Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
T he chair I sat in was stiff and uncomfortable Friday morning. Though the Alderton-Du Ponte Country Club had many meeting and conference rooms, the one we resided in now wasn’t one that had extravagant views. There were no windows that exposed rolling hills or puffy clouds. There wasn’t even a picture on the wall. I had nothing to distract but the staff who fluttered about setting up the computer and webcam.
I sat back and watched, rhythmically tapping my finger on the arm of my chair. “You’ve got five minutes,” I reminded the staff member. The clock was inching closer and closer to noon, and it caused the back of my neck to prickle.
The girl, who looked younger than me, tapped the keypad as if in distress. “The Wi-Fi… It’s connecting in here, for some reason.”
Hopefully the Wi-Fi is good so you get a clear view of him , Sumner had said yesterday. He jinxed it. My eyes flicked up. “What kind of business doesn’t have Wi-Fi in a conference room?”
My father, who sat across from me at the table, frowned, the array of his wrinkles reflecting his irritation. “Everyone’s internet flickers from time to time. It’s not something I can control.”
“Interesting that it’s flickering now when it was working perfectly fine five minutes ago.”
My father had no response to that.
Could he really be messing with the internet connection? I wouldn’t put it past him. I glanced at the clock on the wall. Four minutes left until the top of the hour. Four minutes until Aaron Astor popped up on the other side of the screen, and I’d finally be able to put a face to the dreaded name. Both of my feet were planted on the ground, because I knew that if I crossed my legs, I’d no doubt bounce them.
With a pit in my stomach, I wished Sumner was here. Which was a ridiculous thought. I absolutely did not know him well enough to have him present for such an important moment. No, he was far better off working in whatever department my mother put him in, or sitting in his hotel room, or whatever he was doing this morning. I didn’t check in with him.
But he would’ve said something that lightened the weight on my shoulders. I didn’t need to know him well to know that.
Three minutes. Now that I was sitting down, the suit I’d had tailored the day before was far too constricting. It was as if I’d bloated overnight, the material stretching over me in a way that felt two sizes too small. I shouldn’t have let Jordan take the vest in. I should’ve kept it the way it was.
My finger tapping against the chair’s arm, besides the rapid clicking of the keyboard, was the only sound in the room. Two minutes left. Against my will, my leg began bouncing.
I shouldn’t care if Aaron thought me to be unpunctual. In fact, didn’t this work toward my benefit? Maybe he would be unimpressed with my tardiness, and that could’ve been the straw that broke the camel’s back for him.
The beat in which my finger tapped to sped up.
“Ah!” the staff member exclaimed as the webpage loaded. “It’s working now!”
Right as the clock on the wall struck noon, my father’s ringtone pierced the air of the small conference room. It caused the poor girl in front of the computer to let out a yelp in surprise, but even with as on edge as I was, I didn’t even blink.
My thought was immediate: he hadn’t turned his ringer off, despite us stepping into a meeting with someone as important as Aaron Astor.
My father drew his phone from his breast pocket and pressed it to his ear. “Hello?” His eyes rested on me as whoever on the other end of the call answered. I could hear the faint murmuring of a male voice, but it wasn’t loud enough to make out specific words. “Ah, yes, thank you for calling. Just on time. We completely understand.”
I didn’t miss the “we.” It was most likely intentional, from the way he stared at me.
The phone call ended as abruptly as it came, and my father repocketed the cell. “You can pack up,” he told the girl who’d been fiddling with the laptop. “We won’t be video chatting today after all.”
I didn’t move. “And why’s that?”
“A schedule conflict with Aaron,” he said, rising from his chair with a creak from his knees. “We sprang this on them quite last minute.”
“Then why didn’t you reschedule?” My father ignored me as he walked around the boardroom table, and when he came close enough, I shoved my rolling chair out and into his path. It was inches away from rolling over his toes. “Why did you not reschedule?”
“Aaron isn’t interested in a video call.”
“Isn’t interested in a video call,” I echoed. Again, it was another curious thing that hadn’t come up earlier. “We’ll schedule a phone call, then.”
“He said he’d much rather meet in person, where there are no internet goofs or awkward silences.”
“He said that on the phone?”
“His secretary did.”
So, Aaron couldn’t even be bothered to call and cancel himself, resorting to letting his staff take care of it. It wasn’t outrageous—my parents would’ve done the same had something come up on our end, though they surely wouldn’t have had Sumner make the call. Truth be told, I couldn’t even explain why it rubbed me the wrong way—probably because I’d become very accustomed to thinking anything done by Aaron Astor was equivalent to heresy. Everything he did it just irked me.
