by Nikki Sloane
She saw me not as a monster, but as a savior. My mind didn’t approve the words, but they burst from my lips regardless. “I’ll do it.”
The smile that spread on her face was pleasant enough, but I didn’t like it as much as Sophia’s. Evangeline’s hand darted across the table, and she placed it on top of mine, her warm fingers touching my cold ones. It took all my strength not to move. Not only had she not asked if she could touch me, but her hand covering mine felt like dominance, even as it was meant as a friendly gesture.
Her words carried weight. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” I slowly slid my hand out from beneath hers, breaking the connection. “I’m happy to do it,” I lied.
The last trace of anxiety she’d had about me evaporated in that instant, and her shoulders relaxed.
I stuck to the script Sophia had told me to, asking about the foundation. Mr. Gabbard’s brother had served two tours in Afghanistan and came home with PTSD. He was fortunate to be able to provide his brother the help he needed, but during the road to recovery, he’d met other soldiers who didn’t.
The Gabbards started their foundation and worked on the project together, although the bulk of the work was handled by her. He hadn’t yet retired from HBHC. I pretended to know which department he’d worked in, but some of my better people moved around, and I’d been away when he’d passed.
At least I was pleased the charity I’d been talked into donating to was something worthwhile. It lessened the sting of being blindsided by the situation.
We ate our meal, and she talked, skillfully avoiding any topic that might force us to address my past, until she ordered a second glass of wine.
“This might be the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” she said beneath her smile. She held out the large glass of white wine to me, her fingers wrapped on the bell. “Do you want to try it?”
“No, thank you. I only drink once a year, and then it’s scotch.”
Confusion splashed across her. “Once a year?”
Frustration directed inward. Why had I offered up this information? “Yes,” I said reluctantly. “The anniversary of the day Julia passed.” I had to clarify. “My first wife.”
“Oh,” she said so softly, I didn’t so much hear it as feel it. Shared pain and understanding filled her expression. This was the thing we had most in common—the tragic and sudden loss of a spouse.
“Why scotch?”
“It was her favorite, which she discovered on our honeymoon in Scotland.” I didn’t talk about private things, but I felt disarmed and unbalanced. This was Sophia’s doing—the underdressed suit and the offer she’d made on my behalf which planted the addictive idea I could be a hero. “Scotch makes me feel close to Julia again.”
Once more, Evangeline looked like she was going to cry, but she blinked back her tears. “That’s . . .” she searched for the word, “romantic.”
I hadn’t been accused of being romantic in quite some time, because that part of my heart had died along with Julia. It made sense to me that the love of my life would take most of my ability to love with her when she left.
The way I’d felt for Alice, or even Marist, was a fraction of what I’d once been capable of.
“Does it get easier?” Evangeline’s ache was palpable, and the noise of the people dining around us faded.
She looked to me to have answers, and for once in my life, I didn’t want to be the expert. Since the conversation was no longer under my control, I gave in. “Part of you is gone. Over time, you’ll adjust. You’ll learn to live with this”—I struggled to say the word—“hurt that exists in its place. So, to answer you question, yes. It may get easier, but you know it will not be easy.”
Even now, seventeen years later, there were days that were challenging. Particularly when I saw her reflection in my sons.
The way Evangeline peered into me suggested I was entirely too vulnerable. I straightened in my chair. “That was my experience. Yours may be different.”
“All of my friends are pushing me to get out there, and I . . . can’t. I know it’s been a year now and I’m still young, but John was it for me. He was the love of my life. How am I supposed to move on?”
I grew angry on her behalf. “They’re not pressuring you because they’re concerned about your happiness. They do it because seeing you in grief makes them uncomfortable, and they’d prefer you stop doing it. Ignore them. Don’t think about moving on—only think about moving forward.”
Her head angled, and she looked at me like I’d just torn away a mask and revealed a different person beneath.
Perhaps I had.
“You’re not at all what I expected,” she said. “The way people talk about you, Macalister, I wasn’t sure I’d make it past the first course.”
Three years ago, I would have been pleased with her statement. Often, it was practical to be intimidating, and, in fact, I enjoyed it. But it served no purpose tonight, and I certainly couldn’t use intimidation to make friends, which Sophia had said was a vital step in her plan.
“Yes, well, much has changed for me in the last few years. I appreciate the opportunity to change your opinion of me.” Hopefully, she could help set the record straight with her friends and explain how Macalister Hale was on the road to redeeming his evil ways.
“If you wanted to do this again sometime,” she said, “I’d be okay with it. It helps both of us, right?”
“It does.”
Two dates would be required for people to believe we were dating. Plus, getting a woman to go out with me once could be chalked up as luck—twice would prove skill.
I paid for the bill and was pleased when she didn’t attempt to argue with me about it. I was traditional and had always held the opinion that women were the fairer sex. If she were willing to spend time with a man, the least he could do was pay for the evening.
As we made our way out of the dining room, every pair of eyes watched us go. Did it make Evangeline nervous? When we reached the atrium, she was pale and her eyes were wide.
“Is everything all right?” I asked. She had texted her driver from the table that she was preparing to leave, so it was unlikely the issue lay there.
