CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: CHLOE

I was stuck.

I’d been stuck for the past five minutes.

For an old man, Charles Black had quite the sturdy embrace.

“Um,” I said, peering sideways at him. “Can I—can you…I can’t move.”

“I’m so happy,” he said, squeezing me from the side. “All my dreams are coming true.”

Theo glared at him from where he was leaning against the window on the other side of the room. “Anyone would think you’re the one in a relationship with her, Gramps.”

“She’s my new granddaughter.”

“You’re being very over the top.”

“Be quiet, you brat. I can’t believe it’s taken you this long to convince her to go out with you. Let an old man have his moment.”

“You’re acting like I just told you we’re getting married.”

“Why aren’t you getting married? I told you to learn to cook, Theo. No woman wants a man who can’t cook.”

Alastair looked over from his desk. “Pa, you can’t cook.”

“I didn’t need to know how to cook in my day,” the duke replied. “But women appreciate it nowadays.”

“I’ll have you know I make a mean cheese on toast,” Theo said with a grumble.

“That’s not cooking. That’s toasting,” Alastair said. “You don’t hear toasters bragging about their ability to crisp bread, do you? That’s all you are, son. A living, breathing toaster.”

Theo glared at his dad. “Just because you can cook doesn’t give you a right to be on your high horse.”

“Well said,” the duke said, patting my hair gently. “He gets all high and mighty about this kind of stuff.”

“Pa, please let go of Chloe. She’s not a kitten,” Alastair said, removing his glasses. “You’re squeezing her half to death.”

“But I’m so happy to have a granddaughter!”

“You have a granddaughter!”

“But I don’t—”

“Like that one. We know,” Theo said flatly. “But it doesn’t mean you can monopolise my girlfriend.”

Why was I here?

What was the point of it? I couldn’t get a word in for the life of me. I was merely a spectator with a ticket for a front row seat of whatever show this was.

“She was my secretary before she was your girlfriend. You met her thanks to me.” Charles pouted. “You can’t monopolise her, either.”

Theo stomped across the office and sat down on the other side of me, also wrapping his arms around me. “She’s my girlfriend. I have more of a right to monopolise her than you do, old man.”

“Old man? I’m still young enough to whip your arse, you little shit.”

“You’d have to catch me first, but snails aren’t that fast.”

“Why you little—”

“Why is my office always the site of your spats?” Alastair rubbed his temple. “And please let Chloe go. You’re yanking her about side to side, and I think she might throw up.”

I sighed, dropping my chin to my chest. “I just… wanted my water.”

They both released me and reached to grab my glass. They touched it at the same time, and the opposing forced knocked the glass over, spilling the water on the floor in front of me.

“For Gods’ sake,” Alastair said, standing up and storming over. “Chloe, come here.”

I put my hand in his, and he pulled me up, then pushed me across the room towards his desk.

“Sit there,” he said, pushing me down into his chair in a way that brokered no argument. He pushed a button on his intercom and said, “Cassidy, can I have some more water in here, please? And can you find something for my father and son to do that doesn’t include harassing my dear Chloe?”

“I wasn’t harassing her,” the duke huffed. “Theo was, though.”

“How was I harassing her?” Theo argued. “You’re the one who wouldn’t let her go.”

“Your existence is harassment in my eyes.”

Alastair leant in towards me, resting his hand gently on my shoulder. “Take a good look, dear. This is your life now. I won’t blame you if you run.”

I covered my mouth with my hand to stifle my laughter. “It’s all right. They mean well.”

The office door swung open, and Cassidy walked in, a water bottle in one hand and a rolled-up newspaper in the other. She crossed over to hand me the water with a smile, then spun on her heel and approached both Theo and the duke on the sofa.

Then she bonked them both on the head with her newspaper.

“Your Grace, if you continue, I shall call your wife,” Cassidy said stoically. “And you, young Mr Black, I will call your mother.”

I raised my eyebrows at her simple threat.

“Neither of them will be pleased to be dragged away from their business,” she continued. “One more word of harassment out of either of you to my sweet Chloe will get you in a world of trouble, do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Theo mumbled.