Aaron isn’t interested in a video call . He wasn’t interested in hearing my voice at least once. “ Smitten ” with me, was he? No, he’d much rather remain faceless and wait until we were in person, and put off meeting as long as possible.
He really must’ve been hideous.
My father pushed the back of my chair to move me out of his path, nearly knocking me into the girl who’d begun packing up the computer. He walked out of the conference room without another word.
For a moment, I sat still while the staff member packed up the laptop with fumbling hands. “Tell me honestly,” I said to her, holding her still with my gaze. “Was there truly an internet issue?”
“Y-Yes, it wasn’t loading—and I—I don’t?—”
I held up my hand to cut her off as I pushed to my feet. All at once, the suit fit perfectly again, hanging from my body in a way that was comforting rather than constricting. I’d made the right decision yesterday, asking Jordan to alter it. I shouldn’t have second guessed myself. “Thank you for trying,” I said to her before leaving the room.
I walked down the country club’s hallway with no true destination in mind. Before, I’d wished Sumner had been present, and now I was glad he wasn’t. Later, though, I’d have to explain that the meeting fell apart before it could even happen, and I’d have to listen to his puppy-dog positivity. I didn’t want to be assured. I didn’t want platitudes. I wanted someone to say wow, he couldn’t even be bothered to take a phone call?
No one would say that about Aaron Astor, though, except Destelle. But if I called her, I’d also hear other words I didn’t want to. You shouldn’t marry him if you don’t want to.
I passed a few staff members in the country club who avoided eye contact, pretending to be busy with the carts they were pushing or the papers they held. No one looked at me as I meandered through the hall. Instead of heading back to my room, my feet carried me toward the wing that let out onto the tennis and pickleball courts. Alderton-Du Ponte had two of both, and they were often fully booked, even during the weekday. Today, a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon, made for no exception.
Even though I lived a stone’s throw from the property for the past four years, I’d never once played here. In fact, many of the club’s amenities had gone unused by me. Despite the membership fee being outrageously high, the occupancy of Alderton-Du Ponte never wavered, which meant the pools, the tennis courts, the gyms—they were all always full, and I avoided people like the plague.
Which was why it was annoying I’d unconsciously come here now.
A four-person team on the tennis court swapped out as their time was up, walking off as new wannabe athletes with tennis rackets stepped on. I didn’t look at them, keeping my gaze straight ahead, but for once, I was seen. “Margot!”
Though I recognized the voice, I debated not turning. Ultimately, though, my feet once again moved of their own accord, pivoting me to face the group of four approaching.
Ms. Jennings, Yvette Conan, Alice Fontaine—Destelle’s mother—and Yvette’s daughter, Grace, all dripped with sweat in their tennis outfits, rackets tucked underneath their arms.
Ms. Jennings was the one who’d called out to me. “You’ve come to play?” she asked, reaching up and swiping at the sweat on her forehead with the back of her hand. “You’re not quite dressed for it, dear.”
“Then it would seem I am not here to play.” I kept my voice pleasant enough, which meant I kept it flat. “I feel like I need a shower just looking at you all.”
“Sweating is good for you, dear. You’ll regret it when your metabolism slows down.”
I eyed her. “Indeed.”
“What are you doing out here, then?” Alice asked, and she, unlike the others, was all right enough. She was a woman with just as much poise as my mother, an air that demanded respect, which made her stuffy. She complimented me on my suits sometimes, though, so there was some saving grace for her. “Enjoying some fresh air?”
“Mm,” I hummed with a slight nod, taking a step back. “If you’ll excuse me?—”
“Margot,” Ms. Jennings said before I could make a retreat, repositioning her racket case underneath her arm. She was trying to appease to my good side now, offering me a plastic smile and adding ooze to her words. “I heard you have a video call with Aaron Astor coming up. Is that true?”
Aaron was inescapable. I knew nothing about him, and yet everyone came to me looking for answers. They came for him, never for me. It was all I was good for, it seemed.
“Don’t act as if you didn’t hear the rumor from the source,” I told her with no affection. “I know you and my mother get tea on Wednesdays.”
“Well, we just wanted to talk to you about it,” Yvette piped in, annoyance quivering in her voice. “Your mother said it was happening today sometime. Surely you aren’t wearing that for it, right? Maybe Grace can go through your closet and help you pick out something more… feminine.”
I dropped my gaze to the youngest. Grace, at seventeen—or was she eighteen? I didn’t particularly care—looked too much like her mother in the way she stared at me. With animosity. Disdain. She’d been around the elders too long, their hostility for me already having rubbed off.
