CHAPTER 26
Emma
The elevator doors slide silently open, and I step into the marbled foyer of Knight & Payne. The front-desk receptionist, Amanda, looks up at me with surprise.
“Welcome back, Emma,” she says sweetly.
“Thanks,” I say flatly. I don’t want to be here, but I figured if my dad’s back at work, and he had a broken heart so to speak, then I could do the same.
Amanda sniffs at my rebuff and turns her attention back to her computer screen.
I, on the other hand, hitch my shoulders back and head into The Pit.
Rather than turning left to wind my way through the desks to get to my own, I spare a brief glance to see my dad sitting behind his desk, and then turn right. I follow the perimeter of the room, not looking anywhere but the direction I’m walking. When I reach the adjacent wall, I turn left and walk straight toward Midge’s office.
Her secretary looks up from her desk as I approach, a cool smile on her face.
“Can I help you?” she asks pleasantly.
“Nope,” I say and glide right past her. Taking the doorknob to Midge’s office firmly in hand, I turn it and push the door open while her secretary scrambles up from her desk, saying in a frantic voice, “You can’t go in there without an invite.”
Midge is at her desk and her head slowly rises to look at who would dare intrude into her personal space. Her secretary comes in right behind me and says, “I’m so sorry. She just barged right in. Shall I call security?”
I roll my eyes, but I don’t spare her a glance. Instead, I walk right up to one of Midge’s guest chairs and plop down in one. I set my briefcase on the floor and look at Midge expectantly.
Midge stares back at me for a thoughtful moment, her face exquisitely blank. I brace for her to throw me out, but her gaze slides past me and over my shoulder where she says to her secretary, “It’s fine. You can leave us.”
When I hear the door close behind me, Midge finally looks back to me and says, “Welcome back, Emma. It’s about time.”
“I’m not here to stay,” I say curtly and bend to the side to reach into the side pocket of my briefcase. I pull a piece of paper out and hand it across the desk to her. “This is where I want a job. I want you to handle it for me as soon as possible.”
Midge cocks an eyebrow at me but takes the paper. She unfolds it, and her eyes do a quick scan of the printout. I’d been doing some in-depth searching and knew the exact place I wanted to go.
“Crowley and Padrick,” she muses as she looks back up at me. “You’ve done your homework.”
“You were classmates with Quentin Padrick,” I recite like a robot. “You did moot court together, served on law review, and graduated numbers one and two respectively from your law school class. You’ve worked on several cases together over the years, and I remember seeing him at the Christmas party.”
“Well done,” she praises me, but it doesn’t ring genuine. “So you think I have enough influence with him to land you a job there?”
“I think you have enough influence to do anything you set your mind to,” I offer praise back to her.
She gives a tinkling laugh of appreciation, but then her demeanor turns shrewd. She leans forward, puts her elbows on the desk, and steeples her fingers in front of her face as she looks at me. “That law firm is about as far from Raleigh as you can get without crossing over into Tennessee.”
“It is,” I agree.
“You’re running far, far away, aren’t you?” she taunts me.
“I consider it a necessary career change, and one that was promised to me if I helped Evan out,” I offer back.
“I get it,” she says smoothly. “You know Evan will come back here after the tour, and you’re conceited enough to think he might come looking for you.”
My jaw drops as anger courses through me. “I have no such thoughts—”
“Then why are you leaving?”
I’m prepared for this, because I knew she and my dad would think I was running away from Evan. “As it turns out, your nephew did have one positive impact on me. He taught me that I could do so much more as an attorney than I thought. So I chose Crowley and Padrick because they have a heavy mergers and acquisitions practice. That’s contract heavy, but there is also a good deal of negotiations that occur. I consider it an upward move for my career, and it lets me expand upon my newfound confidence and skills.”
Midge sits up straight as she gives an amused chuckle. She claps her hands repeatedly and says, “Oh, very well done, Emma. I’d say Evan did quite a bit for you.”
I don’t respond because I’ve already given him all the credit he’s due.
We engage in a bit of a staring war, and it’s completely awkward and uncomfortable. It’s hard to do battle with the great Midge Payne. Just as I feel my resolve weakening and I’m ready to let my gaze drop, Midge leans back in her chair and crosses one elegant leg over the other. “You’re making a bad decision, Emma.”
“I don’t think so,” I rebuff her, not willing to let her get in my head.
But she’s undaunted. “Evan’s the best thing that ever happened to you—”
“—he was with another woman,” I can’t help but blurt out.
“—and you’re going to let him get away if you don’t wise the fuck up,” she continues, unperturbed. “You know damn well he didn’t do anything to betray you.”
“He was with another—”
“Emma,” Midge snaps at me, and I jerk with surprise over the venom in her voice. “I know damn well he wrote you an email that explained what happened. Tyler set him up. Got him drunk, possibly drugged him, and he arranged for that woman to be in his bed. He didn’t do a damn thing with her other than share a bed in a passed-out condition. Even his friends verified that all he did was talk about you all night. He had no intention of cheating on you, and perhaps the only thing he’s guilty of is trusting in the wrong person. So yeah… I know he wrote you that email, and more importantly, I know damn well you read it. In fact, I bet you couldn’t help yourself. And I want to know why you’re being so damn stubborn about this.”
I grit my teeth because I hate everything she just said.
I hate it because yes, I read his email, and perhaps Evan was telling me the truth that nothing occurred and he had nothing to do with that woman. But it’s all coming from Evan, a man who I found in a very compromising position.
I don’t know what to believe.
