Page 25 of Devotion
“Why hasn’t she responded about the job yet?”
Trisha stared at me. “Did you hear a single word I just said?”
“Every word. You’re very loud. It’s impossible not to. Now, the job. Did she respond to you?”
“No. She didn’t. And you can worry about that later because you have a board meeting in forty minutes and you’re sitting here in a t-shirt thinking about a fake wedding.”
She was right about the meeting. She was wrong about me worrying about it later.
But I got dressed. Put on the suit. Did the face.
The Vale Industries boardroom was exactly as I remembered it from the one time my father had let me visit as a teenager. Long, polished, smelling of old money and new leather. Thechair at the head of the table was the same one. I was sure of it. Same dark wood. Same high back.
I stared at it while the room filled.
My father’s voice surfaced from somewhere I thought I’d locked. Sitting in this room at sixteen, brought along because Eleanor insisted, and my father turning to a colleague and saying, loudly enough for me to hear, “Let him watch. It’s the closest he’ll get to the business. The boy would rather play pretend.”
Play pretend. That’s what he called acting. Playing. Like the career I’d built, the awards, the global recognition, was a child’s game.
“Mr. Vale?”
I blinked. The room was full. Twelve men and women, looking at me with varying degrees of skepticism and curiosity. Esmeralda sat at the far end. My stepmother. Dressed in black, pearls, perfect posture. She looked at me the way she’d always looked at me, like I was a stain on a white tablecloth that she couldn’t remove without making a scene.
I sat in my father’s chair.
The old man must be turning in his grave. The thought gave me a satisfaction I didn’t bother hiding.
Paul Hargrove spoke first. Silver hair, silver tongue, a man who wielded politeness like a blade. He raised the question of my public image with the gentle precision of a surgeon explaining why amputation was necessary.
“The company needs stability,” he said. “The tabloids have run, what, six stories in the past month? Various women. Nightclub appearances. The hospital incident.” He folded his hands on the table. “With respect, Mr. Vale, the board needs to know that the man leading this company projects responsibility. Not… entertainment.”
He said “entertainment” the way you’d say “infection.”
Esmeralda said nothing. She didn’t need to. Paul was doing her work for her, and the slight upturn at the corner of her mouth told me she knew it.
I was about to respond when Eleanor’s voice cut through.
“Christopher is engaged.”
The room went still.
I turned my head slowly and looked at my grandmother. She sat beside me in her navy cardigan and pearl earrings, hands folded, face serene, as if she’d just announced the weather forecast rather than a complete fabrication.
“He’s settling down,” she continued. “The tabloid history is exactly that. History. I suggest the board focus on quarterly projections rather than gossip columns.”
Paul raised an eyebrow. Esmeralda’s composure fractured for half a second before she smoothed it over. The room recalibrated. The meeting continued. I sat through the rest of it with my hands flat on the table and my face giving away nothing, which was impressive considering my grandmother had just committed me to a fake engagement without consulting me first.
The elevator. Just the two of us. I waited until the doors closed.
“When exactly did I get engaged?”
Eleanor adjusted her pearl earring. “About twenty minutes ago.”
“You lied to a room full of people who will expect to meet this fiancée.”
“Then you’d better find one.”
She said it the way she said everything. Simply. Factually. Like the solution was obvious and I was being slow.
