Chapter 4
I don’t bother knocking, instead barging right in, catching Thomas with his feet up, relaxed back, his desk phone held to his ear as he tosses a cricket ball up and down.
The moment he clocks me, his smile falls. “I’ll call you back.” He drops his feet, sets the receiver calmly in the cradle, and places the ball down, clearing his throat. “Camryn.”
“Tell me I didn’t just read the email I read.”
His lips twist. He’s thinking, really thinking, which means there could be a few different emails I could have read. “Want to help me out?”
“The bonuses.” I remain standing in the open doorway, prompting Thomas to look past me. I glance over my shoulder and see a few staff loitering, feigning the scanning of files as they wander, pretending to be on calls. I slam the door closed.
“It’s Christmas.” he says, slightly high-pitched.
“Thomas, you have one hundred and two members of staff in this building. You have just authorised the payroll department to pay bonuses between one thousand and twenty thousand to each and every one of them.”
“It’s Christmas?” he says again.
“Half a million, Thomas!” I yell. “That’s straight off your profit.”
“I authorised twenty thousand for you,” he says, smiling. It drops the second he realises I’m not impressed.
“Show me the appraisals.”
“What?”
I give him grabby hands. “The performance reports. Show me the performance reviews that determined each and every bonus amount.”
He scans his desk, as if looking for them. We both know there are no reports. Does he actually know what they fucking are?
“Profit, Thomas. To take this company to the next level, to attract the right board, you need to make a healthy profit. Right now, you’re undoing everything I’m working toward to ensure TF Shipping gets there, Thomas.”
“I’m the boss, Camryn.” He picks up his pen and starts clicking the end fast and furiously. “I can do what I like.”
“Do you want to take this company to the next level?”
He gives me a tired look. “I hired you, didn’t I?”
“Then you need to get used to how things will be moving forward, and no new board would agree to your bonus plan, especially without concrete evidence of staff performances. If this company floats, you’ll lose an element of control, Thomas.
You’ll be answerable to a board that doesn’t include your wife and son.
Buying ships will involve many meetings and strategic planning.
” I go to his desk and pick up his cricket ball, tossing it in the air.
He catches it. “Stop spending money or this isn’t going to work. ” I pivot and walk out.
“I suppose now would be a bad time to tell you I just bought hospitality tickets for Wimbledon next year.”
I stop in my tracks, my teeth gritted. “Yes, now would be a very bad time.”
“I’ll rein it in.”
“You’ve been saying that for the past two years.
” Truth is, I would have walked out on this job last year when I admitted to myself it was going to be next to impossible to work with Thomas’s son and wife, who show zero respect for me and my purpose here.
And given how expensive it is to live in London as a newly single woman, my fat salary is a basic necessity.
So even though I despise many attributes of this job, they need me, and I need them.
“From now on, I promise,” he calls.
“That goes for Barbara and Anthony too,” I snap, exasperated. “And I don’t want to see any personal spend on their business credit cards either.”
As I near my office door, Debbie comes out from behind her desk, and I skid to a stop, my eyes on her legs. “What the hell are you wearing?” I ask, squinting.
“These are my advent calendar tights.”
“They’re hideous.”
“But of course you’d love them,” she sings, completely unaffected by my curtness, something I quietly appreciate. I actually like Debbie. “I can’t wait for you to see my elf ones.”
“You’re a fifty-year-old woman.”
“Forty-nine, actually.”
“Oh, well then, this”—I wave a hand up and down her legs—“is perfectly acceptable.” I push my way into my office and grab my coat and bag, leaving over an hour earlier than usual.
“Where are you going?” Debbie calls, alarmed.
“I have somewhere I need to be.” I keep my eyes forward as I navigate the Christmas-infested corridor. “You make me need a drink, Thomas,” I mutter under my breath.
Standing on the threshold of the bar at The Royal Constantine, I scan the tables. It’s not something I usually do, and I hardly want to admit why I do it this evening. It’s quiet. One man in the corner reading a paper. Not him.
Setting my coat and bag on the second stool in, I take the end one, smiling when two martinis slide toward me. “Good day?” the barman asks, making my drink pause at my lips.
