by Hyland, Tara
Apart from the job itself, being headhunted had also given Cole a kick. He was proud of everything he’d achieved and also liked to be reminded of his success. That was why he had no interest in having William’s spoiled brat of a daughter in his department. He’d spent the past few months recruiting some of the smartest people in the industry onto his team. They’d all had to work their asses off to get where they were, and it bugged him that Elizabeth had a golden ticket straight in.
“Fine. Whatever you want, William,” he’d said finally. “But, just be warned—I’m going to treat her like any other employee. And that means she’s not getting an easy ride.”
To his surprise, the older man had chuckled. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Cole was prepared to take William at his word. He’d called his team together, told them the situation—and stipulated that Elizabeth was not to receive any special treatment. And even if at first he hadn’t liked the idea of having her around, Cole couldn’t deny that he’d enjoyed this morning. The look on Elizabeth’s face when she’d realized exactly who she’d be working under . . . that had wiped the haughty look away. She was no one special here. As she rapped loudly on his glass door, he had a feeling that the message hadn’t gotten through to her yet. Well, he was happy to be the one to deliver it.
He continued to read through the report in front of him, waiting for her to knock a second time, and then finally looked up, as though he’d had no idea she was out there. He beckoned her in, motioning for her to sit down in the chair opposite him. She remained standing. He guessed she thought it made her seem more formidable. He leaned back and looked up at her expectantly, almost pleasantly.
“So, Elizabeth. What can I do for you?”
Up close, she looked even angrier than he’d been expecting. He could see her fighting against it, drawing on all that upper-class English restraint to keep her feelings in check. She tossed her head back, sending her fine blonde hair showering over her shoulders. It was shorter than he remembered. She must have had it cut, trying to look professional for her first day. It looked kinda cute that way . . . Jeez—where had that come from? He forced himself away from those thoughts and back to her furious green eyes.
She was blunt and to the point.
“Kathleen came to see me. Told me about the little project she was giving to me.” She managed to make “project” sound like a dirty word.
“Oh?” he said mildly.
“Oh?” Her voice cracked. “That’s all you can say? I’ve got a degree from Cambridge and you expect me to spend a week going through magazines with Post-its?” There was no mistaking the indignation in her voice.
“And,” she went on, growing shrill, “as if that wasn’t bad enough, I have to go out and get coffee for everyone!”
It took all of Cole’s self-control not to laugh out loud. Instead, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, as though this was one problem he felt he shouldn’t have to deal with.
“You know, I’m not really sure how much more we’ll be able to give you to do at the moment.” He made sure to sound perfectly reasonable, knowing that would irritate her more. “My department is filled with experienced professionals. We’re talking ex-investment bankers, management consultants, senior brand managers. They’re the best in their field, and they all have something to contribute. You, on the other hand . . .” He trailed off, allowing her to know exactly what he thought of her abilities.
Elizabeth saw the amused look in Cole’s eyes and knew she was fighting a losing battle. This was payback for the last time they’d met, pure and simple. She tugged at a button on her charcoal jacket, feeling frustrated. She thought of all the beautiful suits she’d bought the previous week, foolishly excited about starting her new job. If she was going to be sifting through moldy old boxes filled with dusty magazines, then she might as well put the suits away and come in jeans tomorrow.
“But there must be something else you can give me to do,” she pressed. It was a last-ditch attempt to get Cole to be reasonable.
“Maybe in time,” he told her. “Once you’ve proved yourself. But I’ve been told you start at the bottom, like everyone else.”
“Yes, but—” she stopped abruptly. But what? But the bottom should mean something different for her? Even she could see how ridiculous that sounded.
He saw her floundering and went in for the kill.
“Look,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “If you’ve got a problem with this, feel free to take it up with Daddy.”
You’d just love that, wouldn’t you? she thought to herself. Well, she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.
“There’s no problem,” she said tightly.
He grinned, letting her know exactly how much he was enjoying this.
“Good girl. Then I suggest you get a move on with that coffee? I’m betting there’s an office full of thirsty people out there.”
It took all her willpower to bite back the sharp retort on the tip of her tongue. With as much dignity as she could muster, she turned and walked out of his office and went to fetch a notebook to take down the coffee orders.
Elizabeth’s day didn’t get any better after that. By the time everyone went home, she was so fed up that she had changed her mind and was prepared to complain to her father. But when she called his extension, his assistant put her through to Uncle Piers instead. Apparently, William had headed back to Aldringham to deal with some Amber-related drama.
“Is there anything I can help you with?” Piers asked.
Elizabeth hesitated, tempted to tell him the whole story. He sounded so concerned, and she knew he would listen and sympathize with her. She was aware that some people found Piers a little plodding and foolish, but that’s what made him far more approachable than her father. She had always been able to confide in her kindly Uncle Piers—had lost count of the times he had interceded with William on her behalf. But still . . . it wasn’t fair to drag him into this.
“No,” she said. “No. Everything’s fine.”
Promising Piers that she would catch up with him over dinner soon, she put the phone down feeling a lot happier. She was sure she could find some way to deal with Cole.