“I’m just thinking about what happens next,” she whispered as she retrieved her long black coat from the coat check. I took it from the staff member and held the coat out to help her put it on. It forced me to recall last night and how Sophia had ripped her coat from my hands, her anger denying me the opportunity to touch her again.
But Evangeline was distracted, too nervous about our impending kiss to notice or care. She turned away from me, slipped her arms into the sleeves, and held still as I brought the neck of the coat up onto her shoulders. I didn’t let my hands linger there, but that brief touch was enough to reveal she was trembling.
“Thank you,” she said.
She didn’t wait for me to respond. Her feet carried her briskly across the marble floor and out the revolving door, leaving me no choice but to chase after her to say our goodbyes.
It was cool outside tonight, and the cars in the street were dotted with rain, gleaming in the streetlamps. We were protected under the lit awning of the restaurant as a black town car pulled up to the curb, which was obviously hers, but she felt compelled to say it anyway.
“That’s me.”
I lowered my voice so only she’d hear it over the sound of cars passing by on rainy asphalt. “We don’t have to.”
It would be better for me if we did, but I had no desire to kiss a woman who looked like she was about to be physically ill.
She shook her head, trying to be strong. “I said I would.”
I went to her car and pulled open the backseat door for her, the closest equivalent to a doorstep kiss. The tremble in her grew until it was pronounced. She was terrified at the thought of my kiss.
Sophia’s voice echoed in my head. How will you do it?
I stood on the sidewalk and had one hand o
n the top of the open car door and carefully set my other on Evangeline’s waist, if only to keep the woman from vibrating apart. “It’s all right.”
Her eyes were wild and unfocused. “I haven’t kissed anyone since John.”
“I understand.”
And I did. Perhaps this felt like cheating, and she couldn’t bear to betray him. Or maybe since he was the love of her life, she didn’t want to feel anyone else’s lips against hers ever again. What right did I have to take that from her? I’d kissed a woman in love with another man before, and it wasn’t a mistake I wanted to repeat.
I leaned forward, hearing her sharp intake of breath, and brushed my lips on her cheek, just outside the corner of her mouth. When I drew back, she was a statue of disbelief.
“Goodnight, Evangeline,” I said, releasing her and stepping back.
Unable to speak, she simply nodded and faded into the back seat of her car. As it pulled away, I removed my phone from my pocket and angrily punched the screen with my finger.
I didn’t give Sophia a greeting when she answered. All I did was bark out my order in an arctic tone before hanging up. “You will be waiting for me in the foyer when I arrive home.”
EIGHT
SOPHIA
At the rate I was going, my phone battery wasn’t going to survive the night. I slid off the stool pulled up to the breakfast bar in the kitchen, snatched up the spare power cord my mom usually used to charge her phone, and plugged in.
I’d been texting Penelope all night for updates and used the time in between her messages to watch social media. As far as I could tell, no one had posted anything yet about Macalister’s ‘date.’ He was still inside Marquee with Evangeline, so presumably it was going well.
My mother appeared in the doorway and trekked across our huge kitchen to the fridge. She had on a pair of black Nike leggings and matching hoodie, and she looked every bit the role of wealthy soccer mom.
Except I’d never played soccer.
Even if I’d wanted to, there wasn’t time. During the height of my Olympic run, I’d trained five times a week, sometimes going through a thousand rounds per day, and the shooting range was a twenty-minute drive from Cape Hill. There’s been competitions on the weekends and the travel that went along with them.
And there’d also been my mother’s fight with breast cancer.
She was tougher than a lot of people gave her credit for. She’d survived a double mastectomy, kicked cancer’s ass, and had come out the other side stronger. Her reconstructed and upgraded breasts helped complete a body few fifty-year-old women could have.
She looked fan-fucking-tastic.
But as strong as she was, Colette Alby still had her weak moments too, and I wasn’t sure if I could ever get past them. Maybe I just needed a few more years.
My father would disagree. She could do nothing wrong in his eyes, and he always took her side. He’d say I needed to move out of the house and try living on my own. He’d use every opportunity to get rid of me.
It wasn’t like I was attached to my parents or the house I’d grown up in; it was more that moving out didn’t make sense. Why should I leave the nest where it was warm and comfortable and rent free? I lived in the far end of the house, the in-law suite, and rarely saw my parents unless we crossed paths in the kitchen or the Wi-Fi went down.
It was just us three here in this big ol’ mansion.
Colette and Stephen Alby only had one child, and my father was heartbroken that I’d been a girl. The Alby family line that had come to America on the Mayflower would officially die when I married. Even if I kept my maiden name—which I wouldn’t—I’d never pass the Alby surname on to my children.
Cape Hill was steeped in tradition. Sometimes I wondered if the biggest one was every family had some form of dysfunction.
“You’re addicted to that thing,” my mother said, gesturing to the phone in my hand.
I shrugged. “I’m working.”
She brushed her light brown hair back out of her eyes and poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher in the refrigerator that had lemon slices floating on the surface. As she set the pitcher down, her gaze zeroed in on me. “I don’t think Macalister Hale is paying you to play on Instagram.”
