“You’re going to hold me to the employment contract? Even after all this? After you ruined everything?” I huffed out a laugh that was not at all amused.
“Of course.” He shrugged. “A deal’s a deal.”
For half a second, I thought about it. About going back to Warrington and pretending this whole week hadn’t happened. But then I thought about Grey’s face when he talked about how much the Hell’s Kitchen project meant to him.
“Yeah, no. We’re going through with the deal.”
Dad shook his head with fond exasperation. “See what I mean? No balls. But don’t worry. Now we have five more years to work on it.” He winked. “And now that you know about Marlette, I could use your help in that arena too. Desi’s a brilliant researcher and moneyman, but the man lacks vision.”
“Desi,” I repeated, stomach plummeting. Grey had said Desi was investing in an LLC outside of York, though the man had denied it in our meeting. “You and Desi Martinez own Marlette.”
My father nodded excitedly, practically rocking up and down on the balls of his feet in the soft sand now that he’d gotten his way. It turned my stomach. “We were trying to shift York’s most important clients over to Marlette before my brother Mark did something stupid! But it wasn’t easy. No one knows who Marlette is, and we couldn’t tell them. So we had to start small.”
“You’ve been undercutting York’s clients.”
“I’ve been creating a backup plan. Something to protect our family against ruthless raiders like Grey Blackwood.”
I snorted. I knew exactly what ruthless looked like.
“I have to go. Where are my things?” I needed to find Grey, to explain. I didn’t believe for a second that he had simply left without trying to talk to me. He was better than that, more honorable. My father thought he could get me to believe it because it was something he would have done. But Grey was a better man.
He wouldn’t have believed my father’s lies. How could he have, after everything I’d told him about my father using lies to manipulate people? Didn’t he trust me at least enough to stick around and ask me?
“I packed them for you and put them in my room. I knew you’d want to head back to Vermont today and close things up there before heading back to the city.”
I turned to leave, walking like a zombie until I hit the steps of the boardwalk. After getting my bags from my parents’ room, I searched through them for my phone. The power was off, so I turned it on. After a second, a text came through with a ping.
Grey: Where are you?
The tears I’d been fighting since the beach came then. Thank god he’d texted instead of leaving without trying to reach me. I swiped at my cheek with the back of my hand and pushed the button to call him. The phone rang once before diverting me to voicemail.
“It’s me,” I said, trying to sound normal. “Will you call me, please?”
I ended the call before saying anything else. Then I arranged for a car to pick me up to take me to the station, where I planned to take the train back to the city. I didn’t need Vermont. I needed Grey. There was no doubt in my mind where I would go when I got to the city.
Grey’s apartment. We needed to talk.
It took several hours to get there, and when I finally walked into the crisp, clean lobby of his building, the doorman stopped me. “Mr. York, sir, I’m afraid you’re no longer on the allowed list. Let me call up for you.”
I’m not? I stared at him as my entire body vibrated with nerves and shock. “Yes, please.”
A few minutes later, Jenny stepped off the elevator, looking nervous. “Ellison, what happened?”
“I don’t know. I need to talk to him. Can I come up?”
“Honey, he’s not here. Marcel said they were headed out of the country. He won’t be home for a couple of weeks.”
I let out a burble of laughter. This was a joke. It had to be. “Can you get him on the phone?”
Jenny twisted her fingers together and shook her head. “Marcel said he’s going somewhere with no reception. I assumed you were going with them. It sounded like a resort in the middle of nowhere. I know Marcel has been trying to get Grey to take some time away. He kept saying he would agree after the York deal was done.”
I laughed again, only this time I couldn’t stop. I laughed until I cried.
And then I cried for three straight days until my anger at Grey Blackwood finally surpassed the pain of the broken heart he’d left behind.
23
Grey
“The good fighter will be terrible in his onset, and prompt in his decision.”
~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
It was amazing how many contracts you could sign by good old-fashioned fax machine. At least that’s what Marcel told me. In truth, I was fairly sure he was hiding a satellite hotspot in his room, but I didn’t care. As long as all of the York business was behind me and I could safely claim lack of cell reception as the reason I hadn’t heard from Ellison, I was fine.
Well, that and about twenty gin and tonics a day.
“For the third time, you can’t fax your mother a fruity drink,” Marcel said without looking up from his Kindle.
“Who assed you that?” I slurred. “I didn’t ass you that.”
“Mmpf.” Marcel’s eyes flicked up to land on Luca’s teeny-weenie bikini. Again.
“Didn’t you get enough of his teeny-weenie last night?” I asked, reaching for my drink to take another sip. I got a face full of ice instead. Stupid glass probably had a hole in it. “You two were so loud, I thought your villa was going to untether and float away.”
“The villa is on land, sweetums. Not over water. And his weenie ain’t teeny.”
“Huh. My villa is over water.” I tried getting more drink out of my glass, but it only gave up more ice cubes.
“No it isn’t.”
“Get terribly seasick on it.”
“That’s not seasickness.” He looked back down at his Kindle. “And we’re moving villas. If I have to listen to you sing along to ‘In Your Eyes’ one more time, I’m not going to be able to get it up anymore,” he muttered.
“I need a boom box,” I said, looking around as if one would present itself here on Nothing-to-do Island.
“I think you should sober up so we can talk about your boyfriend.”
“Luca’s your boyfriend,” I corrected, trying not to think about Ells.
“Actually, he’s my husband. But I was talking about Ellison York. I may have acquired some interesting intel about him that you might like to hear, but you’ll have to be at a net-zero gin and tonic before I’ll give you such important information.”
I didn’t understand any part of that except Ellison and husband. “He’s not my husband,” I muttered.
Marcel sighed and made some kind of hand gesture to the cabana boy before going back to reading his Kindle. Three or twenty-five minutes later, the cabana boy brought me a huge glass of gin and tonic.
“Epic,” I said, lifting it with two hands. I grimaced when I took the first sip. “This is really watered down.”