Practically speaking, Mitch’s offer was infinitely preferable to life as a broodmare for a couple of gay men, one of them incorrigible. The idea of returning to Albright had grown on her, especially given her new financial urgency. Plus there was that other upside to going back to Boston that she hadn’t considered a week ago—Lark Latimer.
“This is Channing Hughes.”
“Please hold.”
She wouldn’t enjoy facing Payton in the office, but she’d see less of her if Payton moved up to the executive level. Plus the challenge of heading up the Eastern region would make her job interesting again. Gradually all the water would pass under the bridge and their affair would be ancient history, an awkward but irrelevant memory.
Mitch was taking his sweet time picking up the call. If she were to return to Albright, her first order of business would be a chat with someone in corporate communications about their choice of “hold” music. New Age piano wasn’t new anymore. There were better ways to—
“Channing, it’s me…please don’t hang up.”
The shock of hearing Payton’s voice manifested as pins and needles down her spine.
“Don’t blame Robin. I didn’t know how else to reach you since you won’t take my calls and you ignore my texts and emails. It’s urgent that we talk.”
Channing hated the exhilaration that overtook her will to cut Payton off.
“I can’t believe you walked out without a single word of explanation. How could you be so unprofessional? Do you have any idea of the rumors you set off?”
“What, that I stole client files and went to AIG? I didn’t.” Payton knew very well her employment contract at Albright prevented her from going to work for a similar company for five years. “Would you rather I’d told them the truth, that you dumped me after a two-year affair and promoted Boyd so you wouldn’t have to travel with me anymore? He’s not competent to handle client negotiations and you know it.”
Payton sighed heavily. “What choice did I have? The two of us continuing to travel together was out of the question.”
“Why is that? I never once let our relationship affect my job, unlike you. Did you honestly think I’d keep working at Albright knowing I was never going to get a superior evaluation out of you because you were paranoid people might think you were showing favoritism? That’s worth thousands of dollars a year, Payton. How much more did you expect me to sacrifice?”
“It was perfectly within your rights to leave Albright, but the issue here is how you did it. You deliberately walked out without explanation because you wanted to dump this mess in my lap. All I’m asking is that you clear it up, that you contact HR and make it absolutely clear this was about your own issues with going back to England, and stop all this—what is it you call it—chin wagging.”
“Fall on my sword again for you. That’s what you always expect from me.”
Drumming her fingers on the desk, Channing stewed. The angry side of her wanted to hang up, but she’d never stopped wanting Payton to say a few magic words to make everything all right. She didn’t need to hear her grovel, nor did she want Payton back. All she wanted was not to feel like a fool for thinking Payton had truly loved her.
“Robin says you talked with Mitch on Monday. Knowing him, he tried to talk you out of leaving.”
So Payton wasn’t aware of Mitch’s offer that she take over the Eastern region, which possibly meant she knew nothing about her impending promotion to VP. Unless Albright had other plans. Surely they weren’t considering letting go of someone with her experience.
“If Mitch wants your input, Payton, I’m sure he’ll loop you in.”
Payton’s voice lowered, a stark reminder of how sneaky they used to be when others milled about. “Channing, please…”
“Please? What more could you possibly want from me, Payton? I offered you everything I had.”
“And I treated you horribly. This is all my fault and I’m sorry.”
“Great, so now I get an apology. I’ll put it in the drawer where I keep the rest of my useless junk.” She too lowered her voice on the off-chance the Brownings had returned from their afternoon errands. Voices carried in the cavernous manor. “You had two years to untangle your life. ‘Ben, I want a divorce.’ Five words. Five bloody words. If you’d loved me half as much as you claimed, you’d have been bursting to get yourself free.”
“You make it sound like a choice between the chef’s salad or the chowder. Leaving Ben would have cost me everything, Channing. Kathleen’s pregnant. What if she’d cut me off from my grandchild? I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I never meant to hurt you. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Then why the bloody hell did you call?”
Since the first text she’d picked up on the plane, Channing had imagined herself unloading on Payton if she dared pick up her call. She’d seize the moral high ground, punish her with pugilistic jabs to her character. It was her turn to have the last word.
“Channing, this whole situation is impossible.” The hitch in Payton’s breath was familiar—she was trying not to cry. “You can’t come back. Too many people are asking questions. My own secretary told me she’d heard you were having an affair. The moment you come through that door, they’ll see it all over our faces. You know what happens then—HR will go back through our every move wondering if we put our relationship above the company.”
“Wha—” Payton had always been paranoid but this was over the top. “There’s no bloody end to your nerve, is there? It’s not enough that you deliberately wasted two years of my life, now you have to muck up the rest. What gives you the right to decide where I work?”
“Nothing.” She sniffed loudly. “That’s why all I have left is to beg.”
Channing’s impulse to lash out again sputtered as she envisioned the pitiful sight of Payton trying to hold herself together. How many times had she crumbled at those tears?
“Bollocks,” she muttered, more to herself than to Payton. “You aren’t the only one in trouble here. I came home to the news that Poppa left me nothing but Penderworth and a tax bill. I can’t ignore Mitch’s offer. I need to go back to work—soon.”