“I’ve been coming here for two years, and I don’t know your name. You don’t know mine. You have never asked me if I’ve had a good day.”
“I know your name.”
“You do?”
“Camryn. I heard you telling the guy who was here on Friday.”
“Then I suppose you should tell me yours.”
“Julio.”
“Nice to meet you, Julio.”
“He was here.”
My glass is now resting on my lips, the alcohol within licking distance. “Excuse me?”
“The man. Dec. He was here again last night.” Julio starts chipping away at a block of ice.
“A coincidence?” I ask, my mind racing.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“What’s your gut telling you?”
He smirks, attention on the block of ice. “It’s telling me not.”
“Why?”
“Because he was looking for you.”
I lower my glass, still having not taken a sip. “How do you know he was looking for me?”
“Because he asked if you’d been in since Friday.”
“Oh.” I inhale, picking up my martini and having a long swig before Julio here says something else that catches me off guard.
Then I tap the bar, blinking when he drops a cube of ice into a glass and it chinks loudly.
He was here? Looking for me? I frown down at the bar, my heart now racing with my mind.
Odd.
Don’t you trust yourself?
Not in the least.
I take another sip of my drink, but for some reason tonight, the strong hit of alcohol doesn’t have the usual or desired effect. I swallow and place my glass down, easing back on the stool.
The barman clears his throat, so I glance up at him. He nods past me.
And something deep inside stirs. My shoulders roll of their own volition, and I slowly swivel on the stool.
My inhale is sharp and unstoppable when I find him on the threshold of the bar, his stance wide as he slowly pulls the navy scarf from around his neck.
Our eyes meet, my stomach flips, and I swallow down my awe.
He doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak. He just wanders over to me and drops his case between the stools, removes his coat, collects mine off the stool next to me, and hangs them on the nearby coat stand.
Then he helps himself to the stool beside me, pulling my spare martini close by the tips of his fingers on the base.
I let my stool turn until I’m facing him, my knees nearly touching his thighs. “Hello again,” I say quietly as he helps himself to a sip of my deterrent drink.
“Hello.” He turns his eyes my way, and my world seems to shift as I stare into them. “Tell me why you come here,” he orders softly.
“No.”
He pouts, squinting thoughtfully as he sips some more. “Tell me how old you are.”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Tell me the reason your husband wants a divorce.”
“No.”
“Tell me your favourite Christmas movie.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Tell me how long you were married.”
“Nine years.”
“Together?”
“Twelve.”
“Your birthday.”
“Tenth of March.”
“Your favourite colour?”
I remain quiet. I don’t see colour anymore.
“Food?”
“I eat to survive.”
“You must have a favourite food.”
I take a sip of my drink on a shrug, making him inhale deeply and exhale loudly. I don’t have a favourite anything.
“Have you signed your divorce papers yet?”
I shake my head.
“Do you still want to be married to him?”
I pause, my drink on its way back down to the bar, and the welcome sense of lightness vanishes. I look away from him, feeling him assessing me. Trying to figure me out.
And I can’t let him. I’ve said too much, told him too much. I place my drink down and slip off my stool. “It was nice to see you again,” I say, edging out, brushing past him as I do.
His hand shoots out and grabs my arm, and the feel of his touch, even over the arm of my long-sleeved dress, makes me freeze. I look at his big fingers wrapped around me. “Don’t go,” he says quietly.
“And why do you want me to stay?”
“Because I like you.”
I brave facing him. He likes me. I like him too. But I don’t say so, my head telling me to get the hell out of here before I get myself into something I’m not ready for.
Or want.
And yet I take my stool anyway, and Dec nods to Julio for two more martinis.
“I have one more question,” he says, turning on his stool to face me.
He reaches for my bare knees and lays his hands on them, and my heart beats its way up to my throat, making breathing hard.
“Why did you come here tonight?” he asks softly, holding my eyes.
“Because I was hoping to see you.” It comes out without thought, and I close my eyes on a swallow, immediately regretting it.
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” He releases me, prompting me to open my eyes. “So why try and leave?”
“Because you ask too many questions.”
“You don’t want me to know you.”
“You don’t want to know me.”
“Wrong.”
