Chapter One
Twenty-four hours later
Hennessy
HUGGING CHARLIE’S JACKET around my shivering body, I walk swiftly up the steps to the Wade and Walters offices, a herbal tea and a drip coffee for David heating my hands as James the doorman greets me.
After the FBI left yesterday, it took an hour for me to stop shaking. I rang Charlie, but of course he didn’t pick up, so I rang Antony and some of my panic faded, as it always does when I speak to my best friend.
Charlie rang me while I was talking to Antony but typically, despite the enormity of the situation, he didn’t bother calling back, just left a message.
As I step into the lift, I replay his words. ‘You might have a few visitors, but you don’t need to worry. You don’t know anything, so you’ll be fine. I’m in a tight spot right now, Essie, but this’ll all blow over. Just keep your head down and play stupid.’
‘Play stupid’—that’s one of Charlie’s mantras. That and ‘don’t look back’. But his favourite is ‘look after number one’.
And he always does. Blood might be thicker than water, but whisky tastes better—and children and whisky don’t mix well.
So, I am tolerated in Charlie’s life. Sometimes, in his own way, I think he even loves me, but it’s always been on his terms. Primarily because after my grandmother died, no one else wanted me, so it was Charlie or nobody.
I scrabble through my feelings, but I’m not worried about him.
I know he’ll be fine. Charlie is an eel, slipping his way through the cracks in life.
And I’ll be fine too because I never let anyone get close enough to catch me.
At a distance, people only see the Hennessy Wade they read about online but, if they get close enough, they might see the real me—and I can’t bear to see the disappointment in their eyes when they realise I’m not worth keeping.
But now is not the time to slip into that spiral of self-destructive thoughts.
This might be the opportunity I’ve been waiting for to show the world and the board that I’m not just there because I have the right surname.
I’m there because I am good at my job, I think as I turn over the chip in my pocket that proves I’ve been clean for nearly two years and eleven months.
But that’s the trouble with being a poor little rich girl: everyone thinks your life, my life, is a dream ticket.
It isn’t. If someone cuts me, I bleed. But I can hardly blame anyone for thinking there are more worthy cases for their sticking plasters. I have more choices than most people do. But, with parents like mine, it’s taken me a long time to work out which are good choices, and which are bad.
Speaking of which…
I glance down my legs to my towering heels.
I did think about going home to change, but then I would have been late for David, and I want to show him that he can rely on me.
And I can explain why I look like I’ve come straight from a club.
I needed a distraction, so I got all dressed up to go out.
But then I changed my mind, came to the office instead and ended up staying.
Reaching into my bag, I pull out my laptop.
I know Charlie’s disappearance is going to be a headache for the business, but I worked most of the night to come up with a strategy that I think will settle any nervy advertisers and shareholders.
And, for the first time since David told me that I was stepping into Charlie’s shoes, I feel like a co-CEO.
As the lift doors open on the eightieth floor, Callie, my PA, steps forward, looking flushed and dazed, as if she has been out in the sun too long. Which would make sense if it were sunny outside, but today is a rain-flecked autumn morning.
‘He’s in his office.’ Her voice is high and trembling, and there is no need to ask who he is. Unlike Charlie, David is always punctual, always reliable, and I feel a rush of relief at knowing he is here by my side.
My appointment as Chief Marketing Officer ruffled a lot of feathers.
And, to be fair, I can understand the doubts.
Aside from being Charlie’s daughter, my CV is patchy, and Wade and Walters is a one-hundred-and fifty-year-old giant in the realm of lifestyle publishing, now in digital as well as print.
Our brands are consumed by millions of people across the globe and our flagship fashion magazine, FROW, is arguably the biggest influencer in the world.
The board was reluctant to appoint me, but David gave me his backing.
‘Good.’ I smile at Callie reassuringly. She has my back too. ‘I’ll find out if David wants you there to take notes… What is it?’
I break off, frowning, as Callie’s face stiffens. ‘Oh, I thought you knew. I left messages.’ She bites her lip. ‘Mr Walters isn’t here. He’s in hospital. He had a heart attack yesterday.’
It feels as though the planet is spinning too fast. Tears sting the back of my eyes.
‘Is he okay?’
Callie nods. ‘He’s fine. They’re sending him home today, but they need to do some tests—maybe an operation.’
