A Christmas Temptation

by Karen Booth

  Ms. Adams turned a page of the will and readjusted her reading glasses. “And finally, we move on to the major assets.” Everyone seemed to sit a little straighter, bending their ears and hanging on every word. “‘To my eldest granddaughter, Mindy Eden, I leave my apartment overlooking Central Park. I have had many happy years there and I hope she chooses to make it her permanent residence.’”

  Mindy shifted in her seat, but made no indication as to whether or not she was happy about the news.

  “‘To my middle granddaughter, Sophie Eden, I leave Eden House, the family’s vacation home outside the city limits of Scarsdale, New York. She loves the house even more than I do, and I know she will take good care of it.’”

  Under the table, Sophie’s hand found Jake’s. She tugged on it hard. “Did you know that?” he whispered.

  Sophie nodded. “Yes. But what does she mean middle granddaughter?”

  There was no time to discuss it. The lawyer continued. “‘And finally, the most important piece of my legacy, Eden’s Department Store. The business and all its holdings, including the building and the property on which it stands, will go to my granddaughters, Mindy Eden, Sophie Eden and Emma Stewart.’”

  There was an audible gasp in the room. Sophie’s eyes flew back to Jake’s, then over to Ms. Adams, who held a finger to her lips.

  “Please allow me to continue.” She looked down again and returned to the text. “‘I promised my son, Mitchell, that I would not divulge this information, but now that he and I are both gone, I feel that the truth must come out. Emma is my granddaughter, the product of a brief dalliance between my son and his wife’s sister, Jill Stewart. I was not proud that he had strayed, but that should in no way reflect poorly on Emma. She has spent her entire life caught up in an impossible situation. I felt it was only right for her to have her piece of my fortune, along with her half sisters.’”

  You could have heard a pin drop in that room. Everyone was dead silent. Ms. Adams held up her finger. “‘There is one stipulation to the ownership of Eden’s, however. The three granddaughters must proceed in good faith to keep the store in business for two years by running the store together. If any of the three do not agree to this, they shall forfeit their share to the remaining heir or heirs, but the stipulation remains in place. The property and business may not be sold or handed over to any entity until after a period of two years. At that time, the three granddaughters must come to a mutual agreement regarding the fate of the store. It is my most sincere dying wish that Eden’s be run by a new generation of women, and I hope that they will endeavor to make it as grand a success as it once was.’”

  The words sank in and Jake could feel himself shrinking in his chair. The store had indeed gone to Sophie and Mindy. It had also gone to someone with whom he had zero relationship, someone he knew nothing about. Even worse, the heirs were required to keep the store running for another two years. There never was a deal for him to pursue. He’d never had a chance. And there was an excellent chance that this woman he’d fallen for, the one he couldn’t get enough of, had known all along.

  Ten

  Sophie was frozen in shock. What had just happened? And what was she supposed to do about it? Her eyes glazed over. The room started to spin. Everything her grandmother had ever said to her echoed in her head. You’ll run Eden’s one day, Sophie. You will. She felt light-headed, as if she might faint. And then she heard a sound that yanked her back to her reality—her mother, sobbing.

  “Mom. Mom. It’s okay.” Sophie reached out and rubbed her back. She had no reason to reassure her mom that anything would be okay, but it was her impulse to comfort her, if only to quiet her cries. It was adding an unbearable layer of awkward to the tension in the room.

  Sophie’s mom looked up at her with mascara streaming down her face. Something about her pained expression made her look even more like Mindy, which was quite a feat. They were already near picture-perfect duplicates of each other. “I never wanted this to come out. But your grandmother never liked me. She never thought I was good enough for your father.” Her mom whipped around and shot her own sister, Sophie’s aunt Jill, the most glaring look. “You always had to have everything that was mine, didn’t you?”

  “Excuse me?” Jill answered with venom in her voice, pushing her chair back from the table and standing up straight. “You got everything from your husband. Everything. Meanwhile, I was paid off to lie to my own daughter about who her father was.”

  Ms. Adams, the lawyer who’d been leading the proceedings, stood and made her way over to Jill. “Ladies. I need to ask for civil discourse or I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises.”

  Sophie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her heart would have been a little more broken by each new revelation if her brain wasn’t struggling so hard to put it all into context. Everything she thought she knew about her family was wrong. What other secrets were lurking between her mom and her aunt Jill? What else had her father done in his lifetime that would come back to haunt them all?

  “You knew this was going to come out today, didn’t you?” Mom asked Jill.

  “Ladies...” Ms. Adams interjected with the leading tone required for a situation as tense as this.

  “I had a pretty good idea, yes. And I have been waiting a very long time for it. Emma hasn’t had the life she deserved. Now she’ll have her birthright.”

  Her birthright. Anger began to bubble under Sophie’s skin, a reaction that shocked her. She wasn’t an angry person, but Eden’s was also Sophie’s birthright, something Sophie had dreamed about since she was a little girl. She’d put in the time over the last several years. She’d been the one at Gram’s side, helping with the day-to-day, doing everything in her power to keep her grandmother’s vision alive. It was one thing to have to share it with Mindy, the one who didn’t care about it at all, the one who always had to be right and never gave Sophie the respect she deserved. It was another to have to share it with someone who might as well be a stranger.