17
_________
Amber Melville took a long drag on a Marlboro Light as Perkins nosed the Bentley through the gates of Aldringham. The first thing she saw was her father’s Mercedes in the driveway.
“Fuck,” she swore under her breath. She quickly hit the button for the electric window and dropped the cigarette outside. It wouldn’t do for him to catch her smoking on top of everything else.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she swore again.
She’d been prepared to deal with her mother, but not him. Frankly, she was surprised he was even here. Maybe that was naïve. She’d just been kicked out of her third boarding school in less than a year. Even Daddy had to sit up and take notice this time. Opening up her vintage handbag, she pulled out some tiger balm and slicked a little under her eyes. Immediately they started watering. It was a trick she’d learned a while back. Tears were always the best defense in these situations. She only hoped no one noticed the intense mentholated smell.
She left Perkins to unload her bags and went into the hallway. Mrs. Hutchins was there to greet her, thin-lipped and unwelcoming.
“Your parents are waiting for you in the drawing room,” she said stiffly.
Amber heard disapproval in her tone but didn’t care. The old bitch needed to mind her own business.
“Could you get me a still mineral water?” Amber said offhandedly as she walked by.
The housekeeper sniffed at her lack of “please” or “thank you.” But she did as she was told.
Outside the drawing room, Amber paused to check her appearance in the gilded mirror. She liked what she saw. Adolescence had been kind to Amber Melville. At fifteen, she was all long-limbed coltishness. Tall and slender with a tumble of platinum blonde curls and skin like cream, she was clearly going to
be the most beautiful of the Melville girls—no idle compliment. Her angelic looks also helped her get away with a lot, and she knew it. No one who gazed into her cornflower blue eyes, wide with childlike innocence, could ever believe she caused the mischief that she did.
She was already plotting how she could talk her way out of this one. She wasn’t even sure what all the fuss was about. It wasn’t like last time, when she’d gotten caught smoking pot. She’d only had her belly button pierced—it wasn’t exactly the crime of the century. The school wouldn’t have known anything about it, if it hadn’t been for all the girls crowding around when she was changing for phys ed, wanting to have a look. Naturally the gym teacher had felt compelled to come over to see what was going on. But it was ridiculous to expel someone over that, in Amber’s opinion—although possibly it hadn’t helped that she’d stolen the money for the piercing from her English teacher’s purse.
“But you have a perfectly generous allowance,” the headmistress had said, clearly confused and disturbed by the behavior of one of her pupils.
Amber had no answer. Stealing the cash had been part of the dare. She hadn’t questioned the logic behind it.
She was still surprised her father had bothered coming home to deliver the lecture. Usually he wouldn’t have time for something so mundane—he was far too busy running his empire. In fact, Amber could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen him over the past eighteen months. It was nothing new to her. He’d always been a distant figure. She knew, without doubt or self-pity, that she was the least favorite of his children. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Elizabeth was so similar to him, it was frightening. And everyone could tell he had a soft spot for Caitlin and was tortured by her absence from his life. Whereas Amber . . . well, she was probably most like her mother, and Isabelle wasn’t exactly someone he valued. Being bad was all she had.
She hadn’t always been that way, of course. When she was little, she had behaved impeccably. But no one except her mother had ever seemed to notice or care. Then one day, when she was five, she’d found some matches to play with. She’d accidentally set fire to her granny’s favorite Oriental rug and nearly burned down the East Wing. Her father had rushed back from London. Afterward, she didn’t remember his anger or the ten minutes of spanking she’d received as a punishment. All she remembered was that he had finally noticed her. From then on, acting out had been her way of getting attention.
She rubbed on a little more tiger balm, stinging her eyes until they watered, then knocked on the door. Her father’s commanding voice boomed out, telling her to come in. Arranging her features into a suitably contrite expression, Amber pushed open the heavy oak door.
The tableau inside was a familiar one for Amber. Her father sat in the center of the room, unsmiling, concerned only with the inconvenience of having to deal with his wayward daughter. Her mother was in the corner, crying softly, no doubt concerned with what her friends would think if they found out about this latest humiliation. For the first time, Amber wondered what they were planning to do to her. Maybe send her to the local private school? That wouldn’t be so bad. It might be fun to be at home for a change. Or perhaps she would get the rest of the term off . . .
Now that would be a bonus. It wasn’t like she needed a high school diploma anyway. As soon as she turned sixteen she was leaving school. You didn’t need qualifications to be a model, like Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, or Christy Turlington. Amber had pictures of them all on her wall. She spent hours in front of the mirror, copying their poses, and secretly thought she was just as good-looking as they were. She just needed to survive the next year and then she could do whatever she wanted. And that meant getting through this afternoon as unscathed as possible.
She turned her tear-filled eyes toward her father.
“I’m really sorry, Daddy,” she began, wiping her wet cheeks. Damn—she’d overdone it with the tiger balm.
But before she could get any further, her father held up his hand. “No, I don’t want to hear your excuses. Frankly, I’m fed up with them.”
Amber was used to her father’s lectures by now, but even she felt a shiver run through her as she heard his cold voice.
William leaned forward in his chair, his face set in a grim expression. “We’ve tried this the easy way, Amber, and it doesn’t seem to have worked. So now you’ve forced me to find a more permanent solution.”
