Chapter 5: Forty Million

Lucan doesn't look up from his phone. That's it. That's the whole conversation about her job.

Celine stays in her chair, waiting for the rest of the sentence but obviously there isn't one.

"Mr. Mercer? Last night, I thought—"

"Seven-fifteen tomorrow," he says, and leaves with his coffee.

She sits there with her toast going cold. Two minutes ago she was a woman about to be fired. Now she's a woman who still has a job and no idea why.

The kitchen door bangs. Mrs. Calloway limps in on a walking boot and a cane she insists is not a cane.

"You should be in bed," Celine says.

"I'm resting standing up. Thursday."

"What's Thursday?"

"Lunch. Three guests, three courses. I can't stand that long, so you'll do it."

"Me? I've been here five days."

"Then you have until Thursday." Mrs. Calloway drops a folder on the counter. "The main guest is Gerald Harrington. Whatever you do, don't let him pour his own wine."

"Why not?"

"Because then he'll think the bottle is yours to hand him. Trust me, Miss Arden."

Thursday, 12:40.

Harrington is exactly what Mrs. Calloway's face promised. Loud, silver-haired, laughing before anyone else gets the joke. Lucan sits at the head of the table, saying almost nothing. Adrian, his COO, sits at his left and watches Lucan like he's waiting for him to break something.

"—and I told the board, Cavendish closes Friday or it doesn't close at all," Harrington says. "Don't look at me like that, Lucan."

"I'm not looking at you like anything."

"You've got a face like a funeral."

Celine steps in with the wine. She's poured two glasses already without a single spill, and she's starting to feel almost proud of herself.

She leans over Harrington's glass.

His hand lands on her hip.

She stops pouring. It's not a bump. It's a hand, flat and heavy, and it stays.

"Mr. Harrington," she says.

"Keep going, sweetheart. You're doing fine."

His thumb moves.

She finishes the pour because stopping would be a scene. She sets the bottle down on the far side of Lucan's plate, out of Harrington's reach. She straightens until the hand falls away.

"Fish in four minutes," she says. Her voice comes out thin.

Harrington laughs. "Where did you find this one, Mercer? She's wasted on soup. Smile, love, it's free."

Nobody laughs. Adrian puts his fork down.

She turns for the door. She's one step from it when Lucan speaks.

"Stay where you are."

He doesn't raise his voice. He's looking at Harrington like he's reading something bad on a screen.

"Mr. Harrington is leaving."

"I'm sorry?"

"Adrian will walk you out."

"Lucan, it's Cavendish. You're doing this over the help?"

"You put your hand on someone in my house." Lucan stands. "Out."

Adrian already has the door open. Harrington grabs his jacket and says something ugly about regrets on his way through it, and then the room is silent. Two full plates. One empty chair.

"I'll clear," Celine says.

"Sit."

"Mr. Mercer, it's my—"

"Celine. Sit."

It's the first time he has said her name. She sits.

He pours water and slides the glass across the cloth. She picks it up and puts it down again. Her hands won't hold still.

"Did he hurt you?"

"No."

"Don't give me the answer you think I want."

"He didn't hurt me. I moved. It's over." She stares at the glass. "You shouldn't have done that. He matters. I heard the name, I'm not stupid. Let me call him. I'll say I tripped, I'll say it was my fault—"

"No."

"Mr. Mercer—"

"There are other contacts." He says it flat, like it's the weather. Then he walks out.

She stays at the table. Her chest feels strange, tight and warm at once, and she doesn't like either feeling.

Ten minutes later she's carrying the tray down the east hall because the kitchen needs the plates and she needs something to hold.

The study door is open two inches. She hears Adrian.

"That was Harrington's office. He's pulling the Cavendish deal."

She freezes.

"Lucan. That's forty million."

"I know what it is."

"Over a staff member."

A long quiet. She hears a clock ticking somewhere inside.

"Drop it."

"I'm not dropping it, I'm flagging it because—"

"Adrian."

One word. Then footsteps, coming toward the door.

She runs. Not fast, not loud, but she runs. Left at the corner, right through the pantry, past the stepladder with the cracked rung. By the time the study door opens, she's at the kitchen sink with the tap going over a plate that was clean twenty minutes ago.

Nobody comes after her.

She turns off the water. Her hands are shaking. She sets the plate down before she drops it.

Upstairs, she sits on the edge of her bed with her coat still on.

"Forty million," she says out loud.

It sounds like a typo.

She does the math slowly, then all at once. Six minutes. Between the soup and the fish, he gave away more money than she'll see in her whole life. He didn't ask her. He didn't tell her. He let her stand there offering to say she tripped, offering to swallow a stranger's hand on her body so his deal could live, and he said there are other contacts like she wasn't worth explaining.

Nobody has ever paid for her before. She has spent two years making herself small. Taking the stairs slowly. Saying I'm fine at the right moments. She doesn't know where to put a man who doesn't think she's small.

And he doesn't even know. He just burned a fortune on a woman who won't be here by spring.

She takes out her phone. She finds the HR address at the bottom of her contract, the one for notice, and starts typing.

Dear Mr. Mercer, I am writing to formally resign

Down the hall, a door closes. His footsteps. Slow, unhurried, going the other way.

She promised herself one rule in that kitchen the night she got the news. Do not let him matter. One rule. It was supposed to be easy.

Her thumb hovers over the screen.

She deletes the message.

She doesn't ask herself why.