I know I want to believe him, but I would do so wondering at the same time how much of a fool I’d be if I did. Worse yet, if what he wrote in that email is true, then I’m a complete and utter bitch for not reacting to his email. I’m heartless for not reaching out to him to talk about it. He sent me that email five days ago and it’s gone unanswered, my cold silence making it clear there’s nothing left to say.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say softly, letting my gaze drop down to my hands where they rest tightly clasped against my dull, boring brown skirt of creped polyester. “I’m not cut out for that life anyway.”
“You know he fired Tyler,” Midge says offhandedly.
I nod without looking up. “He told me that in the email.”
“He’s going to take the deal with Phoenix,” she goes on to say. “Without an active manager and without someone to help him handle an indie career, he thinks it’s best to go ahead and go with a label.”
At that, my head shoots up. “It’s not what he really wants though.”
“I see you do know my nephew,” she says with a smile. “But regardless, he doesn’t feel he has any other options. I’m looking over the contract now, and we’ll ask for a few changes, but it’s pretty much a done deal. They’re pushing for a three-album deal.”
She’s baiting me, but I don’t rise to it. It’s not my problem what Evan decides to do with his career, and it’s certainly none of my concern.
“Are you going to get me that job at Crowley and Padrick?” I ask with resolve.
“Maybe,” she says evasively, then reaches over to the phone on her desk. She picks up the receiver, hits one button, and says, “Cary… darling… can you come into my office? Your wayward daughter is sitting in here and perhaps you can talk some sense into her.”
Now that’s low.
I start to stand up from the chair, completely intent on walking out of her office. She just points a finger at said chair and says, “Sit.”
My butt drops faster than Sirius’ ever has in our training sessions.
Midge even says, “Good girl.”
I fume as I glare at her, but, within less than thirty seconds, my father’s walking into her office.
“What’s up, babe?” he asks, and I have to suppress an eye roll at their easy and flirty banter in the face of these very important career decisions I’m trying to effectuate.
“Your daughter’s asked me to get her a job at a law firm in the western part of the state. She’s being pigheaded and stubborn, and I figured you should have a crack at her before I grant her wish.”
My head tilts and I look to my left as my dad takes a seat in the chair next to me. He angles his body my way and crosses one leg over the other. He looks healthy and fully functional, so I suppose it’s not going to hurt his heart too bad for me to leave him.
“What’s going on, Emma?” he asks in a very fatherly voice.
“I would like to make a career change,” I say succinctly. “I want to try mergers and acquisitions, and Crowley and Padrick is the best firm in the state for that. It’s a very good move for me professionally.”
Midge snorts. “She’s running because she knows she’s fucked things up with Evan, she knows she’s wrong, and she doesn’t have the guts to fix it.”
“Easy, Midge,” my father says in a low, warning voice, and I doubt anyone in Midge’s life has ever talked to her like that. Her eyebrows rise upward in surprise, then her eyes narrow on him.
“Cary,” Midge says in exasperation. “Evan loves her, and she loves Evan, and it’s ridiculous that they—”
“Get her the job,” my dad says, cutting Midge off mid-sentence.
“Pardon me?” she says in surprise.
“Get her the job,” he says and stands up from the chair. “Let her make her own mistakes. How will she ever learn otherwise?”
Now I’m affronted.
“This is not a mistake,” I snap at my dad.
“Prove me wrong,” he says curtly and then turns to Midge. “We still on for lunch?”
She gives him a gamine smile, her lips tipped upward appreciatively over the way he just put me in my place all while giving me the noose to hang myself. “Of course, darling. Maybe we can head to your house for lunch.”
At her suggestive tone, I gag internally but also turn my glare on her, peeved she’s enjoying my discomfort.
My dad turns to me and says, “Emma… let me know when you’re moving. I’ll be glad to help with the expenses.”
And with that, he turns around and leaves.
My head turns slowly back to Midge. She makes a shooing motion with her hand and says, “Run along, Emma. Clear out your desk. I’ll have the job arranged by the end of the day.”
I walk out of her office having received exactly what I came in for, and yet I feel like I’ve lost everything.
♦
Later that night, I sit on my bed and let my fingers rub absently over my phone screen. It’s dark as the phone is in sleep mode, and I ponder everything that happened today in Midge’s office. As promised, I received an email from her at half past four, telling me I was to start at Crowley and Padrick the following week.
It appeared I was moving across the state.
With a sigh, I turn the phone on and skim through my Contacts. With an iron resolve, I choose my quarry and I dial.
Tyler answers on the second ring. “What do you want?”
“The truth,” I say softly.
Tyler gives a dark laugh. In a voice filled with malice, he says, “The truth is that Evan cheated on you. He found someone far more beautiful and sexier than you, and he banged the fuck out of her in the same bed he used—”
I hang up on him, my heart racing.
That’s not what I expected.
Or what I wanted.
I wanted him to confirm for me all of Evan’s suppositions, but instead, he just shoved my greatest fears right down my throat.
At least, I think he did. That could have just been the fact he’s an asshole, lost his job, and is now taking his ire out on me. Can I really expect him to give me the truth?
Before I can talk myself out of it, I flip over to my email and I scroll through my inbox, looking for the one Evan sent me five days ago. I don’t bother reading it, instead hitting the reply button.
I quickly type out a message. Midge told me you were going to sign a three-album deal with Phoenix. Don’t do it. That’s my opinion.
I hit send before I can second-guess my actions, and then I turn my phone off so I don’t see if he replies. I don’t want to be tempted to engage with him.
I’m terrified if he does, it will be clear just how big of an idiot I might actually be.
♦
The next morning, I turn my phone on and brace myself to see what Evan had to say.
There’s nothing in my inbox.
He didn’t respond.