Chapter 3 #2
Eli knew exactly what had happened between me and Ned.
He’d called only a few minutes after Ned broke the news to me.
The door had just clicked shut when Ned left to ‘give me time to process’ when my phone had rung.
I knew it would be Eli. That’s what it was like between us.
That stuff they say about weird, psychic connections between twins was sometimes right on the money.
Like how I felt it in my guts when he fell off his bike on the South Road Trail when we were ten, and he’d broken his left arm.
Or when my partner of thirteen years told me he’d been seeing someone else.
Eli shook his head now. “I know you wouldn’t do anything like that. I don’t really know Blake though. I always thought he was a good guy, but Lila’s the one I had classes with. She’s the one who invited me to their wedding.”
A wave of nausea hit me. Their wedding.
“Did he hit on you or something?” I could see my brother’s jaw clenching.
“No!” I said. That was the truth, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like that, it was…
I pinched the bridge of my nose, then reached for the door. “Nothing happened. He pulled me out of the river.” I don’t know why I didn’t share more than that. Maybe because Eli was always kind of hot under the collar—who knows what he’d do if he knew what I was really feeling?
“I know what it’s like to be the person left behind,” he said, following me inside. He thought I was still thinking about Ned.
“No. You don’t. Your wife never cheated on you.” The words were too loud in the narrow corridor we’d stepped into. But the memory of what Ned did to me always came in too loud; the sting too deep.
“Maybe not,” Eli said. “But you know she told me she wasn’t in love with me, after I devoted my whole goddamned adult life to her.”
I stopped and stared at my brother, the sick feeling rising. “Listen, Eli. I’m sorry for what happened to you. But it’s not the same thing.”
I realized I was essentially goading my brother into a game of suffering Olympics. Which was ridiculous in the first place, but also, I did not want to discuss any of this right now.
Eli ran his hand up and down over the top of his head, mussing up his thick brown hair. I knew a lot of women found Eli attractive. They really went for that scruffy mop-head thing my brother had going. But to me he was just Eli, my idiot brother. Who of course I loved and cared about.
“So what sound did you make when you fell in the river?” He asked. “Was it like AHHHHH or AUGHUGHGUH?”
My jaw dropped.
Eli’s lips lifted into the beginnings of that grin girls loved so much. In high school, one of my girlfriends had called his grin devastating, and the thought still made me want to puke.
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re hilarious Eli. A riot. Why don’t you go on tour?”
The only reason I didn’t shove him now was because a tiny piece of my heart broke, seeing him smile like this. Eli used to be easy with it before his wife left him, and before Mom died. Now, I couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled like that.
But he laughed now. “It’s a little funny. But I don’t wish falling in the river on anyone. And I’d never wish my big sister harm.” He always used big to remind me he was younger than me. By seven minutes.
“Excuse me, I seem to remember you cheering when I fell out of that tree when we were eight.”
Eli scoffed. “Only because you were too scared to get down. You didn’t want me to leave you there so I had to send Griffin to go get Dad. Then you slipped and fell out anyway.”
“You were throwing sticks at me! What if I had broken something? Would you have cheered then?”
“Depends what you broke.”
I stifled a laugh. “Why’d Mom and Dad have to have three of you guys? Imagine how nice our family would have been if it was just me and Chelsea.”
“Speaking of Chelsea,” Eli said, “we should get her to put up some signs warning people to stay off the trail for now.”
“She’s not your secretary, Eli. Why don’t you print some signs?”
“I’m the CFO,” he said with mock indignation.
“And she’s head of events! Between conferences and bar mitzvahs, our baby sister pulls in almost a third of our operating revenue.”
“I was the one who told you that,” Eli said.
“So who’s more important? The one who tells me that, or the one who does it?”
Now it was Eli’s turn to scowl.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re going to be late for this meeting.”
He pulled ahead of me, then I picked up speed, passing him with my chin up.
When we were kids, we weren’t allowed to run in the hallways of the hotel, so we’d do power-walk races. We got surprisingly good at it. It helped if you stuck your elbows out too.
I couldn’t help but grin at Eli sashaying ahead of me. When he swung his hips back and forth, I even almost laughed. He may be an idiot, but my twin brother did know how to cheer me up. But my cheer was short-lived—we’d reached the conference room. I closed my eyes, bracing myself.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “Perfectly fine.” Then I pulled the door open.
I’d wanted to greet Lila. While Blake and I had talked on the phone, it had been Lila I’d videoconferenced with ahead of their remote review. I knew what to expect.
But Blake was all I saw.
He was standing at the window, overlooking the valley below.
He looked completely transformed. His hair no longer stuck up in damp chunks but was brushed back in a clean swoop.
He wore an expensive-looking gray suit but had taken off the jacket and was in the process of rolling up his shirt sleeves with his broad hands and tapered fingers, revealing smoothly muscled forearms. He looked right at me as I walked in, his gaze burning my skin. Asshole.
“Good afternoon,” I said, directing all my attention to Lila.
She smiled broadly at me from beneath a perfect poker-straight bob of brown hair.
I brought a hand to my own wild dirty-blonde waves, which I had to work to tame.
She was petite and almost birdlike, which made me feel like a clumsy giant, given my 5’11 height and less-than-frail bone structure.
I smiled as warmly as I could as I held out my hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person, Lila.”
