“You should be saving that bossiness up for the baby, you know. One day it’ll be a teenager, and you’ll wish you hadn’t wasted it all on me.”
“Don’t worry, I got plenty where that came from. Now spill.” She narrowed her eyes. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Do I have to tell you everything?”
Gracie huffed. “Yes, you do. It’s part of that sister agreement we pinkie swore on in 1992.”
“Surely there’s a statute of limitation on that.” Emmaline tore off a piece of her pastry and popped it into her mouth.
“It’s forever.” Pause. “Is this because of the baby?”
“What?”
“I know you wanted to have one with Conrad, and maybe you resent me for getting to that milestone first…”
Emmaline squeezed her eyes shut. “I love you and Des. I don’t resent your baby.”
“But…?”
How could she say but anything? She should be thrilled for her sister. But…
There it was again.
“Maybe I still want to get married and have a baby,” she whispered. “One day.”
The admission made her feel sick and relieved all at once. Here she was, supposed to be having “the time of her life” according to all the magazines and blogs she’d read about life post divorce, and instead she was secretly pining for the opposite.
Not only was she a failure at casual sex, she was also a failure of a divorcée, too.
“You know there’s nothing wrong with that, right?” Gracie said.
“Of course there’s something bloody wrong with it.” Emmaline replied, reaching for her coffee. “I’m not married, and I’m not in a relationship. Which means I have to start from scratch.”
“I take it this guy you’ve been seeing isn’t someone you could see yourself having a relationship with?”
How had she managed to get herself into this position? As a kid, she’d been smart, had gotten good grades. Her parents and teachers had adored her…then she’d given up all prospects of a bright future for a man who tossed her aside like a piece of trash. Now she was skulking around like a rebellious teenager, all because she was worried about people judging her.
“He’s my boss, Gracie. I’ve been fucking my boss.”
Silence.
Emmaline wasn’t sure if it was because of her admission or the fact that she’d dropped the f-bomb. She supposed both of those things were highly out of character, but right now she didn’t care. A flash of destructiveness ran through her. Maybe out of character was exactly what she needed to shake this stupid desire to settle down and have a family.
Clearly it wasn’t in her future, so why did she still want it?
“Now I see why you’ve been so secretive about it.”
Emmaline took a deep breath. “Don’t lecture me, Gracie. I don’t think I can take it.”
“I won’t, promise.” Gracie sighed. “I love you, Em.”
“I love you, too.” She drew a long breath to calm herself. “Not that it matters now. Parker and I are over. I’m relieved. End of story.”
“You don’t look relieved,” Gracie said with a raise of her brow.
“It doesn’t matter whether I look it or not. I am relieved.” She bit into her Danish. “It was getting too serious, and I’m not looking for that right now.”
“So you should have no problem seeing him at work then…or seeing him with another woman.”
Emmaline had to fight the vicious churn in her stomach. The thought of Parker with another woman made her want to vomit, but she couldn’t admit that aloud. Because then what? She’d have to deal with the fact that she was in way over her head with her feelings and, despite knowing that he was a controlling a-hole, she was still miserable it was over. “I’ll be fine.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“No.” He’d called a few times late Friday night and first thing on Saturday, but she hadn’t answered or listened to the messages. She’d also turned away the flowers he’d tried to have delivered.
“Because he hasn’t called or because you won’t pick up the phone?” Gracie shook her head at Emmaline’s noncommittal shrug. “Right, so you’re doing the mature thing and ignoring him.”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
“Do I need to spell it out? Talk. To. Him.” Gracie said it so loudly that they drew looks from the surrounding tables. “You’re clearly miserable, and the second I mentioned him moving on your face turned green. So you’re obviously not over him.”
“Doesn’t matter. It won’t work out between us, so what’s the point?” She sighed. “He’s not the right guy for me.”
“Why? Because he made one mistake?” Gracie got that smug look on her face that said she knew way more about the situation than Emmaline.
“Two mistakes,” she corrected. “I couldn’t forgive him a second time.”
“And you’re going to tell me that you were perfect the whole time you were together?”
“No, but I didn’t lie to him.”
“I guess the little incident involving your fake identity is a figment of my imagination then.”
Emmaline blinked. “That’s different. It wasn’t manipulation.”
“You lied about your name and your profession. You might not have intended to manipulate him, but if you’d said where you worked he would have known you were an employee before you slept together.”
Okay, so maybe Gracie had a point. And Parker had forgiven her. He’d never once brought it up or held it over her the way Conrad had whenever she’d made a mistake. Still, that didn’t change the facts. Parker had tried to control her life.
So why couldn’t she seem to let him go?
“What if I go back to him and then he does something like this again? What if this an indicator of him being a total control freak?”
“What if it’s not? He made a mistake because he wanted to do the right thing.” She tucked a strand of wavy dark hair behind her ears. “Sure, he should have asked you before altering your submission. That was out of line. But, from everything you’ve told me, he’s done nothing but praise your work and boost your confidence the whole time you’ve been together. Is that right?”
