Part 5
Vanessa gripped her uncle’s sleeve.
“Then the other man?”
“Owen Mercer. His executive assistant. His friend.”
“That’s impossible. Emmy married somebody with nothing.”
Malcolm removed her hand.
“You’ve insulted his wife, stolen from her, and hurt her. I’ve done what I can for you. Don’t ask me to do more.”
He left her beside the closed reception doors.
On the way home, Emmy watched Nathan’s face instead of the passing storefronts.
“Director Dorr could hardly look at you.”
“He had reasons to be uncomfortable.”
“With you?”
Nathan rested his hands on the steering wheel. He could have told her then. The road was quiet. She was beside him, safe, asking directly.
Instead, he explained that he was helping his employer investigate dishonest directors.
“People talk freely around security,” he said. “They forget we’re listening.”
“And your mother’s earrings?”
“Her family used to have money. They were inherited. She didn’t realize what they’d become worth.”
Emmy turned the velvet case over in her lap.
“That’s a lot of things you never mentioned.”
“I know.”
He let the answer end there.
The earrings came back repaired in their original case. A few days later, Emmy opened her banking application and sat down hard on the sofa.
“Nathan.”
He came from the kitchen.
“There’s three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in my account.”
“It’s compensation. From Veylan.”
“For an earring?”
“For the damage and what happened publicly.”
“I can’t keep that.”
Beatrice, brought into the argument by phone, disagreed immediately.
“You didn’t demand it. Accept it.”
“Miss Bea, where would I even put money like that?”
“The bank seems to have managed so far. Please don’t start stuffing the mattress.”
After the call, Emmy studied Nathan.
“First he hires me, then a promotion, and now this money. Is your employer interested in me?”
“Are you saying you’d prefer him?”
The change in his face startled her.
She stared, then laughed once in surprise.
“You’re jealous.”
“No.”
“Nathan. I’m not trading you in because somebody has a larger bank account.”
He looked at her.
“I like the man who carries my bags and complains about mosquitoes.”
“You noticed the complaints?”
“Every one.” She took his hand. “And I’m not keeping all that money for myself.”
Miss Lorraine ran a small residential children’s home on the edge of Mariston. Emmy had known her since the years when her parents’ troubles first began, and had kept coming even when all she could bring was a repaired school shirt or an hour of help.
Lorraine stared at the donation paperwork.
“Seventy thousand dollars, Emmy? We need a roof, but you need a future.”
“I still have money. Let somebody fix the roof before another bedroom leaks.”
She wanted the gift to become a proper fund, something that could continue helping after the first repairs. She looked at Nathan.
“Could your boss help me set it up?”
“I can arrange it.”
Lorraine glanced at him more closely.
“I’ve seen your face somewhere. On television, perhaps.”
“He works beside the chief executive,” Emmy explained. “They’re together all the time.”
“That must be it.”
Later, one of the children started music from an old speaker. Emmy joined the little group dancing on the covered porch. A strap broke on her shoe, and she kicked both shoes beneath a chair.
Nathan took his off, too.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Keeping the dress code.”
She held out both hands.
Afterward, while the children argued over a game inside, he found her on the porch steps.
“I’m falling in love with you,” he said.
Emmy stopped turning the broken shoe strap between her fingers.
“You mean that?”
“Yes.”
She looked down at their bare feet.
“I think that’s what’s happening to me, too.”
Before they left, Lorraine asked Nathan to help carry a box into her office. She closed the door after him.
“Her relatives made her pay for every meal in ways a child shouldn’t have to pay,” she said. “They never let her forget she depended on them.”
Nathan set the box down.
“She hasn’t told me much.”
“She won’t. She’ll tell you they did their best.” Lorraine held his gaze. “If you ever stop loving her, don’t punish her for having trusted you.”
“I won’t hurt her.”
The promise tasted wrong before he finished saying it.
Emmy’s cousin Felicity returned from overseas the following month. Her aunt called from the airport, briskly informing Emmy that there would be a family dinner that evening.
“Don’t embarrass us by arriving late.”
Nathan offered to go with her.
“They can be unkind,” Emmy said. “Especially if they think someone has less than they do.”
“I can survive dinner.”
“I know. I’d just rather not spend the whole evening defending you.”
He didn’t insist.
Her motorcycle stalled on the way. By the time she reached her aunt’s house, supper had begun.
Felicity looked from Emmy’s green dress to her own.
“You couldn’t find a different color?”
“I didn’t know what you were wearing.”
“You never do anything by accident.”
Her aunt began talking about Felicity’s travel, her education, the wedding she would someday have. Then she turned to Emmy.
“Twenty-five already. Are you going to stay single?”
“I’m married.”
The table went quiet.
“Since when?”
“A few months.”
“And you didn’t tell us?”
“You don’t usually answer when I call.”
Felicity demanded to see him. When Emmy refused to interrupt his work, her aunt took the phone and called him herself.
“Too good to meet your wife’s family?” she asked. “Or too poor?”
Emmy took the phone back.
“Don’t speak to him like that.”
A delivery interrupted them. Six bottles of rare whiskey arrived in fitted presentation boxes, addressed to the woman in green.
Felicity reached for the first box.
“They’re mine.”
The delivery attendant checked his paperwork.
“Mrs. Emmeline Holt Vale?”
Emmy raised her hand.
Her cousin’s smile went rigid.
Nathan arrived soon afterward. He had sent the gift hoping, foolishly, to make the evening easier for Emmy.