“It doesn’t matter, Channing. If this blows up, it’ll ruin both of us.”
Several seconds of quiet followed, but Channing was determined to wait her out. She’d said her piece. Maybe for once, Payton would put someone else’s needs first.
“Channing, I know what you’re capable of. You can walk into any finance company in the world and tell them which office you want. Stay in London and I’ll persuade Mitch to waive the noncompete.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”
“I’m sorry. We were selfish and now we’re paying for it.”
“How is that, Payton? Where exactly is this costing you anything at all?”
Voices downstairs signaled the return of the Brownings. Any moment, Maisie would appear in the doorway to ask her preference for supper.
“I have to go.”
“Please consider what—”
“For your information, I already told Mitch I’d gotten homesick, that losing Poppa got to me and I felt overwhelmed all of a sudden. That’s the official story he’s peddling to HR. Repeat it as often as you like.” Channing ended the call.
Chapter Nine
This was a date. Never mind that Channing hadn’t called with an invitation, hadn’t made a reservation, hadn’t bothered to change from her stonewashed jeans and bulky black sweater. To Lark, it still counted as a date. Especially since Channing had enveloped her in a long silent hug the moment she walked through the door of the tiny apartment.
“Let’s push this closer,” she said as she scooted the coffee table toward the couch where Channing sat. Her tiny space wasn’t ideal for dinner guests, but Channing had insisted she hardly cared about an elaborate meal. It was the company she wanted.
Lark situated herself on a stack of throw pillows. “Hope you like chicken jalfrezi.”
&n
bsp; “Brilliant. What’s a little acid reflux as long as there’s wine?” Channing kicked off her tan flats, shoes so plain they could have passed for bedroom slippers.
“It’s from Curry King. Everything on the menu is totally worth the aftereffects.”
She noted also that absent her usual makeup Channing looked more girl than woman. There was a vulnerability about her, the same look Lark had seen in the airport lounge just before they boarded. At dinner on Sunday, Channing had predicted a tough week ahead, with difficult decisions about the estate.
“Any progress on Penderworth?”
“I’ve been up to my arse in spreadsheets. Kenny put me in touch with a property inspector who’s advising me on what absolutely must be done versus what I should leave for the buyer. It’s silly to pour money into custom renovations someone else will rip out.” As they ate, Channing groused about her financial state and the issues with getting Penderworth ready to sell. “I still can’t get over Poppa hiding this from me. He had to know what a headache it would be.”
“I have to hand it to Ma. The best thing she ever did for us was leave all her worldly possessions to Roger. They’d been living together for fourteen years, so it wasn’t like he swooped in and stole our inheritance. It wasn’t worth all that much anyway. Chloe and I both were glad not to have the hassle.”
“This would be maddening if I had to sort it with squabbling siblings too. It’s bad enough that I feel eternally obliged to Maisie and Cecil.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “That sounded cruel. They’re practically family and I love them dearly.”
Lark caught herself smiling at how relieved both Channing and the Brownings would be when they finally sat down for a heart-to-heart and discovered they wanted the same thing.
“Does my suffering amuse you?”
“No…I think it’s sweet you worry about them. If you were half the ogre you pretend to be, you’d have no friends at all. I think your bitchy act on the plane was just that—an act.”
“Underestimate me at your peril, Dr. Latimer. If you’d heard me on the phone with Payton today, you’d know what a first-class bitch I can be.”
“You finally talked to Payton?” That, more than her financial issues, better explained why she’d wanted company tonight. “I never said you didn’t have it in you. I thought you weren’t taking her calls.”
“She tricked me into answering by going through another number. She’s always had a dodgy streak. I should have hung up, but no—I fell into my usual Payton trance. She knew I would.”
“It’s hard to imagine you being under someone else’s mind control.”
“We all have our weaknesses. Except mine isn’t Payton, actually. It’s my fatal need to have the last word, to argue with someone incessantly until they finally surrender and admit that I’m right.” Wineglass in hand, she leaned back on the couch and tucked her bare feet beneath her. “And I’ve an amazing knack for humiliating myself. I assumed she was calling to persuade me to come back to Albright. Quite the opposite. She begged me not to. She’s convinced they’re all whispering about our affair since I left, that if I come back they’ll notice the chill between us, soiling her pristine reputation. And mine too, I suppose. The annoying part is that she’s probably right. It does me no favors if I go back to a promotion and my colleagues all think I earned it between the bedsheets.”
“I don’t suppose it occurred to her that she should be the one to leave?”
“So you’re a standup comic now?”
“Come on, the woman’s got a pair of cojones.” Having studied the headshot on Albright’s website, she had no trouble picturing Payton Crane working behind the scenes to manipulate Channing into doing whatever she wanted. Women didn’t get to be executives by letting others push them around. “In fact, I’m willing to bet you used to like that about her.”