Amber swallowed hard. This didn’t sound good.
His permanent solution turned out to be yet another boarding school. Amber didn’t even get a chance to unpack. Barely an hour after she arrived, she left again. This time for Beaumont Manor, in Yorkshire.
“Beaumont Manor is an institution designed specifically for discipline cases,” her father had informed her. “They have vast experience dealing with troubled children. I think this will be the making of you, my girl.”
So much for getting an easy ride.
Amber didn’t bother sulking. There was no point. It never worked with her father, only her pushover of a mother. Plus, she wasn’t actually that bothered about Beaumont Manor. Her father might like to talk up the harsh regime, but there was always an angle in these places; you just had to know where to look. And she was confident that if anyone was going to find it, then she would.
The North Yorkshire Moors were as bleak and desolate as Amber had imagined: ruined abbeys and manor houses, framed by barren fields, creepy forests, and arid farming country. Beaumont Manor itself was a brooding Gothic castle dating back to the thirteenth century. Perched on top of a rocky cliff, it stood high above the rugged Yorkshire coastline. Exposed for centuries to the driving rain and cruel winds of the English winter, its gray stone buildings were patchy, the gargoyles chipped at the edges. It looked more like a prison than a school.
Inside, Amber was met by a grim-faced Mrs. Dauston, her house mistress. Overweight and underloved, she had wound up a bitter spinster—the kind of person who should never have been allowed to teach. Each year, she watched all these privileged young girls go on to lead the kind of life she could only dream about, and it left a sour taste. She was not averse to taking her disappointment with life out on her charges.
She looked Amber Melville up and down. She had seen her type before. The angelic face didn’t fool her for a second. Too rich and too beautiful, she needed to be taken down a peg or two. She issued Amber a three-inch thick, leather-bound rule book—Beaumont Manor’s Code of Honor—and told her to memorize it.
“Anyone found breaking these rules will be dealt with ruthlessly,” she said in her harsh Scottish burr, as they walked through the labyrinth of corridors to Amber’s new room. The words echoed back at them, bouncing off the high ceilings and making the girl jump.
It was only September, but already the place was freezing. Stone floors and a permanent draft from ill-fitted doors and windows didn’t bode well. Neither did the tiny radiators. Amber didn’t even want to think what it was going to be like in midwinter. No effort had been made to create a homey feel. Unlike Amber’s previous schools, there were no vases of fresh flowers or noticeboards advertising sports fixtures or clubs. She was actually beginning to worry. Maybe getting kicked out of St. Margaret’s hadn’t been the smartest move after all.
Amber’s room turned out to be just as unwelcoming as the rest of the place. It was a tiny, cramped space with high, narrow windows. Peeling wallpaper and a distinctive musty odor suggested there was a moisture problem. The furniture consisted of two narrow single beds, two desks, and two small wardrobes. The walls were bare apart from a No Smoking sign. Her roommate didn’t look like much fun, either. A short, plump girl with huge tortoiseshell glasses, her hair tied back in a severe bun, she greeted Amber with a stony face.
“My name is Eva Mendoza,” she said in precise, over enunciated English. “Eet is good to meet you, Amber.”
The accent confirmed what her South American name and dark coloring had already told Amber.
“Eva is class pres
ident,” Mrs. Dauston said proudly. Eva dropped her eyes, seemingly embarrassed by the praise. “She is one of our success stories.”
Amber got the feeling that Eva’s behavior was supposed to be a good role model for her. Oh, great, she thought, eyeing the other girl suspiciously. They’d obviously paired her up with the biggest square in the class. Eva would probably be reporting back whenever she screwed up.
But Amber couldn’t have been more wrong. As soon as Mrs. Dauston left, Eva’s expression relaxed.
“So what are you ’ere for?” she asked, collapsing on the narrow bed. She took off her glasses, shook out her hair, and undid a couple of the buttons on her blouse. Within seconds she was transformed from a plain, serious schoolgirl into a Latin American minx. Amber realized she’d mistaken to-die-for curves for puppy fat and failed to see through a carefully planned disguise.
“What am I in for?” Amber shrugged. “Just about everything.”
Eva nodded knowingly. “Me, too.” She reached under the bed and pulled out a pack of Camels, offering one to Amber. Amber hesitated. Her gaze moved to the No Smoking sign.
“What about . . . ?”
Eva gave her a sly smile. “There are too many rules ’ere. You just need to figure out how to break them without anyone noticing.”
Amber grinned back. This was turning out to be her kind of place after all.
Eva was the ideal role model for Amber—just not in the way Mrs. Dauston had hoped. The product of a union between a corrupt member of Brazil’s Workers’ Party and a voluptuous film star, she had the smarts and body to get away with whatever she wanted. After she turned five, her parents barely spoke to each other or to her. With little parental interest or control, Eva had grown up wild, doing whatever she wanted with little fear of reprisal. It was something the two girls had in common. Being packed off to Beaumont Manor had been her parents’ way of brushing an embarrassing problem under the carpet, Eva told Amber, without any sense of self-pity. Amber knew exactly what she meant.
