Page 24 of Devotion
I was in my home office, jacket off, bourbon untouched on the desk beside a stack of quarterly reports I still hadn’t read, when the notification came through on the private line.
I picked up the phone.
The message was long. Earnest. Slightly rambling, like how she talked in person, full of feelings she couldn’t quite contain. She thanked me for the meeting and the public statement Trisha had just released, clarifying that I hadn’t been hurt by her restaurant.
The message ended with:I’m still thinking about the job offer. I’ll let you know soon.
I set the phone down.
She was thanking me. The woman whose life I’d wrecked was writing me a thank-you note at midnight. She was cleaning up my mess and calling it generosity.
I thought about the resort, kissing her hand. The scent of her. Coconut and citrus.
I was planning to put up an act. A charming man controls the room. I’d been performing my entire life, reading people, adjusting, giving them the version they wanted to see.
But with her, it had come too easy, too natural. The words, the gestures. It flowed without effort, without calculation, and that was the part that kept me sitting at this desk at midnight staring at a text message from a woman I’d known for less than a month.
Morning. Trisha was in the doorway of my office before I’d finished my first coffee, arms crossed, wearing a blazer over what appeared to be her husband’s t-shirt, glasses crooked.
“I sent you the pre-recording of the interview,” Trisha said. “It airs next week. The pre-cut looks good. Claire Devereaux tried to tear you apart and your little chef held the line without breaking a sweat.” She tilted her head. “She called you kind. On camera. To a reporter who wanted your head.”
“I watched the pre-recording already.”
Trisha studied me. I could feel her reading the room the way she always did.
“It’s been handled, but I kinda feel bad for her. This is a good person, Christopher. A real, actual, good person, and keeping the fact that you ate the kiwi on purpose is still killing my conscience?—”
“What would you think if I asked her to marry me?”
Trisha kept talking. “—You owe her a lot and not even the compensation you gave her is?—”
She stopped.
Her mouth was still open. Her hand was still raised mid-gesture. She looked like someone had pressed pause on a person.
“What?” she whispered.
“You heard me.”
“Say it again.”
“I said what would you think if I asked her to marry me.”
The scream that came out of Trisha Park could have shattered the windows.
“WHAT?! MARRY? Did you just say MARRY? Christopher Vale, have you lost your entire mind? Did the kiwi do something to your brain? Do I need to call a neurologist?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“I WILL NOT KEEP MY VOICE DOWN!”
I looked at the phone on my desk. Face-down. Her message still on the screen underneath.
She looked like a woman who could do anything for the right person. And she didn’t seem greedy. I’d offered more than rebuilding her restaurant, a full financial package, new equipment, expansion capital, and she’d refused most of it. She’d asked for a handwritten quote. A quote. From an interview I barely remembered giving.
“That poor girl,” Trisha said, quieter now but still pacing. “You want to drag her into the Vale circus? Into a fake marriage for a company you don’t even want? You want to put a ring on her finger and parade her in front of a board that will chew her up before the appetizer course?”
When Trisha finally ran out of words, I looked up. Then I frowned.
