Her left hand.
Thering.
Oh my god.Heat suffused her face as all of the shock and anger abruptly swirled out of her like colors down a drain. “I—yes. Nick and I . . . we—”
“I only meant to congratulate you,” Arthur said quickly. “Not put you on the spot.”
Jay blushed. His tone was one of someone assuring another person that their mistake wasn’t reallythatbad. “We’re only stepsiblings. And we didn’t really grow up together—”
“You don’t have to explain. Nicholas told me earlier.” Arthur looked as uncomfortable as she felt. “It’s why he isn’t interviewing. He didn’t think it would be seemly under the current circumstances.”
Current circumstances. Seemly. A hysterical laugh threatened to burst from her lips at the thought of Nicholas using such uptight language.
“It’s all right. You can say it. It’s distasteful. People are going to talk.”
His face softened immediately and he moved towards her as if he wanted to touch her before visibly changing his mind. His hand hovered a moment before falling to his side. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said gently. “It’s very obvious how much he cares about you.”
Was it? Jay gave him a timorous smile. “You’d be one of the rare few, then.”
Arthur gazed thoughtfully out the window. “He never struck me as a particularly happy man. I don’t think I even really saw him laugh until you arrived. But now he does.” His eyes flicked to her. “I assume, because of you.”
(when I’m with you)
“Yeah,” Jay said faintly. “He did say something like that.”
The silence stretched and Jay shuffled her feet, wondering why her skin felt too tight on her bones. “Anyway,” Arthur said, so loudly that both of them winced. “Let’s get on with things,shall we? You have an interview with me today, Ms. Varens. So why don’t you go ahead and take your seat, and we can start by having you tell me some of your strengths and weaknesses . . .”
Chapter Fourteen
???????
In twenty-seven years, only three things had ever managed to score him beneath his armor: crying in the mall over his dead mother’s perfume, Jay’s rejection the first time he told her he was in love with her, and his father fucking laughing in his face when he’d announced his intention to propose to her.
The two former humiliations had faded to a faint sting over time, but in the face of his now very real and upcoming marriage, the latter loomed as large as a ghost. His father’s voice, so close to his own in terms of pitch and timbre, now echoed abrasively in his ears.
(How did you get her to do it?)
His hand tightened around his mug of coffee.
“Stacey is our strongest candidate so far,” Arthur was saying. “Apart from Jun in marketing.”
Nicholas nodded, but he did not want to think about Stacey and Jun.
(I know you’ve been doing a little backyard breeding under my roof. What do you have on your sister, Nicholas? Receipts? Photographs? Or perhaps a tape?)
“Not Stacey,” he said, shifting restlessly. “Any power you give her, she’ll run with.”
“Because she’s a senior level employee. You have to give people some room to grow, Nicholas. Otherwise, it’s hard to retain talent. It’s grow or go, in this industry. You know that.”
An image popped into his head, sharp and salient, of a teary-eyed Jay lying in a bed of cast-off silk, begging him to let her go. He made a harsh noise in the back of his throat.
“No.”
Arthur pushed his computer aside, rubbing at his graying temples. He’d been interviewing candidates for several hours and it must have been exhausting but he didn’t care. Everyone had a reason for why they deserved better, but only one person here had been forced to suffer for it.
“What about Jun then? His managing style is a little less abrasive. And he has a coordinator role, so he’d be ideal at running those meetings.”
(Is that it? Did you film yourself fucking her? Did you make her cry?
