2. TWO
When Poppy’s teammate Adjoa arrived, she gave Poppy a laughing look as she shrugged off her tiny black jacket and sat down at the desk opposite her. “Pale and traumatised is not what I was expecting when I heard the rumours about you.”
At Poppy’s flat look of incomprehension, Adjoa chuckled. She wheeled her chair to the side and leant forward, an amused spark in her eyes. “A little birdy told me you were seen leaving The Hop and Hare with Roscoe Blackton on Friday. And by little birdy, I mean the unofficial company message system. And everyone on it.”
The ridiculous way Poppy blushed told a far more lurid tale than the truth. “We didn’t leave together. He showed me where the taxis were. I assumed he went back inside. How is this even gossip?”
“Because it’s RB Goldy. He can’t sneeze without five people swooning.”
“If he didn’t go home with someone from work, that might be news.”
Adjoa laughed. “But no one would believe it.” She had missed the Friday night drinks, having a sister’s engagement party to get to. Poppy hadn’t had such a good excuse for missing her boss’s birthday. Hadn’t wanted to miss it. Because Liz was an extremely nice woman. Poppy liked her a lot. They had bonded over pressure cooker recipes, a preference for tea over coffee, and a guilty enjoyment of Doctor Who. But she normally always excused herself from all the social stuff at work. Alcohol was extremely expensive.
One drink, she’d told herself. One drink to avoid hurting Liz’s feelings. Except it hadn’t been a five pound glass of wine. The group had decided on cocktails. And she should have realised that the bar opposite their office in London’s Square Mile would operate on a different price scale to the sort of pubs Poppy had been to before. Poppy might possibly have been able to afford one overpriced cocktail, but the group had decided to do rounds. Before she knew it, they were clustered at the bar, the group’s orders were being added to her own, and she had already handed over her debit card. Watched in horror as the bartender held it to the reader.
And that was it. All her money gone until she got paid again in…nearly four weeks’ time.
She should have just gone home. But that would have meant an evening spent in the flat with Lecherous Dave and the crowding, sickening worry of knowing she couldn’t afford to eat. And the one—the only—good thing about that round system was that everyone in the group now owed her a drink.
So she stayed. Drank her debt. Each drink making the worry seem a little less worrying. Then the whole world had started to seem sort of ridiculous, really quite absurd, especially when Roscoe Blackton slid onto the sofa next to her, all crisp white shirt and dark blue suit and infamous bloody face and…and…
Can I touch your hair…
“That’s not the only rumour circulating about Goldy, though,” said Adjoa, something speculative but slightly devilish in her expression.
“Do I want to know?” Poppy asked.
Adjoa grinned. “I think so. Rumour has it…” She paused for dramatic effect, unashamedly enjoying Poppy’s nervous discomfort. “He’s moving to this floor.”
Poppy shot a look at the door, alarm mixing with dread as she recalled the sight of him staring into that room. “What?”
“He’s going to be working here on the exec floor.”
“But… No. He’s on sixth.”
He had to be on sixth—far, far away from anywhere she might conceivably bump into him. That had been her one consoling thought on the train into work this morning. She’d worked here for two years and barely caught more than a glimpse of him. In a company of hundreds, there was surely no reason for their paths to cross. Right?
“Nope,” chirped Adjoa gleefully. “Daddy got him a fast-track ticket to the exec floor. It’s good news for you, though.”
“Why?” asked Poppy, trying to keep her eyes from straying to the door. He might be right outside. He might walk past any moment…
“Gives you another bite at the apple.”
“What?”
“I’m just saying it’s a pity you didn’t go home with him.”
“Why?”
“Well, apart from the obvious…”
Poppy grimaced at the salacious smirk on Adjoa’s face.
“Oh, come on,” the other woman protested, laughing. “Is the young, gorgeous, aristocratic, millionaire genius with the nice manners not your type?”
“No, he’s terrible,” Poppy said with a vague attempt at conviction. “Horrendous. Come on, what’s your other point? Tell me.”
“It could have been exactly the leg up you need. Leg over? I feel there’s a joke in that somewhere.”
Poppy squinted. “Leg up?”
“Don’t you still want to go to the dark side? Apply for a junior analyst role?”
Heat crawled up Poppy’s neck. She looked back at her screen, moved the mouse around, opened an email at random. She didn’t normally reveal any of her real, true self at work. Not the deep, desperate, vulnerable stuff. She even hid her real voice, her accent.
“It was an idea… I was thinking about it…”
“But you don’t have a degree, right?”
Barely had any qualifications at all… The heat breaking over her body turned clammy. She dragged a fingertip through the faint dust on her keyboard between the keys.
“Yeah. So it’s a stupid idea. The competition is crazy.”
“But if you got friendly with Roscoe…” Adjoa glanced over her shoulder, where Liz had just arrived. She leant forward, voice low. “You’ve heard the rumours, right? Emily Malcolm? That promotion to senior analyst? Lizzy Wilson, now deputy head of Asia research? You know what they’ve got in common?”
Poppy pulled a face. She did know. It was one of BlacktonGold’s many rumours. Or open secrets.
“They both,” Adjoa whispered, “went home with Roscoe Blackton.”
Roscoe’s first week in his new role was brutal. And it wasn’t as though things had been easy before. He was used to long days and hard work, even enjoyed it, in a way: proving himself over and over, the results of his efforts speaking for themselves and wiping the smirks off the faces of those who believed he was only where he was because of his name. In fact, it was only the knowledge that he had earned his new position that kept him from panicking. He knew he could do the job. The board had voted unanimously to put him in this role. He was capable. He was competent. And if he’d been allowed to actually do the bloody job he’d been appointed to, things would have been fine.
