Chapter 2
TWO
CALEB
To say that I am sick and tired of Ariella’s shit is a colossal fucking understatement. I accept the fact that I messed up and that I’m mostly responsible for the way things went down. But she messed up too. Yes, I told her she could do whatever she liked and I’d still be here – but happily hopping on Dominic’s private jet to leave the country, knowing that he’s going to have at least twenty uninterrupted hours to execute whatever he has planned to seduce her, is just bang out of order.
It’s been six weeks and I’m still dealing with the emotional hiatus I asked her to put us in. It doesn’t help that moments that inspire real annoyance keep popping up. The latest is a video captioned ‘Throw-by fruiting in progress’ posted on social media by none other than Dominic. He’s not even original. Ariella is laughing while jumping with a big stick to get an apple from a tree. When she doesn’t succeed after a few tries, she throws the stick at the apple in frustration and runs for cover. Still no apple. I have to remind myself not to laugh when I catch myself doing exactly that. Fuck Dominic. I don’t care that he is now going to be our boss’s boss.
I am under no illusions. Ariella may not have said it, but the reason he decided to invest, trapping us all here in our Singaporean purgatory, is because he has hopes with her. I would have laughed it off and labelled him deluded if I hadn’t seen the way she responded when he kissed her.
The forty-eight hours after Ariella found out that everything in Singapore wasn’t as it seemed, was hell. It shattered everything we’d worked and hoped for. I knew that rebuilding the love and trust we lost was going to be a battle, but what I didn’t expect was for Dominic to make his perfectly timed move in an attempt to blow up the tiny chance we had left. All I can remember is her not pushing him away. If Lara hadn’t held on tightly to my hand while she took the piss out of both of them, I don’t know what I would have done. Ariella may have sent him home immediately afterwards, but the damage had already been done. After witnessing their kiss, I spent the rest of the night with a bottle of rum until a comforting, hazy blur settled in. I vaguely remember Jasper helping me to bed after that.
Things moved quickly from that point on. The day after, Ariella in her capacity as COO told us that Dominic was going to buy Ivory Bow, the company that we both work for. She then filled us in on what our options were as employees. I was ready to quit there and then, until Ariella then told us of her self-imposed demotion. She’d basically shackled herself to Ivory Bow and Singapore for the next two years in order to save our jobs. With that, the dream of returning home to London disappeared. I wasn’t leaving without her, so I found a way to get comfortable, doing her time with her. She also announced that Melissa, our previous owner, had agreed to be removed from her role. The week after that, we found out we were getting a new CEO. They’d be responsible for taking on a lot of the processes that Ariella was working on, putting new systems in place and ultimately finding a COO to replace Ariella. Within two weeks, the landscape of Ivory Bow had completely changed.
Melissa cut all ties to the business, although the team’s presence was still required at her wedding to ‘save face’. It also turned out that Ariella’s flat was owned by Melissa, which effectively forced her out of my building and into one of those impossible to secure, colonial black-and-white houses in the same residential community as, you guessed it, Dominic Miller. She didn’t even tell me she was moving. That same week, she cleared out her office to make way for the new CEO. My little Mason, creature of habit that she is, picked the furthest desk from everyone, wedged tightly in a corner. Lydia promptly followed, and set up her desk protectively in front of Ariella’s.
Interviews are still ongoing for the right CEO candidate, so Ariella, Bryce and I are now steering the company. Since the launch, we’ve received an overwhelming amount of interest, and the three of us agreed that it was too much for one person to handle. With Dominic’s approval, I now have the arduous task of hiring two sales managers. One will be for Ariella’s more traditional industries and the other will focus on interest from new sectors – which is why I am sitting here on a Saturday afternoon looking at completed job applications to distract myself from the video that Dominic posted.
‘Pubic lice! Get me ice! Wait. Oooooh…I should be a poet!’
Ugh. Lara.
‘Why are you still here?’ I complain.
‘I’m homeless, you unsympathetic ogre,’ she moans from the sunlounger by my pool.
‘You’re not homeless. You have a perfectly good home in London and a business class ticket ready to deliver you to it.’
‘What? Go back to that prison? No thank you. I like it here.’
‘Prison?’
‘Ivory Bow UK was too restrictive and they underappreciated my efforts, so I have decided that my future lies elsewhere.’
‘Lara. The whole company knows you got sacked. It was the last thing Harrison did, quite ceremoniously, I might add, before Christopher bought him out.’
‘Exactly. Harrison fired me. Now that Christopher has taken over Ivory Bow, we don’t know what his position is, do we?’
‘I’m pretty sure you’re still unemployed.’
‘Well, if that’s your conclusion, that would make me homeless.’
‘You are not home—You know what, it doesn’t matter. Can’t you find a coven to take you in? Or maybe stay at Aari’s? I’m sure MsPat will let you in.’