“Why am I always in trouble? This is my company!” Charles banged his fist against the arm of the sofa. “I need to come back. My authority is waning.”

Cassidy narrowed her eyes at him. “I see you’ve chosen darkness. Very well.”

“No. Wait! Cassidy!” He hauled himself off the sofa and shuffled after her as she headed out of the office. “Don’t call my wife. I won’t be able to play golf this afternoon if you do that!”

The door clicked shut after him, but the echoes of his pleas to save his afternoon of golf still rang clear.

“That was exhausting,” I said, staring at the door. “If I didn’t know you actually loved each other, I’d be very confused.”

Theo grunted. “He’s a pain in the arse. How did you get Cassidy on your side like that, anyway?”

I smiled. “That’s a secret.”

“She remembered her birthday four years ago and baked her a chocolate cake as a thank you for helping her out with something. Cassidy is weak to chocolate and cake, so Chloe hit her in her weakest spot,” Alastair explained. “Ever since then, Cassidy has acted like her mother.”

That was about it. “I never knew cake was such an effective weapon.”

Theo frowned. “And here we thought Gramps would be the one to smite anyone who said anything negative about our relationship. They may have to get through Cassidy first.”

Alastair looked between us. “Are you going to make it known that you’re together?”

“That’s why I came with her,” Theo said, pushing away from his perch at the window. “We wanted to ask your advice.”

Alastair raised his eyebrows. “You? You’re asking for my advice?”

“You’ve worked with your wife. Weren’t you worried about what people would say when Gramps gave her a position at the company?”

“Of course.” Alastair rubbed his hand over his jaw. “We were both young—younger than you two are now. It didn’t matter to many people that your mother had the necessary qualifications for the position she was given, and she did have to fight hard to be respected at first. She didn’t have too much experience, and that was her greatest struggle, but she was determined to see it through.”

Theo glanced at me. “She only moved here after you got married, right?”

He nodded. “She also took a lower position than she was necessarily qualified for. It was her choice, because she thought it would balance out her lack of experience.”

“Did it?”

“Theoretically. Many people thought she only got the job because she married me, but the reality was that she’d taken a slight demotion from her previous position.” Alastair looked at me. “Just like you did when Pa retired. You went from the President’s office to the Vice-President’s, even though you’re arguably skilled enough to hold an office of your own at this point.”

“It’s nice of you to say that, but I don’t think that’s true,” I said quietly.

“Isn’t it? You’ve been managing the secretarial teams for over three years now, and you had a team switch halfway through when you moved down to Theo. You’re already technically in a management role,” he explained. “You have a degree in business management, and you’ve assisted in numerous projects throughout the years, including the relaunch of Adair Travel.”

He… was right.

I was so used to thinking of myself as ‘just’ a secretary that I rarely focused on how wide-ranging my skills actually were. What I did was so much more than answering phones and arranging schedules—I put together reports, gathered data, managed staff, co-ordinated projects. And that didn’t even scratch the surface of everything I’d spent the last few years doing.

“To be honest, Chloe, when Pa said he would help you find another job after you resigned, what he meant was that he would offer you one.” Alastair perched on the corner of his desk and looked down at me with a smile. “One of the reasons you were sent on that business trip was because Pa wanted to offer you the position at the top of the Adair Travel team.”

I jerked my head around and stared at Theo. “Did you know about that?”

He shook his head. “I found out this morning when we arrived that was what he was looking at for you. I honestly thought he was going to offer you a position at one of the subsidiaries, because this position means you’re technically still working directly under me for now.”

“And escaping your tyranny was the reason I was going to resign anyway,” I said.

“Exactly. Wait—tyranny? Isn’t that a bit strong of a word?”

“No. Henry the Eighth had more patience than you do, and he chopped off the heads of two of his wives.”

Alastair chuckled. “Back to the matter at hand.”

I pressed my lips together and nodded.

