Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
T HOMAS WAS RIGHT. T HERE WAS A CERTAIN CHARM IN PRETENDING. In pretending she hadn’t been deeply wounded when he’d told her they had no chance. In pretending he wasn’t totally transfixed. In pretending that their tryst hadn’t lit her entire world aflame. In pretending that she could leave the feelings he’d awakened in her behind. In pretending that maybe she did want something more from him than his body on top of—or perhaps under—hers again.
“The games are rigged , I tell you!” he said as they conquered the stairs to The Empire’s upper offices. “What a brilliant money-making scheme. Perhaps I should add a few to the second-floor saloon—”
“Rigged? You wouldn’t be calling it rigged if you’d won and I hadn’t. By the by,” she said, tapping the new bulge in his breast pocket, “I hope you appreciate the genuine silver watch I gave you as a token of my affections, good sir.”
“I shall treasure it always.”
“And may your affection for me outlast the metal from which it’s made.”
Once on the second floor, she breezed into his study. Leaning in the doorway, she blocked his path inside.
“This is generally the portion of the program when the lady gets a kiss,” she flirted.
All traces of good humor vanished from his face. His voice went sweet and soft. Apologetic. Somehow, that wounded her worse than the rejection that followed.
“Evelyn, I don’t know that that’s wise.”
“And then we could go to supper,” she suggested. “Prolong the day. I know some places with dark and private booths with extremely discreet waiters.”
“That’s not in our agreement. We promised that we would go our separate ways in the evenings. You know this.”
“Hang the agreement. I’m not satisfied with ending things in a false Florence. I want the entire Grand Tour. Why shouldn’t we live? Really live, not just play pretend at it? Live for one day .”
Half plea and half command, the words spilled out of her with a surprising desperation. The stolen moments they’d shared together at Coney Island sparked something within her, something real and raw and unfamiliar. That something could not be allowed to continue. She needed to bury it. But to do that, she needed Thomas to succumb to her charms. Because she knew, if she didn’t get under him soon, there would never be getting over him.
“The day is almost done,” he said, moving toward his desk and its piles of afternoon mail, sounding more like he was convincing himself than her. “We shouldn’t—”
“But do you want to?”
When he spoke, he did so into his letters rather than to her.
“I had a lovely time.”
“And?”
“And …”
Hope fluttered in her chest—he would now dive into bed with her so they could firmly settle their relationship into the category of business partners with plentiful benefits . But he narrowed his eyes down at a letter in his hand. Everything changed as he read. His inner light extinguished completely.
“And … it wouldn’t be appropriate. You should go. Our agreement is clear on this point. Do not attempt to break it.”
“Our agreement also didn’t include cavorting at a public amusement park,” she pointed out. “It did not, as I recall, include you pleasuring me to world-shattering completion.”
“A mistake I will not make again, I can assure you.”
Evelyn held her ground, confusion gripping her. She felt her tone shift to something harsh, mocking. “What is this? Have I struck a nerve?”
“My nerves are none of your concern. Dr. Samson will tend to those.”
“You seemed to be perfectly happy to endure my company not twenty minutes ago. Not two minutes ago. What has changed?”
Whether or not he realized it, his eyes flickered down to the note in his hand. Another note just like the one she’d seen him tuck away that afternoon when he’d been fixing those screws—one marked with a golden NA.
“You are my employee, Miss Cross,” he addressed her coldly. “This is how I treat my employees.”
“Like dirt?”
“ Like they work for me . Since meeting you, my life has turned into a battlefield from which I can never declare victory. I’m calling for an armistice.”
“Please, say more,” she retorted, her emotions rising at an unhealthy rate. “I’m liable to swoon.”
“I don’t need you to swoon. I need you to have some compassion and release me from this fixation of yours. I feel as though I’ve made my sentiments on your intrusions upon my life quite clear. There are affairs, Miss Cross, and there are business affairs, and in my life, never the twain shall meet,” he hissed.
“Except for today. When you were a few buttons from burying yourself inside me.”
A strong hand crumpled the letter, and Evelyn’s eyes immediately went to it. He hadn’t been so set against her until he’d opened the note and read its contents.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He threw it in the waste bin. “Nothing.”
In one swift movement, she plucked the letter from the depths. Thomas protested and shifted into action, pursuing her as she skirted the edges of the room while attempting to uncrumple the damn thing.
“Is it a love letter?” she taunted. “Good sir!”
“Miss Cross—”
“Mr. Gallier, have you been stepping out on me? Is that the purpose of our agreement ? To keep me separate from your strings of lovers? Are they the ones who taught you how to pleasure a woman so well?”
“Evelyn!”
