to dance with my beloved husband. Becca, my dear. Would you pull up a song on your speakers so we can dance?”
His sister-in-law picked up her phone and brought it over to the music console. “How about ‘As Time Goes By’?” she asked, plugging it in. “I loved hearing that at Boyd and Michaela’s wedding.”
“That sounds lovely,” Aunt Clara said, pulling their uncle from his chair.
He spun her slowly in a circle. Trevor whistled, followed by J.T.’s piercing catcall, as Louis Armstrong belted out the song. After distributing the coffee, Quinn and Francesca brought their own cups to their seats. He pressed his thigh against the woman he loved, and she settled her hand on his leg under the table, stroking it sweetly.
Beau started to sing softly, and Caitlyn joined in, prompting a few more people to add their voices to the mix. Soon everyone but Quinn was singing and swaying to the tune, including the woman next to him.
Quinn sipped the coffee and thought of the long, cold years he’d spent without Francesca. They’d been apart for far too long. And he also thought about the strange march of time during this global crisis. Clocks seemed to tick too loudly right now, each passing minute bringing worse news. He’d actually extracted the batteries from the bedside clock in their room. When they were there, he wanted no mention or presence of the outside world.
The song’s final verses were upon them, and Francesca gazed into his eyes, singing softly alongside the rest of his family.
He finally added his voice to theirs. “As time goes by,” he sang, gazing into her eyes. It was his way of telling her that one thing hadn’t and wouldn’t change in this ever-evolving world: his love for her.
She leaned closer, and he kissed her softly on the lips. The warmth he saw in her eyes had him whispering, “I love you.”
She whispered back, “I love you too.”
As the next song began to play—“I Love You For Sentimental Reasons” by Nat King Cole—Aunt Clara gestured to the middle of the dining room. “Come, everyone. Let’s dance and hope for better times ahead.”
His middle tightened, but he took Francesca’s hand and led her to the newly crowded dance floor. His parents were already on the dance floor, along with Becca and Trevor and J.T. and Caroline. Aileen and Liam joined them, he noted, and Hargreaves grandly led Alice out onto the floor, executing what Quinn could only describe as a flawless ballroom frame.
At the end of the next song, Aunt Clara approached Hargreaves, causing everyone to stand back.
“You and I have never danced, Hargreaves,” she told him, flicking her diamond bracelet his way. “I hope you will remedy that tonight on my eightieth birthday.”
The butler’s smile was filled with warmth. “It would be my greatest pleasure, Madam.”
“It’s Clara, tonight, and I’m going to call you Clifton.” She extended her hands to him, and he smoothly took her into his elegant ballroom hold. “In fact, since I’m eighty now, you might want to indulge me and start calling me Clara from now on.”
Quinn’s eyebrow wasn’t the only one that rose at the command in his aunt’s tone.
“I might very well consider it,” Hargreaves said, turning her grandly and leading her into a waltz.
“I suppose you could call me Arthur,” his uncle called out. “Master never sat well with me.”
Hargreaves’ mouth twitched. “With me either—Arthur.”
“It’s like we have front row seats to a miracle,” Alice said, coming up beside Quinn and Francesca. Her joy was infectious. “I’ve told Hargreaves to lighten up. I mean, if you can’t dispense with formalities when the world is in peril, when can you?”
Quinn grated at the mention of the word “peril,” but Francesca laughed. “Peril, indeed? That makes me want to open more champagne.”
“Let’s grab some from the icebox in the kitchen,” Alice said. “Chef Padraig brought a special vintage up from the cellar.”
They shared a conspiratorial smile, and Francesca said, “We’ll be back.”
Alice repeated the phrase but in a horrible impression from The Terminator.
The dancing continued, and so did the champagne drinking—much later than Quinn had imagined it would. Alice and Francesca were dancing to a Beyoncé song Quinn didn’t know well, clearly having the time of their lives.
He turned over his coffee cup, which he’d put facedown on the saucer after finishing the brew, and studied the pattern of the remaining grounds. Francesca was the one who read the cups, and he wondered what she’d see.
When the party finally ended and everyone hugged and kissed one another and went off to bed, he drew her back toward their cups.
Her hair had slightly more volume than usual after the dancing, and there wasn’t a trace of lipstick left on her luscious mouth. She’d never looked more beautiful.
“What do you see?” he asked, extending the white teacup to her.
She looked into it, and her eyes flashed dark before she blinked and set the cup back on the table. “Tonight’s a night for champagne, not Lebanese coffee. Come, let’s take a bottle up to our room and drink and make love until sunrise.”
Her dismissal of the teacup made his stomach quiver. He wasn’t usually a superstitious man, but her readings had always been surprisingly on point. Moreover, he knew she set stock by them. He wanted to dismiss it. But as she kissed him impulsively and dashed off to grab a bottle of champagne, he found himself picking the cup back up.
What had she seen? And, more troubling, why wouldn’t she tell him?