“A man doesn’t want a woman who looks like another man,” Yvette went on, flapping her hand. There was no diamond bracelet to show off this time, just her sweat coated arm. “And really, dear, you want him to desire you, don’t you? Men like cleavage, curves…” Her eyes not-so-subtly dropped to my vest. “You do have those, don’t you?”
Grace snickered as Alice smacked Yvette’s arm with a gasp. Ms. Jennings loosely swung her tennis racket as she soaked up the entertainment. I considered the situation, the dozens of eyes from the surrounding courts that’d paused their games to look in our direction. Calculated chaos—that was what I considered. What would be worth it, what would be too far.
Ultimately, I shrugged off my suit jacket and, even though it was sacrilegious, dropped it to the ground. “Is that your way of asking to see?”
Yvette’s bully of a smile faltered. “See—what, exactly?”
“My cleavage.” I began undoing the buttons on my vest. “My curves.”
Now her smile vanished entirety. “I—absolutely not!”
Hers may have vanished, but a wicked curve took to my lips; I could feel it. “My breasts may not be as large—nor as sagging—as yours, but if you really want to compare, we can.” My vest fell open, revealing my white dress shirt underneath. I reached for the first button at my collar. Alice took a large step back while Yvette’s hand went to cover Grace’s eyes. “If my lack of femininity really bothers you all so much ?—”
Two large hands closed over mine as I got the first two buttons of my shirt undone, ceasing the stripping before it went past baring my collarbones. I looked up, half expecting to find security restricting me, but it was Sumner, who’d appeared out of nowhere.
His expression was tense, his grip on my fingers firm. His eyes trailed along the skin of my throat, as if on their own accord, before sharply averting to the sky. “That’s enough.”
My temper flared. I tried to fight the grip, to undo another button, but he rendered me immobile. “Is it?” I returned with a voice full of venom.
“It is.”
This was Sumner’s first true act he’d been employed for, wasn’t it? What had my parents said? We’re hiring someone who can stop you from making poor decisions. My mother would be pleased to know her hired hand was doing exactly as he was supposed to. It enraged me. Sumner choosing my mother’s side over mine, even after spending time together and getting to know each other, left me almost irrationally incensed .
He isn’t a friend , a bitter voice hissed. Instead, yet another handcuff .
I wrenched my hands out of Sumner’s as Yvette stepped back toward me. “The scenes you make are disgusting and childish, Margot,” she all but growled, her own cheeks flushed. “Grace is more mature than you. Aren’t you at all embarrassed of yourself?”
“Not in the slightest,” I returned with my shirt half undone. The summer breeze brushed against the smooth skin just above the tops of my breasts, and I made no effort to button it up. “I’d have to care what any of you think to be embarrassed, wouldn’t you say?”
Ms. Jennings looked at Yvette from the corner of her eye, enjoying this moment. Despite her uncharacteristic silence, she irked me too. I wanted to smack the smile off her face.
“You’re so draining, Margot.” Yvette reached down and grabbed Grace’s arm. “It’s like you suck the life from anyone you’re around. This is why no one likes to talk to you, dear. If you’ve ever been at all curious.”
I couldn’t tell if her intention had been to wound or if she just stated something she saw as fact. For some reason, the thought of the latter was like ice in my veins, dousing some of my raging fire. Sumner was still at my side, and after he picked up my suit jacket, I felt him brush my arm, fingertips pinching the fabric of my shirt as if to hold me back.
“I’m sure one day, eventually, it’ll occur to you that that is my intention.” I looked over Yvette’s face. “Especially if the ones talking to me were the likes of you.”
While I hadn’t been sure if her words were meant to cause a reaction, mine were, and they did. Yvette’s mouth dropped into an offended O, Grace’s following suit. Alice looked like she wanted to intervene again, but words were failing her.
Sumner, with his fingertip grip, tugged me. “Come on,” he said softly, as if to coax me into a quietness of my own. I allowed him to draw me a step away from them, and then another, until my back was to them. I was the one with the final period of the conversation.
Until Yvette called after me. “I wouldn’t be in a rush to meet Aaron Astor if I were you.” Her words were shrill, but I continued to walk. “Unless you’re looking forward to the embarrassment of having a high-class family realize you aren’t good enough.”
“It’s not as if he’s pursuing Margot because he loves her,” Grace, who’d been silent the entire time, interjected. Her voice was quieter, but I still heard it. “No one would. He just wants to inherit her parents’ company.”
I wasn’t sure who hissed at Grace in response, whether it was Alice or Ms. Jennings, but it definitely wasn’t Yvette; I could hear her chuckle. And it wasn’t me who froze mid-step, but Sumner.