“I’m watching for notifications about him.”
She didn’t like my new ‘job.’ And my dad? Oh, he hated it. I’d been treated to a long lecture about Macalister being his biggest client and how this was going to cause problems for him when I eventually screwed up and got fired. I’d told him it was too late, a done deal. It’d reflect worse on Stephen Alby if he was the reason Macalister’s newly hired assistant quit and left him in the lurch.
“I know you don’t want to hear it—” she started.
“I really don’t.”
“But this job is beneath you. You have a degree from Columbia, for Chrissake.”
I didn’t look at her as she chastised me. Nothing I said was going to change her mind, so why bother? I’d done everything they’d ever asked of me, and it still wasn’t enough.
So, I stopped.
I’d watched Marist, with her green hair flying in the face of all the Cape Hill conservatives as our newly appointed queen, and found myself strangely inspired. I’d figured out what I wanted, and now I was going after it.
I doled out the platitude to my mother in an indifferent voice. “Everyone has to start somewhere.”
Just imagine how fast I could climb in HBHC’s ranks if I became invaluable to the owner of the company. I’d be a brand manager by thirty, maybe even the director of marketing by forty. Plus, there was the nice five-million-dollar bonus if everything worked out.
“Your father and I have talked about it some more, and we think you should try to find a replacement for Macalister. That way, you can quit, and he won’t be upset with any of us.”
More specifically, with my dad. I lifted my gaze from my screen and glared at her. “I just started, and I don’t want to quit.”
“And I don’t want you working for a man who killed at least one of his wives, Sophia.”
My breath caught. “What? I thought his first wife died in an equestrian accident.”
She took a drink of her water but held my gaze as she did it. “That’s how he said it happened, but you know, I never saw Julia ride without her helmet. And after what he did to Alice, a lot of us have been talking. Is it possible he had something to do with Julia’s death too?” She said it in a patronizing tone. “Or could he really just be that unlucky?”
He’d told me he held himself responsible for both of his wives’ deaths, but he hadn’t meant it literally. It was because he thought he was cursed.
Right?
I shook my head like it could rattle the question away. “It was an accident.”
My mom frowned, and an emotion washed over her. It was something so rarely seen from her, it took me a moment to place. Was that honest-to-God concern?
“That man has a temper, and I don’t want you to end up on the wrong side of it.”
I opened my mouth to tell her she was overreacting, but my phone vibrated with a text. My stomach flip-flopped at the words.
Penelope: He kissed her & she just left.
Three dots blinked to tell me more was coming, but I didn’t get a chance to read her next comment. The screen went black as my phone rang, and I tensed at the name displayed.
“Hello?”
Macalister sounded fucking pissed. “You will be waiting for me in the foyer when I arrive home.”
It was followed by chilly silence, and by the time I could form a response, it was too late. He’d hung up on me.
“Who was that?” my mom asked.
My mouth went as dry as a desert. “Macalister.” Shit. I’d have to change out of these clothes and back into the teal dress. “I have to go.”
“Go where?” She glanced at the clock on the microwave. “It’s ten o’clock.”
“It’s an emergency,” I said.
It wasn’t a lie. I knew he’d be upset when he found out what I’d signed him up for, but I hadn’t expected him to be this level of angry. It made worry puddle in my stomach. At least he hadn’t fired me over the phone. Meeting him at his house would give me a chance to plead my case.
Unless his legendary temper prevented him from listening.
Maybe I wasn’t going to get a word in. He’d spend twenty minutes berating me until there was hardly anything left then cut me loose. His plan might be to send me home in tears, as he was known to do when he was CEO.
I slipped my phone into the back pocket of my jeans and hurried toward my bedroom. I’d spent years toughening up my skin from all the online haters. Whatever Macalister threw at me, I was pretty sure I could take it.
The Hale house was silent. There were no ticking grandfather clocks or fires going in the fireplaces. Macalister had told me he didn’t like to see his staff unless they’d been summoned. Even the cat—what was his name? Lucifer. He wasn’t sitting defiantly on the couch in the front room like last time.
The cavernous space of the grand entryway was empty except for me. Its vaulted ceilings and ornate chandelier which was so old it probably predated electricity and had been wired since, exaggerated the feel of loneliness. This house had held generations of families, but now it was a mausoleum.
After parking my Jaguar beside the sprawling garage, I’d dashed through the light rain to the front door and hurried to punch in my access code. I wiped the damp from my face as I stepped inside, pulled off my coat, and hung both it and my purse in the closet. It’d only taken me twenty minutes to change and get here. With the rain, the typical thirty-minute drive home from Boston might take Macalister’s driver longer.
I took my phone from my purse and sat on the second step of the staircase, putting my arms around myself for warmth. Not only did this house feel like a tomb, it was as cold as one too.
There were several messages I’d missed from Penelope during my drive over. She’d wanted my approval on the best picture before posting it to Instagram, but when I’d gone radio-silent, she’d gotten anxious and made the call without me. Of the three images she’d sent, there was a clear winner, and she’d picked the correct one.