She terminated the call, then glanced up at Gabriel and rushed to him. “He says the lawyer doesn’t work for me, he represents the other side, I’m going to be ruined, I can’t afford for this to happen.” She had reached Gabriel by then and grasped both his hands and jabbered, all her words jumbled together. “They’re trying to screw me, and I can’t go back and cancel. We don’t have time. Oh my God this is just the kind of disaster – just what I was afraid – I should’ve known this was going to happen – too good to be true – the lying scum, that toerag says he doesn’t represent me. What am I going to do?”
Gabriel spoke calmly but firmly. “Nic. Nic. Stop. Take it slowly. What’s happened?” He made her sit on the nearest sofa.
“That was the estate agent.” Nicole’s lips trembled. “The buyer, the scum buyer, is trying to renegotiate me down just when everything was ready to exchange contracts.” She dragged in a breath. “Fifteen thousand! Can you believe it?”
Pierre watched unable to move. This couldn’t have been the reason Nicole wanted to speak to her. The call sounded like an unexpected thing.
Nicole’s face was white. “They’re trying to screw me out of eight thousand pounds. I’m already committed in LA. I’ve paid for the new offices and the apartment.” Her voice quivered and she gripped his arms, pulling him down to sit beside her. “I can’t afford to lose eight thousand. I’ve gone out on a limb, liquidated everything, and thrown it all at the new business. I can’t afford to cancel now. And he knows it. The scum – the scum estate agent says it’s a buyer’s market. How did it suddenly become a buyer’s market? What are we going to do?”
“Shhh, slow down. There must be a way out,” Gabriel said.
Pierre felt like an intruder. Watching Gabriel sit so close to Nicole was painful, actually physically painful.
“We can’t,” Nicole wailed. “I don’t want a way out. It’ll take forever to get another offer on the house. The flights are booked, everything is set, I already have a bunch of meetings set up as soon as I arrive in LA, I don’t want to lose everything.”
“Okay, then we’ll think…” he tailed off and glanced up at Pierre.
Nicole suddenly remembered that they weren’t alone and glared up at Pierre. “What?”
“Liam said you wanted to speak to me.”
Gabriel reminded her. “You sent Liam to get us. We were up in the office,” he explained.
How could he be so calm?
“Not now.” Nicole threw the words and turned back to Gabriel.
He extricated himself from her grasp. “Just give me a minute, Nic.”
He tried to get up, but she stopped him.
“No, wait. I have to see the staff today. Pierre, stay.” She turned to Gabriel. “Can you talk to estate agent and negotiate with him? He’ll listen to you.”
“But it’s not my house; you’re the vendor.”
“But you’re a man. He won’t talk down to you the way he talks to me. And he knows we’re getting married. Please do this for me. Stop them from bankrupting me.”
He looked trapped as he glanced between the two women.
“Please.” Nicole took his face in both her hands.
That was too much. Pierre fled out of the conservatory and hurried away. When she got to the stairs she stopped, unsure where to go. Not back to the office where they had just …
She headed for the kitchen.
“You okay?” Liam asked when she dropped into a chair.
No. “I’m fine.”
“What did Nicole want?”
Whatdidn’tNicole want? Money, a new business, and a new life with the man who looked after her and managed to calm her down.
“I know what she wants,” Cook said. She stood at the sink, rinsing a large fish. “To tell you what to wear for the wedding.”
Which wedding?
The image of Nicole’s hands holding Gabriel’s face was a razor slicing through her.