  Sophie scanned the conference table, and when she looked up, Emma was staring at her. Sophie’s breath wasn’t merely stuck in her chest. It felt as though it was never going to leave her body again. The look in Emma’s eyes could only be described as disgust. Maybe even plain and simple hatred. Emma might have come here today in the hopes that a wrong would be righted, but Sophie was still getting up to speed. Much of the emotion coursing through Sophie had to do with confusion. She and Emma had never been close, partly because her mother and her sister had always kept their distance. If anything, their mother was more prone to disparaging comments uttered after one too many dirty martinis.

  None of the bitterness between her mom and Aunt Jill made sense when Sophie was growing up. Now it was all coming together. Her mother had been living with the knowledge that her husband and her own sister had an affair. That made Sophie’s mind run off on yet another tangent. How long did it go on? Was it a onetime thing? Or was their mother made to suffer that indignity on a regular basis while Mindy and Sophie were none the wiser?

  Emma rose from her seat and looked down at her mother. “Let’s go. We’ve gotten what we came for today.” She then directed her sights at Sophie again. The fury in her eyes had faded, replaced by ice-cold determination. “Sophie. Mindy. I’ll begin work at Eden’s on the second of January. I expect to have an office. One that is no smaller or any less nice than either of yours. Please make the appropriate accommodations.”

  Sophie and Mindy exchanged glances. Sophie was surprised Mindy didn’t lunge for her and tackle her right there in the conference room.

  “Of course. That won’t be a problem,” Sophie replied, thinking that this was going to be nothing but a huge problem. Gram’s office would have to become Emma’s. That made Sophie’s heart hurt. Still, she had to respect the wishes of the woman she loved and admired. If Gram wanted Emma to be part of the operation, there had to have been
a reason for it. Gram must have believed that this could all work out. Sophie prayed that was true.

  Sophie and Jake both got up from the table and wandered out into the hall. She sought comfort in his arms the instant they were alone, but he stood straight as a board, putting only one arm around her, and even that wasn’t a true embrace.

  “I need a hug, Jake. I need reassurance right now. That was a complete nightmare.”

  He didn’t say anything, but she felt the rise of his chest as he drew in a deep breath.

  “Jake. Hug me. Say something. Please. Can’t you see that I’m upset?” She took a half step back. He wouldn’t even look her in the eye. “What is going on?”

  Finally, their gazes connected. “What’s the one thing you always told me when you talked about your grandmother?”

  Sophie shrugged, unsure of why he would even ask this question. “I don’t know. That I loved her more than anything?”

  He nodded, slowly, but it wasn’t so much agreement as it was confirmation that she was on the right track. “And?”

  “That we were very close? That we talked all the time?”

  “Exactly.”

  The air seemed to stand still as his one-word reply echoed in her head. “You think I knew about this business with my cousin being my half sister? Because I didn’t. I am as shocked as anybody right now.”

  He rolled his eyes and turned away from her, running his hand through his hair. “Do you really expect me to believe that? What kind of family keeps that sort of thing a secret? All this time?”

  “What kind of family? I don’t know, Jake. Apparently mine. But don’t act like this is somehow my fault. I knew nothing about it. Nothing.”

  A low grumble escaped Jake’s lips. Suddenly that heavenly sound was no longer so pleasant. “Okay. Fine. I’ll buy that much, but I am not about to buy the fact that you knew nothing about these stipulations about Eden’s. You let me send you fruit baskets and bring you flowers and generally make a fool of myself when you knew that you were in no position to sell.”

  Sophie’s eyebrows drew together. “I never asked you to do any of those things. If you acted foolishly, that was your doing, not mine. If you honestly think that I knew what was going to happen today, then I don’t know what to say. If you think that little of me, we have a serious problem. A problem that goes well beyond flowers and fruit baskets.”

  “You talked about nothing but how close you and your grandmother were. It was the basis of your entire argument for not selling. I don’t see any way you couldn’t have known about this. All those years of working closely with her and she never said a thing to you about you having another sister? She never said anything about restricting the sale of the business when you inherited it? That seems like an awfully salient detail. I can’t believe you didn’t know about this. I don’t see any way you didn’t know.”

  Sophie wasn’t sure she’d ever heard more hurtful words come out of Jake’s mouth, aside from the morning after their first tryst eight years ago. “I can’t believe you don’t even care that I am deeply upset about what happened today.”

  “Why would you be upset? You got exactly what you wanted. Part ownership of a multibillion-dollar property, and two years to try to make it a success. You have an ironclad legal excuse to do exactly what you wanted all this time. You win, Sophie. You got everything you ever wanted today. The rest of us got screwed.”

  Hundreds of thoughts were colliding in Sophie’s head. None of this made sense. The secrets. The will. Jake’s anger. “You really think I got everything I ever wanted? Because that’s not true.” As her words left her mouth, the weight of what came next became unbearable. She would not get everything she wanted. Because what she truly wanted was Jake. And he thought she’d deceived him. He thought she was some sort of terrible conniving person when Sophie couldn’t have been any less that if she tried.