I didn’t realize until I’d begun to take another step, but the pinch he held on my sleeve held me back. When I looked at his expression, I found something I’d never expected from him: a fire of his own. The normally calm, soft blue eyes of his were stormy with something dark, lit from within.
So, Mr. Unflappable has his limits , I thought as he dropped his hand from me. He turned around. “I don’t know who taught you to talk like that,” Sumner said to Grace. “But you should lose the nasty habit of saying garbage things because other people are doing it, too.”
Grace’s face flushed as bright as a tomato, and Yvette’s pleased smile at her devil spawn’s words vanished. “Excuse me, but you do not talk to my daughter that way?—”
“So, it was you?” Sumner had less patience with her mother than he had with Grace; it was audible in his tone and the way he clutched my suit jacket until his knuckles were white. “You taught her it was okay to be hateful toward people? You didn’t teach her that the uglier you speak, the uglier you are? Aren’t you embarrassed?”
“Who do you think you are?”
“Someone who doesn’t like it when someone thinks they’re bigger because they make other people small. Someone who doesn’t like ugliness.” Sumner’s gaze gave her a once over. “But sees a lot of it.”
Yvette’s mouth popped open, and I was sure I looked a whole lot like Ms. Jennings in that moment—like someone could’ve given me a bucket of popcorn. I could’ve kissed Sumner. I’d done it before; I knew how easy it was, and in that moment, I could’ve done it again.
After she sputtered, Yvette finally got out, “I will have your job!”
“Try it. Let’s see who wins with that.”
I wasn’t sure if Sumner didn’t know who he was talking to or if his anger made him overly confident, because harassing Yvette Conan, who sat on the country club’s board of directors, would easily be grounds for my parents to replace him. Ms. Jennings looked at him with hearts in her eyes, Grace with horror, and Alice with all the uncertainty of what she should do about the situation.
I had to agree—the way he stared her down was undoubtedly, incredibly hot.
“Let’s hope nothing happens when Margot meets the Astors,” Sumner went on. “Since she’s going to be meeting them at your daughter’s wedding, after all, right?”
The realization flashed in Yvette’s eyes, and I watched her process the veiled threat that it was. I didn’t bother trying to hide the mirth in my eyes.
And in hers, I saw what I’d been waiting for—a sliver of fear.
Sumner’s response had effectively stunned everyone into silence. Our cue. And Sumner seemed to pick up on it, too; he turned around and grabbed me by the wrist with his free hand, drawing us away from the crowd of onlookers we’d amassed.
I couldn’t keep the smile off my face as he pulled me after him, away from the country club building. My heart stumbled to keep up in my chest. I’d never had someone defend me so earnestly before, upset on my behalf. Even when my mother’s friends muttered snotty things regarding me to her face, my mother rarely quipped back in response.
Sumner, though, had stepped up to bat and swung even against the likes of Yvette Conan, and, in my book, he hit a home run.
Like I said—incredibly hot.
Sumner released me when we were out of view of the tennis courts and halfway to the east pool, finally coming to a halt on the cobblestoned pathway behind the country club. I watched his back as his shoulders rose and fell with his breath, eyes coasting over where his hair brushed the collar of his teal uniform polo. He still clutched my suit jacket, wrinkled from his anger.
“I didn’t know you had it in you,” I said, allowing myself to show the barest tinge of amusement. “I didn’t know your puppy dog self could do more than just show your belly.”
Except teasing was not something Sumner wanted to hear. He whirled on me, eyes still flaming. “What is wrong with you?”
“ Me ?”
“You were going to strip ? Right there in front of everyone? Really, Margot?” He blinked several times, at an obvious loss with his parted lips and livid gaze. “This is exactly what your mother hired me for, isn’t it? To keep you from making impulsive decisions like taking your clothes off in the middle of the tennis court? Do you truly not think anything through?”
The attraction that’d momentarily reared its head disappeared. “I wasn’t stripping.”
Sumner lifted my discarded jacket and looked pointedly at my unbuttoned vest and my dress shirt that still bared all the skin of my décolleté area.
“For your information, I do think things through.” I began buttoning back up, feeling warm. “The second I undid the fourth button, they would’ve scattered. The lace of the top of my bra would’ve sent them running into the arms of their therapist. You cut in too quickly.”
Sumner shut his eyes. I stood there as he fought for that unflappability, trying to console his frustration that’d brimmed over. It was clear he wasn’t familiar with giving into that feeling often, judging by the way tried to shake it off. I stared at him through it all, watching the livid line above his brow and the pinch of his eyes as they eventually softened.