‘No she won’t. I’ve tried. Besides, Ariella doesn’t have a pool any more. It’s much more fun here and someone has to keep an eye out for when you revert to type and drag some poor unsuspecting thing home. I want to be the first to tell Ariella.’ She pulls down her sunglasses and looks at me suspiciously. Lara Scott knows exactly how to push my buttons.
‘So what’s the plan? Lounge around until you’re booted out of the country? You’re going to have to return eventually.’
‘I am returning. Temporarily. I’m not missing Zachary’s wedding for anything. Speaking of which, are you still Aari’s plus one or did she get rid of you?’ Lara sniggers loudly.
I’d completely forgotten about Zachary’s wedding. We RSVPd a long time ago, when life was perfect.
‘I’m not sure I’m still invited.’
‘Doesn’t matter anyway. Dominic will just go with her if you’re not around.’
‘There is no way Ariella’s taking Dominic to the wedding,’ I state forcefully.
‘Bloody hell. Calm down. She’s in town for the wedding, he’ll be in town to meet Christopher, you’ll be six thousand miles away…’ Lara takes a long sip from her drink as she watches me from over the top of her sunglasses.
‘How on earth do you know all this?’ It can’t be true.
‘I still have access to my emails and Christopher’s diary – I guess no one told IT about my change in circumstances.’ She chortles. ‘There is a lot of Dominic activity that week. There are dinners, strategy meetings, golf…all pretty boring. There isn’t a strip club down in the diary as “community outreach” in sight. Harrison’s diary was much juicier.’
‘Dominic is not going to that wedding,’ I say to myself as I open a browser tab and start pulling up return flights to London.
‘He might. I’d take him. He’s hot in that classic alpha way. He’s steady, mature, loaded and he’s always there, ready to solve her problems. All you seem to do is create them.’
That hurts, only because Lara is right. ‘And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you want a job?’ I retort weakly.
‘It has everything to do with that. I was going to stick around to get a job with Ivory Bow Asia, but Ariella has destroyed both our futures by falling on her own bloody “demotion” sword. Now, I’m going to have to go back home to charm Christopher, before I bribe or blackmail Dominic into giving me a job out here. And not just any job, I want a house and a car and a housekeeper and all that fancy shit.’
‘You honestly think that you’re going to rock up for a job you’re unqualified for, demand a massive pay packet from Dominic and he is just going to give it to you?’
‘Why not? You men have been doing it since the beginning of time. There are presidents of whole countries that give me good reason to question whether they ever finished primary school. This is just a job. No nuclear codes, international incidents or deaths.’
‘That’s not going to happen, Lara. You have more of a chance of staying in London and getting your old job back.’
‘You know what I have a 100 per cent chance of getting?’
‘What?’
‘Front-row seats to Honey beating the living daylight out of you tomorrow morning. It really sets me up for the day.’
‘Is that what you’re really looking forward to when Honey is around, Lara?’ I tease her.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She sits up. I’ve hit a nerve. I’m going to enjoy this.
‘I think someone has a little crush…’ I sing, and I see Lara go beet red all the way from here.
‘I do not!’
‘Yeah, you do…’ I relax.
‘Shut up, Caleb.’ She’s getting angry and I’m the happiest I have been in a while.
‘If you write a note, can I pass it to her in class?’
‘You’re a dickhead, do you know that?’ She narrows her eyes at me. ‘I categorically do not fancy Honey.’
I’m laughing too hard to care what Lara’s defence is.
‘I don’t!’ she protests. ‘And even if I did, I’m not going to go there. That whole Bamidele thing scared me off straight girls looking to experiment for ever.’
‘Wait, what?’ Lara still doesn’t know about Honey? They have spent so much time together recently that I assumed Honey would have told her by now.
‘Ariella didn’t tell you about Bamidele? Nice. Get me drunk on the expensive stuff one day and I might spill. Your disgusting little mind will enjoy it. There’s a lot of lesbian sex.’ Lara pushes her sunglasses back up and reclines again.
As annoying as Lara is, I’m secretly pleased she’s here. In her own acerbic, insulting way, she has been largely responsible for holding me together since that night of the kiss, especially after Jasper went back to London. She forced me to keep training with Honey even when I didn’t want to, and was always a willing participant when I wanted to drink, moan and be petty. She currently is very much in the anti-Dominic camp, although she repeatedly warns me that her allegiances might switch, based on whether or not he hands her a truckload of cash. The one thing she has never wavered on is Ariella. No matter how broken I have felt, she stands firmly in her best friend’s corner. However, little acts of kindness that show the empathy she clearly feels keep slipping through the hardened armour she defends herself with. Armour that magically disappears when Honey is around. Lara isn’t fooling anyone. She is crushing hard on Honey. She is always up to watch my training and gets Honey’s hot-water bottle ready for her every morning. This is going to be interesting.
Forgetting that things aren’t great between us, I grab my phone and send a text to Aari. By the time I remember, it’s too late to delete it. Argh! Why is everything so hard at the moment?