The walls nearly shook with the force of his bellowing voice. Evelyn’s vision blurred as she stared down at the odd piece of wrinkled paper in her hands.
“What …” she asked, her voice weak, “what is this?”
Thomas cleared his throat. “It appears to be a draft article about our little escapade this afternoon. I will find Nehemiah Alban and sort this out. Make sure it never gets printed.”
Evelyn stared down at the page in her hand. “Our photograph on the pier looks lovely.” Her voice had gone quiet, almost wistful.
But Thomas seemed to hardly notice. He plucked the page from her shaking hands and resigned it once again to the waste bin.
At his brusque manner, Evelyn’s tone shifted to indignant. “What’s so wrong with a photograph like that appearing in the papers?”
“I must control The Empire’s image. We’re in a fragile enough state as it is.”
Oh, she saw how it was. After all this, he was still worried about what the papers might say if he was seen with her.
Anger and hurt in equal measures wrapped their cold, bony hands around Evelyn’s throat.
“You aren’t controlling The Empire’s image,” she accused. “You’re letting the press control you. ”
“That isn’t true.”
“Then let them have the article. Let the world know that the most eligible man in New York City was seen cavorting around an unsavory amusement park with his unsuitable, fat sideshow attraction. Come to dinner with me. Take me home. Take me here in this damn office, if you want. But whatever you want, let yourself have it, damn the consequences. Play the world instead of letting it play you.”
She’d wanted it to come out as a command. Instead, she might as well have been begging.
Thomas didn’t even have the decency to look her in the eye. “I cannot.”
It was a rejection. He was just like the rest. Turning her down, even in private, because he was afraid of what the rest of the world would think about them together. She should have been hurt or angry, but in that moment, all she could feel was pity for the man.
He controlled every aspect of his life—romance, drink, sex, business, and God knew what else. For what? To blend in with men like Nehemiah Alban?
“You want me, and you’re giving me up just to please them . How pedestrian. How predictable. How positively ordinary of you.”
“Miss Cross—”
Brisk enough to vacate the premises before any hasty tears made an appearance, Evelyn charged for the exit. She paused only for a moment in the doorway. “If this is the real you, then … you were right. He does nothing but hurt people. Including himself.”
Present Day
I T WAS SORT OF NICE. M E AND A RMITAGE G ALLIER.
There was a shift between us. A recognition that things could never go back to the way they were, all polite distance and the occasional kind word or glance.
Like Thomas, he’d made a mistake. He’d shown me that he cared. Even a little bit.
Everyone says that billionaires get to be billionaires by working hard—endless hours, jet-setting business trips, nights spent debating in the boardroom and mornings poring over “the numbers,” shouting “have it on my desk by five,” whatever.
Armitage didn’t do any of that. Instead, he sat with me like it was his job. Not hovering anymore, because he’d been serious about our deal that he wouldn’t read my research until it was done, but like we were two strangers working side by side in a beautiful old library.
That is, if one stranger always silently brought the other a cup of tea and the other always tried to make ridiculous, ice-breaking jokes that never seemed to quite land.
“There’s not a dress code for hanging out with me, you know,” I said out of the blue one night. “I mean, do you even own a T-shirt?”
It wasn’t that I hated seeing him in collared, elbow-rolled button-ups and Savile Rowe trousers perfectly tailored at the ass. But still, it always seemed so surreal, looking up from pictures of Thomas Gallier in full suit to find his descendant, frowning over a newspaper in an outfit not entirely dissimilar.
Like seeing an echo of the past.
“Why would I need to own a T-shirt?”
“Because you’re a human on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century.”
“My father would drop dead if he caught me in one. I’m a Gallier. We aren’t T-shirt people.”
“You’re not T-shirt people? What does that even mean? Who doesn’t own a T-shirt? I mean, what do you sleep in?” Then, a thought caught me. “Holy shit—do you sleep in those old-timey silk pajamas? Do you wear a little sleeping cap and carry around a chamberstick so you can see at night?”
I hadn’t ever expected a man like Armitage Gallier to blush—but I wouldn’t call what happened to Armitage’s face then not blushing, either. He ducked his head behind his newspaper.
Oh, how delicious. “You do, don’t you?”
“Well,” he said, after a brief pause. Was that a smile I heard in his voice? “Not the sleeping-cap thing.”
So, anyway, that’s how I ended up at the Fifth Avenue residence a few days later, carrying a Target bag stuffed with T-shirts.
If I was lying, I would have said, Oh, no, I have no idea why I did that. Life’s funny that way. Such a mystery. People are weird and do irrational stuff, huh ?
But I knew exactly why I did it. I wanted him to like me.