Chapter 23
The champagne couldn’t erase the dire warnings she’d seen in Quinn’s teacup.
She was pragmatic in most things like her father, but she had her mother’s whimsy in this one area. As she poured champagne on his belly and drank from it, she struggled to stay in the moment. Usually the defined angles and muscles of his body captured her full attention, but tonight her mind kept floating back to his coffee cup, to the design formed by the grounds.
He flipped her onto her back and loomed over her. “You’re having trouble being here. Let me help you.”
When he lowered his mouth to her core, she finally surrendered. She laid her hand over her eyes as he used his lips and tongue to make her come again and again and again.
When she was floating in the aftermath, she felt him slide into her. Her body arched, so sensitive to his touch now, and he started to move. Moaning aloud, she pressed her hands to his back and rose to meet him again and again until they both came in a rush, calling out each other’s names.
He gathered them to their sides, and then she was falling asleep, her eyes heavy with fatigue.
The next morning, she awoke to an empty bed. The sun was visible out of the window over the sea. When she opened it a crack, the wind whipped pleasantly at her face.
She needed to set aside what she’d seen in his teacup.
Part of her wished she’d looked at her own. Then again, it might only have inflamed her fear. They were linked, so whatever befell him affected her.
She very much prayed the predictions in his teacup would be wrong.
Over a week later—on March 8—everything she’d seen in his cup came true, only it was worse than she
could have imagined. Oil prices plunged twenty-four percent.
Her father had been right. Dear God.
The week leading up to it had been alarming enough, with the Saudis starting to sell off crude oil after Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC members failed to come to an agreement with the Russians on oil production cuts.
“We’re dead in the water,” Quinn said, his face gray.
They were sitting at the dining room table with his father and brothers, including Flynn, who’d flown his family to Ireland after Colorado had announced eight coronavirus cases.
“It’s the worst plunge since 1991,” Quinn’s father said, rubbing his forehead. “I can’t believe they made this move. It’s going to cripple every oil-dependent nation and all of the producers, us included.”
But Francesca knew they were capable of it. The Saudis played the oil market like Bobby Fischer played chess…and her father had known what they were planning.
“We can’t recover from this,” said Trevor, his tense jaw covered in two days’ beard growth. “We don’t have the financial reserves to hold until prices go back up, assuming they even do. This virus is killing demand right and left. Italy has already gone into lockdown mode, and the other E.U. countries will almost certainly follow. No one will be driving or flying anywhere.”
“It’s catastrophic,” J.T. said, patting his dad on the back when Shawn leaned onto the table with his elbows.
“Everything we’ve built will be gone. I don’t see it going any other way.” Shawn rose slowly, showing his seventy-two years. “You all have done an incredible job, and I’m proud of you. In other times, the restructuring would have worked. These simply aren’t those times. I’m going to find your mother.”
As Francesca watched him leave the room, she tightened her hands in her lap. Shawn was wrong. If she’d listened to her father like he’d asked, she wouldn’t have restructured the company around oil. This could have been avoided. She could have avoided it. All her hopes of buying into the media sector for a quick profit were impossible now.
“It’s my fault,” she admitted. “My father told me not to restructure around oil. Quinn—all of you—I’m so sorry I didn’t listen.”
Quinn whipped his head in her direction. “Your father told you about this?”
His voice shook with anger, with accusation, and she felt herself wither a little. “No. He wouldn’t give any details. He only told me not to restructure around oil and said it wasn’t because of the virus.”
When he stood slowly, he seemed to tower over her. “Why didn’t you tell me? Dammit, Francesca.”
“At first I thought he might be trying to sabotage you—us.” Her own voice turned hoarse. “I kept looking for a sign in the market, but I couldn’t see anything.”
“Jesus,” Trevor uttered. “He had insider information.”
“Of course he did,” J.T. said bitterly. “He’s Georges Maroun. He’s always been tight with the Saudis.”
They were right. Her father’s Saudi connections went back to his early schooling at Oxford. But she’d had no reason to believe him at the time, nothing but his say-so, and he’d proven he would lie or stretch the truth to influence her. “I didn’t suspect anything until this week when talk between the Saudis and Russians escalated. But I would never have imagined something like this.”
It was unprecedented. Every oil market analyst was saying so. The impact to the market—and to the people who worked in it—was going to last years. Hundreds of thousands of people would be laid off. Businesses like Merriam Enterprises were going to fold.
“You should have fucking told me!” Quinn said, his hands fisted at his sides. “At least we would have had a chance to look into it. Trevor and J.T. have good connections with the Saudis. Dammit, Francesca!”
She shot out of her chair. “What would you have asked your sources exactly? Can you please confirm a vague and scurrilous warning by Georges Maroun? There was nothing you could have asked that would have elicited any information. It might even have hurt your reputation to ask. Or it would have blown back on my father. Trust me. They kept this shut up so tight no one outside of the inner circle knew.”
