All Chapters of Too Late, Mr. Whitlock: The Heiress He Divorced: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

On Monday morning I took the elevator to the forty-first floor of the building on Water Street, and the first person to speak to me was a man who thought I was there to bring him coffee.He was in his fifties, silver at the temples, in a three-piece suit, standing outside the executive suite with a printout in his hand. He glanced at my coat and my flat shoes and the paper bag from the deli downstairs, and said, "Oh, good. Black, two sugars. And can you find out why the Savannah numbers aren't on my desk?"Behind me, Okafor made a very small sound."Good morning," I said. "I'm Leah Ashcombe. You must be Gordon Pryce."His face did several things in a row. "Ms. Ashcombe. I'm so sorry. I didn't— Hector said you'd be coming in, but I assumed—""That I'd be taller." I held out my hand. He shook it. His palm was damp. "Gordon, the Savannah numbers aren't on your desk because they're on mine. I asked for them on Friday. Page four has a fuel s

Vivienne Hart waited until she was inside her car, with the doors locked and the engine running, before she let herself scream.It wasn't a long scream. She was too well brought up for long screams. Just one sharp burst into the leather of the steering wheel, and then she sat back, fixed her lipstick in the rearview mirror, and checked that nobody in the parking garage had seen.I'll take whatever you're willing to give me.Grant Whitlock had never said anything like that to her. He hadn't said it in two years of engagement, or when she'd cried at his father's memorial, or on the night Arthur's will was read, when she'd stood in the rain outside his office and begged him to tell the old man no.He'd looked at her that night with those polite grey eyes and said, I'm sorry, Viv. It's three years. Then it's over.Three years. She'd waited. She'd let her father mortgage the Hampton house for the second time, then the third, because Whitlock money was coming. She'd smiled at parties while

My speech was four minutes long.I'd written it at my mother's desk at two in the morning, on the back of a Savannah fuel report, and crossed out everything clever. What was left was simple.I talked about the children's wing. About a girl I'd once known who'd spent three weeks in a hospital bed when she was twelve, after a car accident that killed her mother, and how the only thing that had made it bearable was a nurse named Rosa who brought her books from home. Rosa had read her The Secret Garden in a terrible Yorkshire accent, two chapters a night, and never once told her to stop crying. I didn't say the girl was me. Everyone in that ballroom knew anyway."The new wing will have a library," I said. "With a reading chair beside every bed. That was the only condition of the gift. The rest is up to the doctors. They know what they're doing. I only know what it's like to be twelve and frightened and very bored."When I finished, nobody clapped for a full second. Then everyone did.I st

The New York Post ran it on page six on Sunday morning.The engagement was on page five: a large photograph of Vivienne in pale pink, beaming, beside a blurry shot of Grant looking like he wanted to murder someone. WHITLOCK HEIR TO WED AGAIN?Page six was me.Me on the terrace at the Pierre, in midnight blue, with Sebastian Kerr standing beside me. Somebody had caught the exact second I'd almost smiled at him.ASHCOMBE HEIRESS AND KERR CAPITAL CEO: A MERGER OF HEARTS?"I'm going to kill him," I said."Which one?" my grandfather asked mildly, from behind his own copy at the breakfast table."The photographer. Sebastian. Grant. Vivienne. Whoever's selling them to the Post." I threw the paper down beside the toast rack. "Did you do this?""Did I arrange for you to be photographed with Sebastian Kerr? No." He turned a page. "Am I unhappy about it? Also no.""Grandfather.""It's good for the stock price. A Kerr–Ashcombe alliance, even a rumored one, makes Whitlock's board very nervous." He

I didn't sleep on Wednesday night.I lay in my childhood bed with the lamp on, reading Okafor's chart until the red clusters swam. At two I gave up and went down to the kitchen in my socks. My grandfather was already there, in his dressing gown, eating cold chicken out of the refrigerator with his fingers, which I had never in my life seen him do."Sit," he said. "You're letting the cold in."I sat. He pushed the plate toward me. I took a piece."Kerr called me tonight," he said. "Very courteous. He wanted to know which way you'd vote.""What did you tell him?""That I've never once known which way you'd vote, and I raised you." He wiped his fingers on a dish towel. "He laughed. I didn't like the laugh.""You told me to let it burn.""I did." He looked at me across the scrubbed pine table, the same table where he'd taught me long division and the value of a ton of coal. "I'm an old man who's been angry at the Whitlocks for fift