I half-turn towards the lift. ‘I should go see him.’
‘It’s only family now. We’ve sent flowers, of course. I’m sorry, Ms Wade, I did try and let you know…’
And it’s my fault that she couldn’t. I’m not on social media anymore and I’ve edited down my address book to a few people I can trust, and obviously Charlie and Jade.
But the world I walked away from is still out there, and the temptation to scroll through other people’s lives, to be in with the in-crowd is always there, always beckoning.
Last night’s near miss is proof of that, which is why I switched off my phone in the taxi.
‘It’s fine, Callie. It’s not your fault.’ I frown as my brain replays her words. ‘So, who’s in David’s office?’
‘Mr Walters’ replacement.’ A flush of colour seeps over her cheeks. ‘Mr Walters has decided to take early retirement, so he chose his successor yesterday and he flew in this morning from Australia.’
‘Then I better go and introduce myself.’
Later, I wondered why I didn’t put two and two together and make four right there and then, because there’s only one man on the planet who has the power to turn a perfectly sensible, thirty-something PA into a quivering wreck.
But now, I’m so knocked off-balance by the news about David that I walk briskly into his office…
I stop so suddenly that Callie bumps into me.
My heart feels like a dead weight inside my chest. I stare at the man standing beside the window with his back to me, panic slipping and sliding over my skin like suntan oil.
Only, it’s not just panic. Something I can’t, won’t, name flickers down my spine and over my skin, pulling everything tight so that it’s suddenly hard to catch my breath. And I hate that even now he can do this to me. That he can make me shake—and on the inside too—before I even see his face.
My stomach clenches and unclenches, my heart starts to pound, and I can’t stop either from happening. This is his doing. Just being near him does crazy things to my body, things I can’t control. But I need to control them…
‘What’s he doing here?’ I say hoarsely. I don’t know why I ask Callie that question, though, because I know the answer. But I can’t accept it until I hear it said out loud.
‘Mr Valetti is the new co-CEO,’ Callie whispers, although she is so shaken, it is a pantomime whisper that is probably audible in Brooklyn.
No.
The word reverberates so loudly inside my head that I’m surprised Callie can’t hear it. Maybe Renzo heard it, though, because he turns then and I say quickly, ‘There must be some mistake. You can’t be my co-CEO—’
‘You stole my line.’ The deep, masculine voice slices through me like a blade, cutting me off mid-sentence. But then Renzo is good at that—cutting me off, cutting me down. After all, he’s been doing it for years.
My legs feel like blancmange, which is crazy. Given all the shocks of the previous twenty-four hours, his presence should barely register on the Richter scale. But this is by far the greatest shock of all.
It feels personal.
It is personal.
A shiver runs over my skin as I remember the taste of his mouth and the feel of that kiss as it curled through me, turning me inside out and upside down, making me open, soft and hollowed out with need.
It was carnal, devastating and possessive.
The harsh lights of Vegas faded into nothing, and I forgot everything except him.
I was his, and Renzo was claiming me… Until he abruptly broke the kiss to tell me that what just happened would never happen again—before listing the reasons why, as if I was some disappointing employee he was forced to fire.
My body turns to a pillar of stone as Callie retreats silently, and I have to dig my heels into the carpet to stop myself scampering after her. My pulse, my breathing—everything—hits accelerate and for a moment, I wonder if I’m hallucinating.
He is unnecessarily, unfairly, conspicuously beautiful—the kind of beauty that demands a piece of marble—with high, fine-cut cheekbones, a strong jaw and those blue eyes.
Not the light-blue, Paul Newman kind, that makes you think of summer, but dark, like the sky in the moments before night falls.
Just looking at him makes me press my lips together, and my legs too.
Which is not just unfair but completely stupid.
Futile, really, given how I react to intimacy.
But since when has that ever stopped me where this man is involved?
‘Where have you been?’ Those blue eyes tear into me as he speaks, and I can’t tell if the tension in my body is panic, fury, warning…or something that I don’t want to feel for him, and shouldn’t feel, and haven’t felt for any other man before or since.
Not that there’s been that many. Contrary to what is written about me, I’ve only been with two men. All the rest, the ones that sell their stories, are liars—and drunk or high, which is why they don’t remember what really happened. They don’t remember that they passed out.