Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78357 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
For the last six months, I’d seen Reid with two women up close and personal. The first was Anushka. She and Reid had been dating for three months before I appeared. His PA before me was a lovely older lady called Janet. She’d retired.
Anushka was unhappy that Reid’s new PA was a twenty-two-year-old, not entirely unattractive (I hoped) woman. Again, Patrick filled me in on that. After about two months working for Reid, Anushka grew increasingly paranoid about me. At her jealous insistence that Reid fire me, he fired Anushka instead.
Emmy appeared on the scene about a month later.
And she was the worst.
While I truly got the sense Anushka had genuine feelings for Reid, all Emmy saw was Reid’s success and what his money could do for her. Patrick told me (if you hadn’t already guessed my big brother was a bloody gossip!) that Reid had to stop at his mum’s house in Dalkeith one night while Emmy was with him. Despite Reid wanting to buy his mum a nice house somewhere else, she didn’t want to leave. Instead, he paid off her mortgage. The darling man.
Anyway, back to the story. So Reid goes to Annie’s to drop off the new phone he’d insisted on buying her when her old one broke and Emmy had stayed in his car, dramatically terrified to get out of it as if Dalkeith was the ghetto. While the estate we grew up in was a little run down and very working class, the insinuation that it was dangerous was insulting. Patrick had been pissed when Reid told him Emmy had said “he was never to bring her back to that dump again”. Reid had just shrugged it off. When I asked Patrick why, he said Reid wasn’t serious about her. He was just interested in their sexual relationship, so there was no point getting upset about her attitude.
I got upset.
Mostly at the reminder that the snooty cow got to have sex with Reid.
Reid who looked after his body with the same careful discipline he brought to all areas of his life. There was a staff gym on the top floor that Reid used first thing in the morning, every morning.
I’d once found him in there, shirtless.
The image was BURNED on my brain.
“I don’t care how many men would die to have you in your bed,” Reid was saying to Emmy. “Go find one of them.”
“What?!” Emmy screeched.
I winced.
There was a moment of silence and then, “I called you in here to discuss the charges on my store tab. I’m not a man you can use like this, Emmy.”
“Use you? I’m using you,” she said indignantly. “As if you aren’t using me. Reid, I’m at your bloody beck and call. You do realize that’s not how normal relationships work? They’re about give and take. Outside of the bedroom, you’re all about take. Surely, a little compensation for being one step up from an escort isn’t a lot to ask.”
“An escort?” he replied coolly.
I knew that tone. If Reid wasn’t happy before, he really wasn’t happy now.
“Yes, an escort. And I’m worth more than that. You think you can break up with me? I’m breaking up with you.” Footsteps moved toward the door and I skittered quickly back to my desk, staring at my computer like I hadn’t been eavesdropping.
The door to Reid’s office opened and I heard Emmy say, “You’re an unfeeling bastard, Reid, and you’re going to die alone for it.”
I tried not to let my jaw drop in shock at her awful snipe.
She stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her with a little slam. She cut me a dirty look and strolled away.
“Good riddance,” I called out to her as if I was calling a cheery ‘good day’.
Emmy glanced over her shoulder, pausing. “Excuse me?”
“Go-od. Rid-dance,” I drawled, as if she were challenged in the hearing department.
“Screw you,” she huffed and marched away.
“No thanks,” I muttered to the screen. “Can’t afford you, babe.”
A snort sounded from the doorway, and I looked up to find Reid leaning on the doorframe of his office.
I grimaced. “Sorry. Not professional, I know.”
“No. But funny.”
I smiled sympathetically. “She’s wrong, you know.”
He raised an eyebrow. “About?”
“You’re not an unfeeling bastard who is going to die alone.”
Reid’s expression closed down. “Has Butler called?”
I knew by the very fact that he didn’t want to talk about what Emmy had said meant that she’d drawn blood. Hating that she’d wounded him, I suggested, “Why don’t you finish up early? I can handle everything here.”
“I’m fine. Let me know when Butler calls. If he doesn’t call by three o’clock, you call his assistant.” He disappeared back into his office before I could reply.
Hours later, once the store was closed at seven o’clock and the staff had all gone home except for the night time maintenance crew and security, I knocked on Reid’s office door.