A Night, A Consequence, A Vow

It had taken Emily a full minute to realise the tightness in her chest had been not only shock, but sadness.

The Royce was the one remaining connection she had to her father. Now that connection would be irreparably severed.

She stood up suddenly and smoothed her hands down the sides of her trousers. She wasn’t going to do this. She wasn’t going to get emotional. It would only make her feel worse.

Drawing a deep breath, she headed down the plush carpeted corridor and looked into the accounting office.

It was empty.

Further along, she stopped at Marsha’s desk. ‘Do you know where Jeremy is?’

‘He called in sick this morning.’

She sighed. The news wasn’t welcome, and not only because she needed financial data from Jeremy. He was one of the few people at The Royce she felt able to confide in—and the only other person aside from Ray Carter who knew about her father’s gambling problem. It would have been nice to talk with him.

Marsha looked at her. ‘Can I help with something?’

‘Do you have access to the finance drive?’

Marsha nodded and Emily grabbed a pen and a piece of notepaper and scribbled out a list. ‘Download these files onto a flash drive and take them to our guests in the boardroom.’

‘Mr de la Vega?’

There was a gleam in Marsha’s eyes that Emily tried not to notice. ‘Yes. And please also arrange for refreshments and lunch for our visitors.’ She moved towards her office. ‘Thanks, Marsha. I’m going to keep my door closed for a while. If Mr de la Vega or his lawyer ask for anything more, let me know.’

So I can tell them to go jump.

Except she wouldn’t, because she didn’t have that luxury. But the thought was satisfying, if nothing else.

Sitting at her desk, she forced herself to focus. This morning’s outcome was not what she’d anticipated but she still owned forty-nine per cent of The Royce. She still had a job to do. The staffing budgets had to be completed and she’d promised the executive chef she’d look at his proposed changes to the seasonal menu and give her stamp of approval.

Plus there was the small matter of drafting a discreet communication to the members. Maxwell had agreed to a carefully worded announcement in his name welcoming the Vega Corporation as a shareholder. The members already believed he was the sole owner. Armed with only selective facts, they’d assume her father had retained the balance of the shares, and he and Emily and the club’s new shareholder would allow that assumption to go unchallenged.

It wasn’t ideal, but discretion was necessary. The club’s stability had to be her priority.

An hour later, despite her good intentions, Emily had abandoned her desk. She stood at her office window, her arms wrapped around her middle, her mind a tangle of thoughts as she stared sightlessly through the glass.

A knock at her office door jarred her out of her head. ‘Come in,’ she called over her shoulder, assuming it was Marsha.

It wasn’t. It was her father.

She turned around and he closed the door, pushed his hands into his trouser pockets.

After an awkward silence, he said, ‘The lawyers are fleshing out the terms. Ray will bring you a draft to review as soon as it’s ready.’

‘Fine,’ she said, but it wasn’t.

None of this was fine.

She wasn’t fine.

Maxwell looked away first. He always did. ‘If you don’t need me—’ he spoke to a point somewhere beyond her left shoulder ‘—I’ll head off and come back when the agreement is ready for signing.’

If you don’t need me.

Emily almost let out a bitter laugh.

Of course she didn’t need him. She had needed him as a child, but he’d never been there, so she had taught herself to need no one.

‘What will you do?’ she asked, forcing the words past the sudden, silly lump in her throat.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed, and Emily didn’t think she’d ever seen Maxwell look quite so defeated.

‘You still have the Knightsbridge apartment?’

Or had he gambled that away too? As he had everything else, including his father’s stately mansion where Emily had lived at weekends and holidays when she wasn’t at boarding school.

He nodded and, though she shouldn’t care, she felt relieved that her father wouldn’t be homeless.

He turned to go and all of a sudden Emily felt as if she were six years old and her daddy was abandoning her again. Walking out of the front door of the mansion and leaving her in that big, silent house with only her grandfather, his stern-faced housekeeper and her mother’s ghost for company.

‘Was it really so hard to love me?’

The words blurted from her mouth before the left side of her brain could censor them.

Maxwell paused, half turned. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Did you love her?’

She clasped the pearl at her throat and saw the tension grip her father’s body. He had never talked about the woman who’d died giving birth to his only child.

‘Your mother...’ he began, and Emily’s breath caught, her heart lurching against her ribs as she waited for him to go on.

But he simply shook his head.

‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.

And then he left, closing the office door behind him.

Gone.

Just like all the times before.

Tightness gripped her throat and she blinked rapidly. No tears, she told herself fiercely. She returned to her desk, opened a spreadsheet on her computer and forced herself to concentrate. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry in a very long time. She wouldn’t start now.

* * *

Ramon draped his suit jacket over the back of the Chesterfield sofa in Maxwell Royce’s soon-to-be ex-office and sat down. His briefcase, a sheaf of papers and his open laptop lay on the dark wood coffee table in front of him. He could have worked at the big hand-carved desk at the far end of the enormous office, but staking his claim before the deal was officially done felt a touch too arrogant, even for him.