“Cassandra,” she said, standing. “Wonderful to meet you! I understand you’ve already met Blake?”
A rush of adrenaline hit me in the gut. He told her.
“Oh,” I said. “Yes.”
“Cass decided to go for a dip in the Quince this morning,” Eli said as I moved to the head of the table, sliding into my chair opposite the two where the Harringtons would sit.
Eli and Griffin sat adjacent to me on the left side of the table.
“What?” Chelsea asked, incredulous, from the opposite side.
There was an empty seat next to her. Jude was late, of course.
If Chelsea hadn’t blown off our run this morning, I never would have known she’d had a night of fun.
Her chestnut hair was twisted up in a tight chignon and she wore a fitted white blazer.
But my chest squeezed. Everything to do with Blake aside, I had the panicky image of my baby sister floundering in the river. “It was good you weren’t with me this morning,” I said. “The path is a disaster right now. But Eli said he was going to put up signs to let the guests know.”
“I did not,” Eli said.
Chelsea shot him a glare. “I’ll have my team do it. But Cass, are you serious? Are you okay?”
“She is, thanks to Harrington,” Griffin said. He sat back in his chair with his arms folded. He knew something was up, he just hadn’t sorted out what it was yet.
“I’m sure Ms. Kelly would have been just fine on her own,” Blake said, speaking for the first time.
His voice sent heat running through me. Hot rage, that’s what it was, I told myself. Nothing else.
Blake continued, walking toward his chair and placing his two broad hands on the back. “But I happened to be out for a bit of peaceful fishing and saw a pink…” He glanced at me and cleared his throat before finishing. “I saw her bright running gear in the water.”
“Oh my God,” Chelsea said.
I cleared my throat. “Yes, I’m very grateful to Mr. Harrington for assisting me. However, plucking Kellys out of the water isn’t what he and his wife Lila are here for today.”
Blake’s jaw tensed.
New fury ran through me. That was how he reacted to the mere reminder that he was married?
“Quite right,” Lila said. “Rather an exciting start to our project, don’t you think?”
Shit. If Brynn had suspected anything was up, she hadn’t shared that information with Lila.
I noticed the other woman now, sitting on a chair in the row at the side of the room.
I’d been so consumed with Blake that I hadn’t noticed her there at first. Her eyes were wide, telling me she hadn’t thought anything was up before, but did now.
Too late. But it wasn’t her responsibility to read between the lines.
Anything that happened now was Blake Harrington’s fault.
“Project?” Eli said, his face snapping toward mine. Eli knew what services the Harringtons offered.
Shit again. Alright, not telling any of my siblings my earlier plans was my fault. Not that it mattered now.
“I thought this was a one-off consultation meeting,” he said, alarmed.
“It is,” I said. “Would you mind actually going over the results of your remote study, Lila?” I asked. “Per the agenda.”
“Oh,” she said, looking deeply confused. This was getting messier by the minute.
“No,” Eli said, his jaw tensing. Any good humor he had from earlier was gone. He was pissed.
I gritted my teeth, trying to send him a psychic twin message. Drop it, Eli. It’s not happening anyway.
“Where’s Jude?” Griffin asked Chelsea. He was throwing me a bone. Distracting Eli.
Eli hated how Jude was always late for our meetings, or blew them off altogether.
It pissed me off, too. If he wasn’t my brother—and he wasn’t pulling in so much business with his name on all our brochures (Recreation at the Rolling Hills is overseen by five-time world champion tennis player Jude Kelly)—I’d fire him too.
But right now I couldn’t care less where Jude was.
Chelsea shrugged. “No idea.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We can fill him in later.”
“Maybe it’s best to get started,” Blake said, his voice commanding enough to get all our attention.
He hadn’t spoken while the room had gone tense, had just watched us volleying words back and forth.
“Perhaps now is the time to tell all of you about our operational review service, and why we not only recommend one in the case of the Rolling Hills resort, but why we told Ms. Kelly if you all agreed to sign with us we’d guarantee a tripling of your profit by next year. ”
That got Eli’s attention. “I’m sorry, tripling?”
It also got mine. Blake had framed it as if we hadn’t already signed a contract. He was pulling me out of the water again.
I gripped the arms of my chair, half-furious that he was jumping in to rescue me again, and half-relieved that he had.
Then I registered what Blake had said. Tripling our revenue?
He hadn’t mentioned that to me. He hadn’t even provided me with a guarantee.
He’d only indicated he was confident we’d become profitable. He was raising the stakes as he spoke.
He knew. He knew I was going to cancel the review. And he was making sure that didn’t happen by getting Eli on his side right in front of my face. The warmth turned to a hot blue flame of fury. That bastard. No, that shark.
“Yes,” he said, reaching for the black remote on the table.
“Barring any extreme situation such as cataclysmic building failure or executive corruption—which we, of course, do not anticipate will arise—following this review and your implementation of each of our suggestions to the letter, we guarantee a profit increase of double your previous year’s earnings within one year of implementation, and triple once the executive wing is reopened. ”
“Wait,” I said. “The executive wing?”
“Yes. Allow me to explain in the presentation. That is, if you want to continue?”
Blake leveled his gaze on me. This was a challenge.
But what could I do? Eli and the rest of them were looking at him with nothing short of awe.
“Please,” I said. I was going to snap the arms of my chair in two. Good, maybe I could throw the pieces at his head later.
“Go ahead.”