Channing laughed softly before fixing a blank gaze at the floor. “I suppose I did. She’s the woman we all want to be. Strong and smart, and she works extremely hard. And takes guff from absolutely no one. The most astonishing thing about our relationship was seeing her relinquish control. Not just sexually…she could be quite vulnerable whenever we were alone. Payton never let down her guard anywhere else. That’s when I knew what we had was something extraordinary. I felt like the most privileged person on earth because I got to see her like that.”
Lark could have done without Channing’s reference to her sex life with Payton, since it jolted her with an irrational sense of jealousy. Nor was she especially happy to see the subtle smile, the first from Channing when she talked about Payton. Was it a pleasant memory tucked away or a longing to feel it again? Before giving in to her feelings, she needed to peel this part of Channing back and see what lay beneath it.
“How did it happen, your affair?”
Channing wagged her empty glass. “If I’m to tell that story, I’ll need more wine.”
* * *
She’d told no one, not even Kenny, the dramatic story of how she and Payton had fallen into each other’s arms, into each other’s beds. The details were deeply personal, and they carried consequences to this day.
“You must promise me you’ll never repeat a word of this.”
“Who do I know that cares one way or the other?”
“Perhaps Kenny and Oliver…anyone really. It must remain completely private.”
“Of course.” Lark refreshed their glasses and returned to the pillows on the floor.
“Before we got involved, I admired Payton so much, respected her. She’s just the sort of example we need in the business world, women who prove it really can be done. She was extraordinary. And fit in that attractive older woman kind of way. I liked thinking I was looking at myself eighteen years in the future…which seems to be something I do. But it was never that sort of vibe that comes when you start to fancy someone. Do you know the one I mean?”
“Absolutely.”
“We did a lot of traveling, just the two of us. Overnights for client meetings and all. Our territory was the entire eastern region. Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York, and everything in between. Albright’s very big on sitting down face-to-face with clients. From the very start I saw that Payton had a fierce work ethic. On the airplane, in the taxi—her head was always working. But once we sat down to dinner in the evening, she was done for the day. All it took was that first sip of wine and it was as if she’d slithered out of her corporate skin.”
The memory of those early evenings stirred a sense of nostalgia for what had been a warm mentoring relationship. Had they stayed that course, Channing likely would have been heading her own division by now. Instead she’d allowed their affair to dampen her ambition.
“I got the feeling she was starved for conversation, that she and her husband never talked. She was wicked smart, knew all about politics, books, film. She’d go on about her daughter in college, all the headaches of planning her wedding. Or her son, who played varsity basketball. I was happy just to listen, but she’d also prod me into sharing personal things. She loved hearing about Poppa and Penderworth, what it was like to grow up in England. Sometimes she’d grill me about the women I was dating. I always looked forward to our trips together.”
“Sounds like you were falling in love.”
“Hmm…it never felt that way. We were mates.”
“Obviously something changed.”
“It was Philadelphia, the Four Seasons Hotel. We were having our ritual wine and dinner in the hotel restaurant. She’d seemed out of sorts all day, distracted. I don’t know why but I was anxious about it. I thought she was cross with me over something. Perhaps I’d botched the figures or said the wrong thing to our client. So I finally got up my nerve to ask what was wrong. She began crying. Not misty eyes, mind you—sobbing. Finally she blubbered out that she was pregnant.”
“Whoa…I didn’t see that coming.”
“Nor did she. Forty-five years old, on the executive track for VP. And her youngest is a senior in high school,
right? A baby is the last thing she wants.”
“I have a feeling I know where this is going.”
She studied Lark’s expression for signs of disapproval. Many long-time Bostonians were staunch Catholics with pro-life beliefs. She’d totally forgotten Lark saying her mother had given birth to two children while in her teens.
“For Payton, it was never a question of what she’d do about it. What bothered her most was the guilt over not telling her husband.” She sat up straight to push back against a possible objection. “No, imagine what’s going through her head. They’re Catholic as well. Not terribly devout, but still. What if Ben had come out against it? She couldn’t bear to take that chance.”
“Right there should have told you she couldn’t be trusted to consider anyone’s interests but her own.” She held up a hand to head off Channing’s protest. “Not that I think she was wrong, but that’s a huge thing to keep from your husband.”
“Obviously their marriage was no pillar of strength. Anyway, she’d already made the appointment for herself at a clinic in New Hampshire. Surgical, because it was too late for the pills by the time she realized she was pregnant. She’d planned to go alone, which I thought was tragic, so I offered to take off work and drive her. We do that for our mates, right? I booked the hotel and paid for both rooms so Ben wouldn’t find out.”
Channing did that quite a lot over the next two years whenever they’d tack on an extra night out of town. They couldn’t bill Albright, but Payton couldn’t risk it showing up on her credit card bill either. Besides the emotional damage, the affair also had cost Channing thousands and thousands of dollars, including not only the expenses for their illicit trysts, but lost salary and bonuses. That was when she thought she had the Hughes fortune at her fingertips.
“After her procedure, we sat together on a love seat in her room. Hardly talking, but she was shaking so I held her. For that moment I was the most important person in the world to her, and I relished it. I’m not even sure how it started. She turned…our lips were close…I kissed her.”
A Proper Cuppa Tea Page 10