But he kept getting pulled into meetings about tax. And he was swiftly beginning to discover that he abhorred tax legislation. His father, too, kept pulling him aside—calling him into his office for chats about the future of the company, or to meet-and-greet some old friend of his from his school days.
It was all part of the job, he supposed. Being the face of the company. He kept on smiling and slept less. Skipped the gym. Ate every meal at his desk or on the go. Occasionally, when his brain finally relaxed its grip on the day and let him drift towards sleep, he found himself wryly remembering his brother’s anger when Roscoe’s appointment was announced. Hugo had been jealous, disappointed, and Roscoe couldn’t help but laugh now at the thought of his spoilt elder brother doing even an hour of one of his days.
“You’re the heir to the title,” Roscoe had told him, sympathy mingling with irritation, because Hugo had never once shown any interest in BlacktonGold until told he wouldn’t be working there. “There’s no line of descent when it comes to the company.” Then he’d handed his brother a stiff drink, for much the same reason they used to pour rum down the throats of bloodied sailors awaiting amputation. It was the only thing they could think of to numb the pain.
He hadn’t felt guilty. Hugo was already heir to everything else—the Earldom, Conyers, all the other properties and land. No, if anything, Roscoe had felt a little smug, knowing his own inheritance had been earned, not just gained through an accident of birth. He had earned his position here. He had worked for it. Had willingly shackled himself to the harness…
What was that horse called in Animal Farm? The one that worked itself to death…?
With those thoughts in his brain at night, was it any wonder he spent his days looking for a glint of something brighter? A streak of copper. A glimpse of Poppy Fields. After a particularly tedious video call, he’d look out through the window by his door and see if she went by. She never did. If he rushed out to a meeting, he’d slow his stride as he passed Liz’s office and hope she emerged. But she never did.
He once caught sight of her at the end of a corridor, but she disappeared before he got anywhere near her. He was being stupid, he told himself. A schoolboy crush. She’d only say something strange, anyway. Accuse him of the tax avoidance that was becoming more undeniable by the moment.
Get back to work,he told himself. Eyes down. Stop looking.
By Friday, the last thing he felt like doing was going to the official staff party. Although had anyone ever wanted to go to a party that was described as the ‘official’ anything? Worst of all, this party was being thrown in his honour, in the entertaining space upstairs with its bar and rooftop garden. It would be full of execs and board members, the final part of the interview process, for Roscoe to show everyone they had made the right choice.
He tried. He talked to all the people he needed to talk to. Attempted to impress all the people he needed to impress. But he was doing it fairly abstractedly, because all the while he was aware of Poppy Fields standing alone near the bar.
He’d seen so little of her that he’d started to wonder if he’d dreamt her. But she was here, and he kept her in the periphery of his vision as he circulated, because there was no harm in looking. He couldn’t help but look.
Adjoa, another of the people in his father’s team, was briefly with her. Then, the next time he looked over, Aubrey was with her.
Fucking Aubrey Ford. That smooth bastard.
Roscoe hastily excused himself from a detailed recital of someone’s home improvements—to their holiday home in the Seychelles—but was immediately waylaid by Andrew Carter-Hall—Duke of Molton, one of BlacktonGold’s largest contributing founders, and one of his father’s oldest friends. Not someone he could brush off. Damn.
“Ross,” the man said warmly, clasping Roscoe’s hand between two of his. He was a large man, big and bluff, fair-haired with weather-reddened cheeks. “Absolutely delighted for you, my boy.”
“Thanks, Andrew,” said Roscoe, dredging up his patience. “How’s Dodie? The boys?”
“All well enough. But look at you! All grown up into the man your father always knew you would be.”
Roscoe’s smile came out tighter than he had intended.
“He’s planned it almost since your birth,” confided Andrew, blue eyes twinkling. “Having you as his right-hand man. He used to tell me this story about you coming into his study when you were five—”
Across the room, Poppy laughed, and Aubrey leaned in. Roscoe gritted his teeth.
“—always precocious, even then. You asked him what he was doing, and being your father, of course he actually started to tell you all about it—stocks and shares and dividends and what-not. And he says you just drank it in. Stood there wide-eyed, scabs on your knees, just absorbing it all. And the next day, you came back, and asked for more.” Andrew chuckled, laying a thick hand on Roscoe’s arm. “That’s when he knew, you see. That’s what he always told me. That’s when he knew that the company would be safe with you.”
“Or my brother or sister, perhaps.”
“No, no… You, my boy. Hugo’s the heir to your father’s name, not his heart. It’s you, Roscoe. This job has been waiting for you for over twenty years. Just waiting for this moment.”
“Then it’s lucky the board agreed with my father’s vision.”
“Agreed? As if they’d ever have the guts to vote against him. The whole company’s in his pocket. You know that. It’s Blackton to its core. I might have written the first cheque that helped get it off the ground. But it’s George’s life’s work. And now yours too—a new generation ready to take the helm. A true family business.”
Roscoe barely heard the last part. The company’s in his pocket. They’d never vote against him. So this job, the one he’d been certain he’d earned fair and square, purely on merit… Was it nothing but nepotism, after all? If he hadn’t been George Blackton’s son, would they have ever voted him into it?
“There’s no line of descent when it comes to the company,”he’d told his brother.Except. It seemed there was.