Part 3
“You’ll do that tonight.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mara lowered her eyes. “You don’t need to—”
Adrian looked at her. “What you did should not cost you your job.”
“What you did might cost me mine,” Russell said before he could stop himself.
Silence followed.
Russell’s skin flushed from his collar upward.
Adrian almost smiled. Not because the remark was funny, but because it was honest.
“That depends on what you do next,” Adrian said.
Russell nodded once and walked quickly toward the kitchen.
Mara watched him go. “He isn’t a bad manager.”
“I didn’t say he was.”
“He panics around important people.”
“That’s a dangerous quality in a resort full of them.”
A sound escaped her that might have been a laugh if the evening had been different. She pressed her lips together.
Adrian studied her face. “Are you all right?”
She looked surprised by the question.
“I’m not the one who—” She stopped. “Yes. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“I’m at work.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“It’s the one I have.”
He accepted that. Beyond the service doors, plates clattered and somebody called for more coffee cups. The kitchen had resumed its ordinary speed, indifferent to the fact that an engagement had ended twenty yards away.
Mara glanced at the blanket.
“Do you want another one? That touched the floor.”
“This one is fine.”
“There may be wax on it.”
“You removed it.”
Her eyes lifted briefly. “You noticed.”
“I notice most things.”
“Apparently.”
The answer carried no admiration. Adrian found that reassuring.
His driver arrived from the lobby with Adrian’s winter coat over one arm. Thomas followed several steps behind.
“Car’s ready,” the driver said.
Adrian nodded.
Mara moved toward the kitchen.
“Ms. Ellis.”
She turned.
“Thank you.”
This time she did not say it was nothing.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “I hope you’re all right tomorrow.”
Thomas waited until she was gone.
“Who is she?”
“An employee who behaved decently.”
“I can see that.”
Adrian looked toward the atrium. Celeste was still inside, surrounded by her mother and two friends. Her ring remained on her finger.
Thomas followed his gaze.
“You should have told me.”
“About the movement?”
“About all of it.”
“You knew I was in therapy.”
“I didn’t know you were conducting experiments on your fiancée.”
Adrian pushed toward the lobby.
Thomas walked beside him. “Was tonight the plan?”
“No.”
“You expected something.”
“I expected her to be kind when it cost her nothing.”
“And if she had been?”
Adrian’s hands slowed against the wheels.
“I don’t know.”
His father absorbed the answer.
That was the first honest thing Adrian had said about Celeste all night.
The Vale family’s three SUVs waited beneath the resort’s stone porte cochere. Snow dusted the black roofs. A valet stood near the curb with Adrian’s folded travel ramp, his face fixed in the professional blankness of someone who had already heard what happened and knew better than to show it.
Adrian’s driver, Luis Ortega, opened the rear passenger door and secured the ramp.
“Home?” he asked.
“The rehabilitation cottage.”
Thomas looked at him. “At this hour?”
“I have an eight o’clock session.”
“You need rest.”
“I need both.”
“You can stay in the suite.”
Adrian shook his head.
The rehabilitation cottage sat two miles down the mountain, away from the main resort and from the guests who would be carrying the story into breakfast. Vale Meridian owned it through one of the company’s hospitality subsidiaries. Adrian had used it for six weeks because its wide halls, accessible gym, and proximity to Denver-based specialists allowed him to train without turning each session into a family event.
Only his medical team, Luis, and two senior company employees knew the extent of his progress.
Celeste could have known.
For the first eight months after the accident, she attended appointments. At first, she asked good questions. She learned the names of nerves and muscles. She took notes in the careful handwriting she used for charity boards. She argued with insurers. She bought adaptive equipment before Adrian admitted he needed it.
Then recovery became repetitive.
The early emergencies ended. The flowers stopped arriving. Friends returned to their own lives. Adrian’s exercises produced changes measured in millimeters. Celeste began missing appointments because of meetings, fittings, luncheons, headaches, and eventually no reason at all.
Adrian stopped telling her when therapy schedules changed.
It was not a decision he made cleanly. There had been no single morning when he chose secrecy. He withheld one improvement because she was in Paris. He did not mention a muscle response because she was angry about postponing the wedding. He let her assume a brace belonged to another patient. By the time he understood how much he had concealed, the concealment had become a test he was ashamed to name.
The accident had not made him suspicious. He had always been suspicious.
It had only given him an excuse to call suspicion prudence.
Luis secured the wheelchair inside the vehicle. Adrian transferred into the seat using a sliding board. The movement pulled at his lower back. He kept his face still until the worst of it passed.
Thomas stood in the open door.
“Celeste says you manipulated her.”
“I did.”
His father’s eyebrows rose slightly.
“That doesn’t excuse what she did,” Adrian continued.
“No.”
“It doesn’t excuse what I did either.”
Thomas looked back toward the resort entrance. “What are you going to do?”
“Tonight?”
“In general.”
Adrian leaned against the headrest.
“I’m going to sleep badly and regret several sentences.”
“That sounds realistic.”
“You should try it.”
Thomas almost smiled. Then his face settled again.
“The board will hear about this before morning.”
“They were in the room.”
“Not all of them.”
“They’ll hear it faster, then.”
“The annual leadership vote is in four weeks.”
“I know.”
“Celeste’s father controls two seats.”
“I know that too.”
May you like
Thomas lowered his voice. “And now he has a daughter who believes you deliberately humiliated her in front of forty people.”
“She humiliated herself.”