“And yet, your father is in that inner circle,” Quinn shot back. “That’s why I hired you. Because you have access no one else does. You failed to disclose a critical piece of information during a major restructuring of our family company, our heritage.”
His eyes drilled into her, hot with anger, rich with hurt. Her heart squeezed in response.
“What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? I am. More than you can ever know. Do you think I wanted this? I’ve failed your family and you—and I love you so damn much.” Her voice cracked on the words. She felt all too conscious of the eyes on them, of the fact that they weren’t alone.
His hand closed around her arm, and he stepped closer, his scent engulfing her, bringing more attention to the distance now between them. “Then why not tell me? Babe, I thought we shared everything.”
She shook her head slowly. “Like you told me that my father tried to warn you off fifteen years ago? Quinn, my father didn’t want me helping Merriam Enterprises, and he certainly doesn’t want to see us together. I couldn’t trust his motives. Even if I’d told you, would you have heeded the warning? Restructured the company differently simply on Georges Maroun’s say-so? Please! We both know better.”
Quinn’s mouth twisted.
“Tell me.” She gestured with her hands, entreating him. “What would we have restructured it around instead?”
He looked away, his jaw ticking, and while it broke her heart to say the rest, she knew it had to be done.
“Oil was the only major area you had left,” she said, making herself speak like a market analyst. “There was nothing else to do other than what we did.”
“She’s right, Quinn,” J.T. said. “I wouldn’t have trusted a vague bullshit salvo from Georges Maroun given his feelings about you, and neither would the rest of us. No one could have imagined this play. Right, Trev?”
His brother took a moment to respond, though, and he only jerked his head.
“You’re the queen of improvisation when it comes to business, Francesca,” Quinn continued. “That’s what makes you so great at what you do. Surely we could have done something.”
“Let it go, man,” Flynn said. “It’s not her fault. The whole damn world is falling apart, and everything with it. Our company is just another in a long line of collateral damage.”
Quinn whipped around and faced Flynn. “That’s why you’re the tech guy and I’m the CEO. I can’t just say, ‘too bad, tough shit’ and move on.”
“Hey—” J.T. said as Flynn lurched out of his chair.
“Fuck you, man,” Flynn shot back, his eyes glittering. “You’re not the only one who’s upset here. I get that this is horrible. I’m Merriam Enterprises too. But there’s more at stake here. Your relationship with Francesca for one.”
The gesture fell on deaf ears. Quinn didn’t look at her. He hadn’t so much as glanced her way, she realized, since she’d told him about her father.
God, she ached.
“We have people who depend on us,” Flynn continued. “Acting like a dick isn’t going to help. Did you see Dad? This has fucking crushed him.”
Everyone went still at the anguish in his usually carefree voice.
“He’s right,” J.T. said, standing up, regret in his eyes. “We have to take care of our people as best we can. We need to plan for bankruptcy and give people as generous a severance as possible.”
Quinn strode over to J.T. and shoved him back. “I’m not fucking filing for bankruptcy.”
Francesca gripped her chair, aware of what that would cost Quinn.
He whipped around to her and pointed in her direction. “You broke it. You fix it.”
All the life seemed to leave her body as she stared at the angry man she loved. She’d thought him grouchy the day he’d walked back into her life. He was furious now, an
d it was the kind of fury that could give way to hate. She had to be honest, and her heart cracked, knowing it could end them. “I don’t know how.”
His green eyes glittered. “Figure it out. I can’t—I won’t—accept defeat.”
Her throat was hot with tears. “I can’t fix something this globally dependent. I’m not a miracle worker, Quinn.”
He looked away again, and it felt like he was withdrawing from her. From the future they’d envisioned together. From that family walking together along the beach.
“Do you want me to leave?” she made herself ask.
His head fell forward, and he said, “No, I don’t want you to fucking leave. If you do, we’re done, and I can’t take that.”
The words were wrenched from him, and tears burned behind her eyes in response.
“I just need some time. Excuse me.” He strode out of the room, his shoes slapping the floor harshly in the ensuing silence.
She turned to his brothers. All of them were looking at her, a mixture of grief and anger in their eyes. Their shoulders sagged with it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered again. “I’m so sorry.”
Seeing no other choice, she fled the room.
Chapter 24
She’d betrayed him.
Quinn couldn’t erase that thought from his mind. He locked their bedroom door, then scooped up her red silk robe from the bed they’d shared last night. It had always tantalized his senses. Now it made him more sick at heart. Her scent wafted to him as he tossed it into the wardrobe where the rest of her clothes hung. God! Why hadn’t she told him?
He picked up his phone and called the only person he knew he could turn to right now. Connor picked up right away, almost like he’d been waiting for his call.
“I didn’t know if I should reach out given what’s happened,” his brother said, his usually baritone voice even deeper with emotion. “I feel like this is all my fault.”
He rocked on his heels. “Yours? I restructured the company. Did you know the Saudis were going to dump oil? Moments ago, I learned Francesca had been vaguely warned about it.”