And like Evelyn with Thomas, I wanted to know the real him. I wanted to like the real him. And I wanted the real him to like me.
Weird, right? Armitage Gallier was so out of my league we might as well have been different species. Not just in social standing, but in looks, too. What would a guy who could have anyone want with a woman like me? He was a Gucci Nine; I was a solid Walmart Four. He was Saturday-morning runs and green smoothies; I was midnight movies and milkshake dates. He was runway. I was run away, it looks like the fat girl’s going to ask you to dance.
At least, that’s how I saw myself back then. Like I wasn’t beautiful. Like there was something wrong with midnight movies and milkshake dates. Like the problem was with me, not the assholes who made fun of me when I asked them to dance.
I didn’t have that Evelyn Cross pop . I didn’t have seduce a man on a Coney Island ride energy. So when I was interested in something … I had to nudge it out of someone. I never came out and asked for anything; I wasn’t ever forward. I just dropped crater-sized hints.
Like the T-shirts.
And I’ll admit this wasn’t the first time I’d done something possibly ill-advised for the sake of a guy. My track record in this area was … not great.
In high school, I cut class to get the boy I had a crush on some throat lozenges because he had a cold (and I found the still-full bag in a trash can an hour later). In the hope of catching the eye of the cute violin player on my hall freshman year of college, I baked cookies for my entire dorm (and still didn’t get invited to the party where everyone ate them). I worked up the courage to send a drink over to a guy at a bar once (only to have the drink returned to me by a very embarrassed bartender because the guy hadn’t wanted to “lead me on” by accepting it).
As a historian, I knew history repeated itself. Yet still, my problem was always thinking this time would be different. Always thinking I’d be the one to defy the odds. Always thinking that someone would look past my insecurities and see the person I was beneath them.
All that said, I should have known better than to try the whole T-shirt gambit on Armitage Gallier.
“Did you bring your dinner tonight?” he asked, nodding to the bag as I emerged onto the back terrace. He’d suggested we work outside to take advantage of the unusually nice weather, flashing a shy sort-of smile that I was trying to ignore entirely.
“Actually, this is a gift,” I said, plopping the bag down on the table in front of him. So proud of myself.
He blinked up from behind his glasses, eyes seeming larger than usual. “You got me a gift?”
“Yeah. I know guys like you usually want donations to a socially conscious charity of your choice in lieu of gifts or whatever, but I couldn’t help myself.”
I bounced on the balls of my feet as he fumbled with the plastic. It was clear this guy had never touched a Target bag in his life—and his jerky movements only got more pronounced when he held up a package of maroon fabric.
“It’s a T-shirt,” he said, voice unreadable. “It’s a bag of T-shirts.”
“For the man who has everything,” I practically crowed. I might as well have posed and said ta-dah!
His face clouded. His hands fisted in the material, bringing it down into his lap, where he stared at it like it was a map he couldn’t decipher.
“I thought … Do you not like it? Was this stupid? I’m sorry. I thought maybe –”
I stopped bouncing. Oh, God. It was high school all over again. Not only was I not Evelyn Cross, I wasn’t even capable of something as simple as this.
“Why did you do this?”
The question came on such a small voice that even the gentle wind over New York City almost drowned it out.
“Because you don’t have any T-shirts,” I said.
“I could have bought my own.”
“You weren’t ever going to, though, were you?”
“I don’t need them.”
No. He didn’t. But in a million years, I’d never thought they would offend him, either. I figured maybe he would do a polite ah, thank you and throw them in a forgotten drawer, never to see the light of day again. Indifference, vague appreciation, polite dismissal? Yeah, sure. But not offense , which seemed to be what currently wracked him.
I rushed to explain myself, hating the warbling panic underscoring each word.
“Right, but it’s, like, a gag gift. This is what friends do. I was at the store and saw them on sale. They made me think of you, so I bought some. It’s not a big deal. I can take them back if you want. No harm, no foul. Here, let me—”
He shoved the T-shirts back in the bag like the very sight of them rankled. He did not, however, hand them over.
“Really, I’m sorry.” God, I was blushing now. Stammering. “I mean, I know we’re not friends. I get it. This was … I’m just an employee. I’m …”
The sentence trailed off into nothing. For a moment, I thought he was going to protest. Tell me it was okay, that he got the joke now, that it was a sweet gesture. Instead, he just said:
“It was unexpected.”
I had no idea if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It felt bad in the moment, but later, I wouldn’t be so sure.
“Anyway,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” His cheeks lifted in a half-fake-smile, half-wince. “How about we move back into the house, hm?”
We did just that. A few awkward minutes later, we found ourselves back in the library, back to work beneath the watchful, painted eyes of Thomas Gallier and his wife.