“Why?”
“That I haven’t figured out yet.” Facing the bar, he taps the base of the glass. “So let’s set some boundaries.”
“Okay.”
“No personal questions.”
My lips purse. If he can’t ask me, I can’t ask him. “I’ve just sat through a quickfire round with you,” I point out.
“You really didn’t reveal much, Camryn. You’re thirty-seven, a CFO, you apparently don’t have any favourites, you’re divorced but not, and deeply unhappy.”
I recoil. Deeply unhappy. “It’s more than I know about you,” I say quietly, not refuting his analysis.
“Maybe that’s best for both of us.”
“Maybe,” I agree. But I don’t agree. Surprisingly, I want to know every tiny detail there is to know about Dec. And now I can’t ask.
“Drink,” he whispers, pushing my glass toward me. I blindly reach for it, lost in his silver gaze as he watches me take a sip. “Let me tell you what I know about you.”
“You just did.”
“Things you haven’t told me.” He leans in closer, and I get a stronger hit of his heady scent.
“Your dark hair reflects golden strands when the light catches it,” he says quietly, his eyes flicking to my hair.
“You have a layer here that’s a fraction too short to stay comfortably behind your ear when you tuck it there, which is usually when you’re uncomfortable. ”
I feel my hand twitch to do exactly that—pointlessly tuck that shorter layer behind my ear.
Dec’s lips twitch, and he reaches for it.
“Let me do that for you,” he says, pushing it back.
My heart booms as I study his face, unable to take my eyes off him.
“You don’t wear lipstick, but you don’t need to.
” The pad of his index finger meets my cupid’s bow.
“Because your lips are naturally rosy.” The feeling of his finger dragging across my top lip to the corner heats me between my legs.
“This mole,” he murmurs, moving his light touch to the top of my cheek, “I love it.”
“I hate it.”
“It’s beautiful.” His bottom lip disappears between his teeth. “And your eyes,” he whispers, edging closer to the point I’m sure he’s moving in for a kiss. “They speak to me more than you probably want them to.”
A soft hitch of breath escapes as I stare at him, my mind telling me to retreat, but my heart begging me to explore this. “And what do they say?” What am I doing?
His palm opens and slides onto my cheek. “They’re telling me you’re wildly attracted to me,” he breathes.
“That’s some intuition you have, Dec.”
“It’s not intuition.” He releases my cheek and leans back. “It’s fact. And the feeling is shared.”
“So this is just physical?”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Camryn. You’ve revealed too much, so not only do I have your beauty to contend with, I also have my intrigue.”
“I’ve revealed too much?”
“You want to get to know me.” His head tilts, waiting for me to correct him. He knows I won’t. “You’re surprised by that. Am I close?”
It’s not just physical.
He’s intrigued.
Fuck.
“Maybe,” I murmur. And he nods.
I should have gotten up and left the bar. I didn’t. At least, not on my own.
The walk home is quiet and comfortable. Our shoulders brush a few times, and neither of us apologise for it.
In fact, we seem to get closer and closer with every step.
When we reach my apartment building, I slow to a stop and breathe in deep, facing him.
He has some fluff from his scarf caught in his rough stubble.
“What?” he asks, seeing me staring at the delicate piece of fuzz on the corner of his lip.
“You have something here.” I point to my mouth.
“Then get it.”
I shoot my eyes to his shimmering gaze, seeing his order there too, and slowly reach for the fluff, pulling it free. “There.”
“You have something too.”
I brush at my mouth.
“Not there.”
“Where?”
“Just”—he leans forward, his face a fraction from mine, and my senses are immediately overwhelmed by his closeness, my nose invaded by his rich, clean cologne—“here.” He breathes across my cheek, only a second before he presses his lips into my skin.
I close my eyes, paralysed by the warmth that sails through my cold body from a simple kiss—just a press of his lips on my cheek.
Then he pulls away, and I mourn the loss.
Dec steps back, sucking his lip between his teeth, as if tasting me. “Goodnight, Camryn.”
“Goodnight, Dec.”
He turns away, strolling off down the road, and this time he doesn’t stop at the corner.
But somehow I know it’s okay.
Because I’ll see him again.