  “Just be honest about it, Soph. I can’t stand the deception. You were never going to sell to me and you just let me believe there was still a chance.”

  That really got her blood boiling, even hotter than it had been when she started to think about Emma’s claim on Sophie’s birthright. “I told you from the beginning that I didn’t want to sell. You just didn’t want to listen. You knew that I was putty in your hands and you did everything you could to take advantage of that. If I’m guilty of letting you believe in anything, it’s that I let you believe in us, Jake. And judging by this conversation, I guess I was wrong to do that.”

  “Why did you let me come here today, Sophie? To humiliate me? To make it that much worse when I call my business partners and tell them what an idiot I’ve been?” Jake’s expression was unflinching. None of what Sophie was saying was making the slightest bit of an impression. That was the moment when she knew this was over.

  “Do you honestly think I would do that? I’m not even capable of being that conniving.” Sophie wrapped her arms around her waist. “You know what? You are just as much of a jerk now as you were eight years ago. You don’t care about me. You don’t care about my feelings or what I’m going through. I was just a foot in the door, wasn’t I? A chance for you to make a big pile of money and be the big important man.”

  “Don’t criticize me for being successful or good at what I do. That isn’t what this conversation is about, okay? I need to know why you weren’t honest with me. I need to know why you let me believe one thing when you knew all along that it was never going to happen.”

  An awkward and unexpected burst of laughter left Sophie’s lips. She couldn’t help it. The irony of this situation was not lost on her. In fact, it was slapping her in the face, and the sting was going to linger for a very long time. “Sort of what you did to me in school, isn’t it? Be sweet to me and flirt all day long and let me be the girl who makes you feel good about yourself, but never actually give anything back.”

  “That’s not the same thing at all.”

  Now the irony was eating away at Sophie’s insides, hollowing her out. Jake was never going to take a leap with her. Even when this was so much better than last time, it wasn’t what she really wanted it to be. It wasn’t love, returned and given freely. It was love one way. She’d allowed her stupid optimism to get in the way of rational thought. Jake Wheeler wasn’t capable of an emotional investment. Money, yes. His heart? No.

  And to think she’d been prepared to profess her affection for him today. The universe’s timing was impeccable. Here she was being pulled back from the precipice in the nick of time.

  A smaller laugh left Sophie’s lips. “It’s funny, you know.”

  His vision narrowed on her. It was such a waste of his incredible eyes. “There’s nothing funny about this.”

  Sophie threaded her arms into her coat, straightening her spine and forcing her tears back down her throat with nothing but sheer will. “Perhaps we’ll find it funny later. Years from now. When it doesn’t hurt so much.”

  “Sophie, you’ve lost me. And honestly, I don’t have the patience for your clever games right now. If you want to tell me something, just say it and get it over with.”

  His voice sliced through the air like a sharpened blade, destroying everything sweet and kind and beautiful between them. She was no longer sadly resigned to her fate. She was no longer going to be sweet, polite Sophie Eden. She’d had enough. “It’s not a game, Jake. I was going to tell you today that I love you. But you have ruined that. For the second time in my life, actually. You have ripped it to hundreds of pieces. So instead, I’m going to say goodbye. Have a nice life. I never want to see you again.”

  She turned on her heel, the tears starting the instant she could afford to cry, when her face was turned away from Jake and she was marching down to the elevator.

  “Sophie. Stop. Don’t be so dramatic.”

  She couldn’t turn back. She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t see what she had so stupidly be
lieved could be her future. Her life. It was just going to break her heart. She picked up her speed, turning the corner. The elevator door was closing. “Hold it, please!” she called out in desperation. A man stuck out his hand. With a lunge, Sophie’s foot hit the inside of the car and she pulled the rest of herself through the narrow opening. She nearly collapsed against the back wall of the elevator. The doors closed.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?”

  Sophie straightened and smoothed down the front of her coat. She endeavored to keep her breaths even. She told herself that crying would have to be for later. Not now. She’d never be able to stop. “Oh, yes. I’m just fine. Thank you for holding the elevator.” She turned and granted the man a small smile before opening her purse and rifling through it for a tissue.

  The elevator dinged at the lobby floor. The man held the door for her. “No problem. Happy holidays.”

  “Happy holidays to you, too.” For the first time ever, Sophie put no stock in the sentiments behind those words. As she strolled out into the biting-cold day, it felt as though the spirit of Christmas had not only been sucked out of her, it had been taken from the entire city. She not only couldn’t conjure the feeling she looked forward to all year long, it was as if she couldn’t even remember what it felt like. It was simply one more damning detail in her history with Jake. She loved him and he wasn’t capable of giving it back. This time, recovering from the loss might take forever.

  * * *

  Jake took the stairs. He couldn’t get in the elevator that Sophie had just ridden in. He already knew that his nose would betray him and pick up on any traces of her sweet scent. That would just bring back a flood of memories that did nothing to help him out of his predicament. It would do nothing to fix what had transpired over the last hour—the utter dismantling of the most vital plan he’d ever had.