“Theo is right that the Adair Travel team would technically be working under him, but the team will be operating as a separate entity. There’s also the caveat that the director position was never intended to be long-term for him.”

Theo nodded. “Two years maximum, then we were going to hire someone else so I could focus fully on my actual job.”

Alastair looked at me.

I opened my mouth and pointed to myself. “Me?”

“Pa was hoping so. Well, so was I,” he admitted. “There could be few complaints from the old farts in suits if you went from working on the project as Theo’s secretary, then as the manager. You’ve been with it since the very beginning, and you’ve been with the company long enough that a promotion would be inevitable.”

I looked down. Everything he was saying made sense, but… “But when people find out about me and Theo, won’t it look as though I got the position because of our relationship?”

“There will always be people who think that way,” Alastair said softly. “But there are always ways to mitigate such rumours. After all, as far as anyone else is concerned, you were fully aware of this promotion before the trip.”

I met his eyes. “You’d lie?”

He shrugged. “Nobody knows you were trying to resign, not even Theo’s other secretaries. It’s quite clear that you both became closer during the trip, so we can just fiddle the truth a little.” He cast his gaze between us. “For you to have this level of concern… I’m assuming you’re aware of what happened before Theo came here.”

I nodded. “He told me.”

“Well, speaking as a father, not the boss… You’re both overthinking things.”

Theo tensed. “What do you mean?”

“You were in the situation you were in because Lily was the one with the power,” Alastair said, looking at him. “She was your superior and twisted the narrative to suit her, leaving you unable to do anything. People only talked the way they did because she was in control. That’s not the case this time.”

“But I—”

“He’s right,” I said quietly, looking over at Theo. A small smile crept onto my face. “You’re the one in the position of power this time, and I know that even if our relationship didn’t work, you’d never do anything to make me uncomfortable.”

His jaw clenched. “But other people…”

“You can’t control what other people do and say.” Alastair got to his feet. “If you keep your relationship a secret, people will talk. If you tell everyone, people will talk. It doesn’t matter if Chloe resigns or gets a promotion, because people will talk. People will always draw their own conclusions about what’s going on, and there’s nothing you can do about it. All you can do is control how you respond to it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I think that helps.”

He grabbed his suit jacket and slung it over his arm, then smiled at me. “I want you to seriously consider what I’ve said, Chloe. Adair Travel is a project you’ve worked on for months and know better than anyone else in the company. There’s currently no manager for the team—Theo is still filling in for that role, and he will continue to do so until you make a decision either way. Consider this an unofficial offer.”

I bit the inside of my cheek and nodded.

“Remember that we had you earmarked for this before you ever left. Your relationship has no bearing on this decision, and we would have offered it to you when we discussed your resignation anyway.” He looked at me pointedly. “It’s a position you earnt through your own hard work, Chloe. If you’re worried about the change, we can have you take over slowly over a couple of months so you can hand over your current responsibilities to your successor.”

I pressed my hands to my cheeks. “It’s just… a lot to think about.”

“It is.” He smiled. “But I believe it’s the best way to alleviate all your concerns—the both of you. Of course, if you wish to leave the company entirely, then I will keep my word and will have your resignation processed as soon as you submit it.” He patted my shoulder. “Think on it for a little while. Talk it over between you and let me know when you’ve decided how you want to move forwards.”

I nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

He gave my shoulder a light squeeze before stepping back. “I have a meeting. If you have nowhere to be, you’re both welcome to talk things through here so you won’t be disturbed.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Theo said. “We have a bit of time.”

Alastair nodded and pulled on his jacket, then left us in his office with a wave of his hand. The moment the door clicked shut behind him, I collapsed into a heap on his desk, burying my face in my arms.

Theo touched his hand to my back and leant in, kissing the back of my head. “You okay? That was a lot.”

“You could have warned me,” I muttered into the crook of my elbow.

“You wouldn’t have accepted it from me. You had to hear it from Dad.”

“Did you really only just find out about it?” I turned my head.

He crouched down next to me, bringing himself equal with my eye level. “Just this morning, like I told you. He called me not long after I got the office.”