His eyes opened, and he reached out, folding the distance between us in half as he draped my jacket over his shoulder. “I want to understand you,” Sumner murmured as he picked the jacquard fabric of my vest up, fingers beginning to button it back up. The heat behind my neck flared hotter. “Help me to understand you.”
This is why no one likes to talk to you, dear. Yvette’s voice was an ugly one in my head, and it circled relentlessly, paired with the sarcastic tone of her daughter’s. He just wants to inherit her parents’ company. Neither statement was new to me by any means, but neither had ever been stated so bluntly before. The words stacked upon everything else in my mind, causing the tower to teeter.
“Yvette said a man only wants a woman that looks like one,” I said, holding still as his attention was fully focused on his task. “I was going to show her how woman-like I am.”
“I thought you didn’t care about her opinion of you,” he returned. “That’s what you told her.”
Something in my chest hummed as he delicately fastened the final button of my vest, something that felt dangerous and new and quiet. “I guess I just wanted to prove to her what someone once told me. That it’s not clothes that make you ugly or pretty.”
Sumner dropped his hands but didn’t step away from me. I wondered if he regretted ever saying such a thing to me. “And to see the look on her face,” he added.
My mouth quirked, just a little. “And to see the look on her face.”
Sumner’s eyes dropped to my lips as he noted the tiny lift, and a corner of his own raised in return. A ripple of something unknown stirred in my chest. He stepped back and replaced the distance between us, drawing a hand through his wind-tousled hair. Only then could I breathe again, lungs aching.
I looked around for the first time. We’d found ourselves truly off the beaten path, a long way to the east pool. Even though it was the beginning of summer, with temperatures that caused the water to beckon, most of the clubgoers opted for the pool on the westside of the facility. The eastside’s pool was smaller, and the kitchen didn’t deliver meals out to this wing.
“What department are you working in?” I asked, eyeing Sumner’s uniform as I took my suit jacket down from his shoulder. As my eyes roamed lower, I locked onto something sticking out of the front of his khaki’s pockets. “Is that sunscreen?”
He looked down as if just remembering and pulled out a small tube of sunscreen. “I stepped outside to make a phone call, and this lady…” Sumner trailed off, and for the first time, I noticed the hint of distress on his face as he turned the sunblock over in his hands. “She was heading to the pool, and told me she wants me to put sunscreen on her back.”
The audacity of it, as well as the absurdity, nearly had my jaw dropping. “Did you tell her that the staff doesn’t do that?”
“She said she’s had people do it for her before.” Sumner, gazing down at the sunscreen, appeared like a little kid who dreaded something they had to do. It reminded me of all the times I’d been forced in that same position before, not given a choice, not wanting to get in trouble for saying no.
The switch inside me flipped once more. “Where is she?”
Sumner became even more distressed. “It’s okay, Margot, seriously.”
I wadded the jacket up, fingers digging into the ball and, if it’d been flesh, they would’ve cut deep. “You are my secretary, not anyone else’s. Mine . You’re not going to rub sunscreen on some middle-aged lady because she wants to get felt up by a hot guy in his twenties.”
I’d begun walking toward the pool, but Sumner caught my upper arm, fingers firm against the paper-thin material of my shirt, and pulled me to him. His golden eyes were filled with a complicated emotion. “This is probably the sort of thing I was hired for,” he said. “Keeping you from ripping some old lady’s head off.”
“We’re still on country club grounds, which means you’re not my babysitter right now.”
“I don’t need you to fight my battles?—”
“If you can fight mine, I can fight yours.” I pulled my arm from his grip. “And I’ll fight yours because, apparently, you won’t fight them yourself.”
I unbuttoned my shirt sleeves and rolled them up to my elbows as I walked toward the pool. Whoever bordered on sexual harassment had chosen a poor day to get on my bad side. I’d been far too ready to rip into anyone who crossed my path, and unfortunately for them, they’d stumbled into it.
There was only one person at the pool when I opened the gate, sitting on one of the lounge chairs. Her polka dot swimsuit ducked down in a U at the back that exposed her wrinkled skin. She sat waiting patiently for Sumner to return, and even from here, I could see the eagerness on her profile. There was a wheelchair parked beside her.
All traces of my anger vanished, replaced by an overwhelming urge to sigh. So, I did. The woman turned at the sound, taking in the two newcomers. “Oh, good,” Nancy said as she focused on Sumner. “You found some sunscreen. Margot, have you checked out this boy’s tush? It’s divine , isn’t it?”