Felicity recognized him from gossip surrounding Velmora.
“The bodyguard. Did you take these from work?”
“I sent them to my wife.”
“With what money?”
“They’re hers,” he said.
The attendant confirmed the recipient again. Felicity accused him of acting out a paid performance, lifted one bottle, and called it counterfeit before throwing it against the fireplace surround.
The room filled with the sharp smell of spilled whiskey.
Nathan looked at the shattered bottle.
“That was one of six remaining from that release.”
Owen, who had accompanied the delivery to arrange its documentation, showed Felicity the provenance and replacement valuation. Her face drained as she read the figure.
She tried to leave for the bathroom.
“No,” her mother said, suddenly frightened. “Stay here.”
Nathan asked Owen to arrange a civil repayment agreement for the bottle she had destroyed. Any amount she could pay now would be credited; the balance could be paid in installments.
Her aunt rounded on Emmy.
“We took you in. We fed you.”
“And mentioned it with every meal,” Emmy said.
“You ungrateful—”
“I was grieving. You gave Felicity new clothes and made me ask for the things she didn’t want. You called me lazy while I cleaned your house. You reminded me I had nobody else.”
“We gave you a home.”
“I was afraid in it.”
Nobody answered.
Emmy picked up her purse.
“You don’t get to speak to my husband that way, either.”
Outside, Owen began, “Mr. Va—”
Nathan interrupted.
“My employer gave me those bottles after I protected him during an incident.”
Emmy turned at once.
“You were hurt?”
“No.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I wasn’t injured.”
She checked his face before letting him take her hand.
The remaining whiskey boxes crowded a corner of the apartment. Emmy complained about them one evening after returning from the grocery store, where she had argued over a twenty-cent discrepancy.
“You have two hundred and eighty thousand dollars in the bank,” Nathan said. “And you went back for twenty cents.”
“He charged me for something I didn’t buy.”
“Understood.”
While he was out, she started dinner. Unable to find cooking wine, she opened a dark bottle from one of the boxes. She tasted the sauce, added more, then tasted from a small cup.
By the time Nathan came home, she was leaning against the counter, smiling at him.
“That isn’t cooking wine.”
“It looks like soy sauce.”
“It’s whiskey, Emmy.”
“Oh.” She considered the cup. “That explains the warm part.”
He took it away and guided her to the sofa.
She rested her cheek against his shirt.
“I like when you come home.”
“I like coming home.”
“The apartment feels different with you in it.”
He sat beside her, unable to bear another easy lie.
“Emmy, there’s something I need to say. About my job. About who I am.”
She blinked sleepily.
“I own Veylan. Owen is my—”
Her head had slipped against his shoulder. Within seconds, her breathing settled into sleep.
Nathan stayed awake long after he carried her to bed.
He meant to tell her the next evening.
Sabrina Quinn reached her first.
Emmy opened the apartment door to a polished woman who looked around the room before looking at her.
“You’re Emmeline?”
“Yes.”
“Then understand this. Nathan Vale is my fiancé.”
“My husband’s a bodyguard. You’ve come to the wrong place.”
Sabrina’s smile was brief and unpleasant.
“He still hasn’t told you.”
Nathan arrived while Sabrina was reaching toward Emmy’s face. He caught her wrist before she could touch her.
“Never do that again.”
“Mr. Vale,” Sabrina said deliberately.
Emmy looked at him.
“Why did she call you that?”
“She’s confusing me with my employer.”
Sabrina laughed.
“You married her to provoke me.”
“I married her because I wanted to. She’s my wife. You aren’t.”
Sabrina demanded a private word in the hallway.
“I can tell her right now,” she said when the door closed.
“I was going to.”
“She’ll hate you.”
“That’s between us.”
Sabrina lowered her voice. She spoke about his enemies, the women who wanted his name, the danger Emmy would face once everyone knew.
“Come to my birthday celebration. Until then, I’ll keep quiet.”
He agreed only to attend. When he returned inside, Emmy was waiting.
“Is this what you tried to tell me last night?”
Before he could answer, Owen called. A foreign investment had developed a serious legal and financial problem. Nathan needed to leave immediately.
He stood with the phone in his hand.
“When I come back,” he told Emmy, “I’ll explain all of it.”
She nodded, though her eyes remained troubled.
“I trust you.”
Sabrina placed the order while Nathan was abroad. Vanessa helped arrange it through a Velmora manager willing to overlook an odd request for a large deposit.
The client wanted a deliberately distressed coat, something rough and worn, and insisted that Emmy design and deliver it personally to a birthday venue.
Emmy questioned the assignment.
“The deposit’s cleared,” the manager said. “She asked for you. Don’t make this difficult.”
At the party, Sabrina told her to put the coat on.
“I’m delivering it. I’m not your model.”
“You’ll demonstrate it or I’ll report a breach of the order.”
Emmy complied. Laughter moved through the room.
Vanessa stepped out from behind a group of guests.
“Turn around. Let them see what a market girl looks like in her own work.”
Emmy reached for the coat’s fastening.
Sabrina caught her arm. Vanessa seized the other.
“Enough,” Emmy said. “Let go.”
Across the room, the doors opened.
Nathan had come directly from the airport after Owen confirmed where the delivery assignment had sent her.
“Take your hands off her.”
Sabrina released Emmy and turned toward the guests with a radiant smile.
“Allow me to introduce the man I’m going to marry. Nathan Vale, owner and chief executive of Veylan…”
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