“Maybe,” she muttered. “But it doesn’t negate the fact that he acted without consulting me because he thought he knew better. Twice.”
“If you think that you’re going to find a perfect man who never does anything wrong, then I’m sorry to say you’ll be single the rest of your life.”
“Des seems pretty perfect,” Emmaline pointed out.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love him to bits, and I know he’ll be an amazing father. But he’s far from perfect, and so am I.”
“Same,” Emmaline admitted.
“I mean, how bad was it in the grand scheme of things? He put you up for an award that you were already in the running for.”
“I hadn’t made the final cut.” Emmaline traced her finger around the edge of her coffee cup. “And I might not have made it on my own. But it’s not about that. He’s risking my reputation by giving me unfair treatment. How can I expect people to take me seriously if I let him give me an unfair advantage?”
“I understand that.” Gracie nodded. “But have you ever thought that maybe it’s none of anyone’s business who you sleep with?”
“I guess if we were just sleeping together it wouldn’t be an issue.” She ran her fingertip over an imperfection in the table, her nail smoothing over the gnarled section of wood.
“But?”
“It stopped being purely about sex a while ago.” Admitting it aloud loosened the fist around her heart. “He’s infuriating, and he thinks he knows everything, but he’s also funny and kind and generous.”
“You have to think about what you want, Em. Strip away all the fear and the drama. What would you be doing now if this hadn’t happened?”
“Having the best sex of my life.” A smile crept across her lips. “Having fun, drinki
ng wine, and watching movies with Parker.”
She’d been so looking forward to their special night together, all the plans she’d had to try out new things on him…and on herself. He gave her the confidence to experiment, to get in touch with what made her feel good. But it wasn’t just physical—he encouraged her ideas and her desire to succeed in her career.
Which was exactly the kind of things she’d wanted from her marriage. So why did it all seem so daunting now?
“I’m scared about getting it wrong again.”
Gracie’s brows crinkled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean relationships, marriage. What if I fail again?”
“You didn’t fail.”
“Yes, I did. I let Mother pressure me into marrying the wrong man, and I let Conrad take away everything that made me who I am.” She curled her hand into a fist against the table. “If it happens again, I’ll be back at square one and even worse off than I am now.”
“Firstly, no amount of worrying is going to change that. And secondly, I can guarantee you, if you don’t take a risk on Parker or anyone else, then you definitely will be in the same spot that you are now. That’s a fact.”
“I’m scared.” Admitting it aloud brought forward a wave of emotion, but she swallowed it back. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“No one does” Gracie reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “And I can’t tell you what to do, only give you my advice. You’ll figure it out.”
Emmaline smiled. “You’re the younger sister. How did you get to be so wise?”
“Because I did a lot of stupid things before I figured out that I was in love with Des. It’s not like how they say it is in fairy tales—it’s messy and scary and sometimes it gets worse before it gets better.”
She nodded. “If I don’t take a stand now, then I’m going to keep letting people steamroll me.”
The ironic thing was, before Parker she might not have had the confidence to stand her ground with this situation. Her natural instinct was to keep the peace—like she’d done all through her childhood and her marriage—but the courage she had to fight for what she deserved now was the courage he’d helped her to find.
Her life was officially an Alanis Morissette lyric.
“I know he said he was sorry, but sorry isn’t enough. I don’t see proof that he won’t do the same thing again in the future.” She pushed away her half-eaten Danish, her appetite vanishing. “I know we had something between us…something that could have been everything. But I’m not going to risk losing control over my life again.”
“Then do what you gotta do, Em.” Gracie squeezed her shoulder. “If he’s the right guy, then he’ll give you that proof. If not, you think of all the good sex you had and move on.”
“It was good sex.” She sighed. “Even the Better Than Sex cake couldn’t compete.”
But orgasms—while a great addition to her life—weren’t enough. She deserved more, and this time, she wasn’t going to compromise.
…
Parker sat at the head of the long table and stared at the bewildered faces before him. His executive team was uncharacteristically quiet, digesting the bombshell he’d dropped. Usually these meetings were filled with passionate arguments and debates, the sounds of pens scratching and keyboards clicking. But today it was so quiet he could hear the whir of the coffee machine in the executive kitchen next door.
“But the CEO always participates in the final ASTAR selection.” His CTO wrinkled his silver brows and grappled for a response. “Part of the reward of this program is knowing you were handpicked by the CEO.”
“How does that mean anything if I don’t know these people?” Parker said. “I’ve barely been in this role a month.”
“The CEO doesn’t usually have personal knowledge of the individuals,” Linda pointed out. “The panel selects the winner based on the applicant’s submission and all the supporting documents.”
“And the CEO usually provides an unbiased opinion, since if it were left to the panel they would all vote for candidates in their own area,” The Director of Operations added.