So, that was what they were discussing for long. “Mmph,” I grunted. “Do you really think I can do it?”

“I do. And he’s right when he says it would negate any gossip about you getting the position because of our relationship.” He brushed the hair from my face and smiled. “But it’s ultimately your choice. You did want to leave, after all.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t as though I had another job lined up. I didn’t even know what I wanted to do,” I said as he took my hand and linked our fingers together. “It’s not like I have nothing to leave for. I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t get yourself all worked up about it. Like Dad said, you can think about it for a while. I’m already doing the job anyway, so I can always tell you what your responsibility would be as we work on it.”

I nodded my head slowly.

Theo brought our clasped hands to his mouth and kissed my fingers. “I don’t care if you resign, Chloe. Just don’t leave me. Please.”

“Silly.” I sat up and touched my free hand to his cheek. “I don’t plan on it. As if you could live without me.”

He grinned, turning his face into my palm. “It’s true. I would be utterly hopeless without you.”

“I’m very glad you’re aware of that.” I checked the time. “Come on. You have a meeting in half an hour.”

“Do you want to take the rest of the day off to clear your head?” He pulled me to my feet and wrapped his arms around me, resting his chin on top of my head. “I’ll allow it.”

“Stop giving me special treatment.” Still, I smiled at his words and hugged him back. “No, I’ll be fine. But you won’t be if you don’t get moving and read my report for this meeting.”

Theo sighed. “I miss the cottage.”

Me, too.

“Hey,” I said softly. “If I accepted your dad’s offer, would it mean more trips up to the cottage?”

Theo pulled back and looked down at me. “Why? Does that tempt you?”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, brushing my lips across his. “Only if I could kidnap the company Vice-President and make him go with me.”

“Hmm.” He kissed me softly. “It’s not kidnapping if he’s willing.”

“Your grandfather might not think so.”

“It’s fine. We can just bribe him with marriage. He’s easy pickings.”

“Who’s easy pickings?” The office door swung open, and Charles stomped back inside. “Stop canoodling at work! Put her down, you little sod!”

I pushed Theo away, laughing. “He’s right. We have to get back to work.”

“Ow, ow!” Theo flinched away from his grandfather. “Stop hitting me, you fossil!”

“Fossil?” Charles gasped. “Who are you calling a fossil, you foetus?”

I covered my face with my hands.

“Foetus? You wanna talk foetus?” Theo taunted. “Keep beating me, and there’ll be no great-grandchildren for you.”

Silence.

I peeked through my fingers, and Charles was staring at Theo, cushion still raised.

“Great-grandchildren?” he asked after a moment. “From you?”

“No, from the weekly farmer’s market,” Theo replied. “Yes, from me.”

Charles swung his gaze towards me. “Great-grandchildren from you means…”

“Mhmm.” Theo nodded. “That will never happen if you hit me every time we canoodle, as you put it.”

What on Earth was he saying right now?

Charles took a step back and tossed the cushion onto the sofa, then brushed his hands down his shirt. “I want a great-granddaughter. Like Chloe. Not you.”

“You can’t really order babies like that, but sure.”

“I suppose I’ll allow some canoodling.” He cleared his throat. “I won’t tell your father.”

“Thanks, Gramps.”

He shuffled towards the door. “Carry on.”

I watched as he left, slamming the door behind him. “What just happened?”

Theo grinned. “Told you. Easy pickings.”

“You’re insane.” I shook my head and followed in the duke’s footsteps to the door. “Let’s go. You have a meeting to get ready for.” I paused and looked back at him. “Sir.”

“I told you not to call me that when we’re alone.”

I smiled, holding the door open. “But we’re at work. What else am I supposed to call you?”

“I have a list,” he said, following me. “Would you like to hear it?”

I scooted behind him and gave him a push in the back. “Don’t make me call your mother.”

“You know, sometimes I think you’re the boss here.” Theo laughed, and the sound trickled across my skin in a wave of warmth.

I dipped my chin, smiling.

Yeah.

Maybe I was.