Parker sighed. The decision to withdraw himself from the ASTAR program hadn’t been made lightly. This was one of the flagship items in his plans to uplift the perception of the Wentworth Group—fixing the people problem from the inside out. Stepping back from this wasn’t the way he wanted to go because it could give people the impression that he didn’t care. That he was much more like his father than he was.
But that was a sacrifice he was willing to make if it meant a possibility of mending things with Emmaline.
“Are you telling me that my highly experienced, highly paid team is not capable of coming up with a solution to this change?” Parker raised a brow. “Perhaps I need to reassess the team I have working for me if a little problem solving is so confounding to you.”
“We could make it so that no panel member can cast a vote for any applicant in their department,” Linda suggested. “That should be easy enough to facilitate.”
“Good.” Parker moved to push up from his chair. “Thankfully someone is thinking like an executive.”
“People will want to know the reason you’re recusing yourself from this process.” The CTO sat in his chair, not seeming to take the hint that the meeting was over.
The older man had tried a few times to throw Parker off his game—no doubt questioning his ability to keep the group in check. But Parker never lacked for confidence, and he knew that his being heir to the company wasn’t the reason he’d landed the CEO gig. It was because he was business smart and people smart, often a rare combination at that level.
Not so people smart if you screwed things up with Emmaline to the point that she won’t even let you hash things out with her.
But he was rectifying that mistake now. By stepping down from the ASTAR selection panel, he would be putting the ball back in her court. This way he couldn’t influence the decision nor risk her reputation, as she’d feared.
An apology wasn’t enough—he knew that. What had Arthur told him once? Saying sorry is a lot easier than showing it.
“We can tell people that I want time to get to know the employees before making such an important decision, and that I trust my team to select a winner who will embody our company values with their place on this program.” He scanned the room, making sure to let the silence drag out long enough that people remembered who was in charge. “I understand that, in the past, the CEO didn’t have a personal connection with staff in the lower levels of the structure, but that is going to change. And I won’t be a hypocrite by pretending that I’ve made that connection in four weeks.”
“I’ll have some messages worked up.” The Director of Communications tapped at her phone. “We’ll have a draft to you by the end of the day.”
“Anyone else have concerns about this?” Parker asked, standing and tucking his compendium under one arm. He counted to three in his head to force himself to hang around long enough to give them an actual chance to speak up, despite thinking it was ludicrous that they had an issue with it in the first place. “Good.”
He headed back to his office, the weight on his shoulders a little lighter. The old Parker would have thought it stupid that “doing the right thing” in this case would mean doing nothing. But it was the only way he could see to restore the balance of power between them. It was funny how Arthur’s words were the ones that had given birth to this idea of how to make it up to Emmaline.
Since the dinner, he’d been thinking a lot about how to move forward with his dramatic, imperfect family. It would take time to work through all the emotions he’d locked away, to work through how much of his “I won’t stand for it” mentality was real when it came to his father…and how much was a defense mechanism.
He strode up to Mercy’s desk and watched as her delicate hands flew across the keyboard. “When is the ASTAR Awards night?” he asked, leaning against her desk.
/>
“Let me see.” She leaned forward and clicked through his calendar. “Next week. Friday night starting at seven p.m. Would you like me to book James to pick you up when it’s done?”
“Yes, please. And make a repeat booking with Crown Towers for that night.”
Mercy raised a brow. “The suite, again?”
“Yes. Have them leave a bottle of champagne in the room.” He met his assistant’s curious stare without giving anything away.
“Two glasses or one?” She could barely contain the twitch of her lips, that teasing little minx. He shot her a look, and her smile finally cracked. “Okay, two glasses it is. And thanks again for letting me use the room on Friday. That was a lovely surprise. It was so nice to put my feet up and relax.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“Shall I add Ms. Greene’s name to the reservation?” For a lot of people that would have been a loaded question—an act of sniffing out gossip. But the last month had shown him that Mercy was as loyal as they came, and she took the responsibilities of her role—including keeping quiet on her boss’s personal affairs—very seriously.
“No.” He raked a hand through his hair and sighed. “I don’t know if she’ll agree to come.”
“She’s smitten with you, Parker. Whatever you did, you’ll win her over.”
He wasn’t so sure. But right now, the main thing was showing Emmaline that he was sorry without the expectation of anything in return. If she was going to trust him again, it had to be on her terms, with her taking the lead.
It wasn’t how he liked to do business…but this wasn’t business. It was personal. And that was an area where he had to let go a little if he wanted any chance of getting back the woman he cared for.
Chapter Nineteen
Emmaline’s hands fluttered nervously by her side. The ballroom at the old Wentworth department store on Bourke Street was filled to the brim with shiny, beautiful people. Even though she’d been with the company for seven months now, she hadn’t seen the ballroom before. It was tucked away in the heritage-listed department store, accessed by a private elevator.
Taken by the CEO (The Scandalous Wentworths) Page 18
