Page 104 of Worth Every Penny

Nico nods, slowly. “Martin Brooks.”

“I thought he had retired?” Jack clarifies.

“He had. But he wants back in. Retirement bores him.” David pulls on his earlobe. “He’s our newest board member at Argentum.”

“What?” Jack’s voice is so sharp that David draws back in his seat.

“Didn’t you know?” I put my hand on Jack’s arm. “He told me at your birthday drinks.”

“He was at my party?”Shit.Jack really didn’t know. “Why didn’t you mention it?” He scrapes his fingers through his hair. “You could’ve fucking said something.”

I lean away from Jack’s over the top reaction, and a cramping sensation seizes my stomach.

Martin hadn’t crossed my mind since the party. And, if I’m honest, the only person I was thinking about afterwards was Nico.

“Sorry. I didn’t think it was relevant,” I say.

Tension creeps around the table as the other people in the room deliberately avert their eyes from our awkward discussion.

David shuffles in his chair, looking anxiously at Jack. “After all the work Martin did with your father, it’s only natural he’d have a fondness for the two of you,” David explains, again looking at me and Jack. “And he’s interested in the spa project because the idea goes back to when he and Gerard Lansen were in charge. He says he misses your dad.”

“Bullshit,” Jack spits.

David’s hand flies to his throat as he fixes Jack with an incredulous look.

Nico’s fingertips leave the desk, hands half-raised in warning at Jack; a motion that wordlessly conveys, ‘Rein it in and shut the fuck up.’

Jack glowers beneath lowered brows.

“Have you done a handover?” Nico asks David.

“Not officially. We’ll do it for the board, and Hawkston too, if you like. Martin won’t change anything. He knows my aims for the project. You’ll hardly notice the difference, I’m sure. We’re very aligned in our vision. He knows all the details. Kate can meet directly with him in the future, I assume, once it’s all tidied up and passed over to him.”

Nico and Jack share a sideways glance I don’t understand.

“We’ll have to discuss it,” Nico snaps, before calling the meeting to an abrupt end, leaving me and half the team confused. He immediately rises and guides David Webster to the door, escorting him from the office.

I grab Jack’s arm. “What’s wrong?”

He shakes me off. “Leave it, Kate. This has nothing to do with you.”

“It’s my project.”

Jack dismisses my objection with a look, pushes back his chair and follows Nico, leaving me to pack up my documents and trail behind them.

By the time I catch up, David is gone and Nico and Jack are leaving the building together, deep in discussion about something that they clearly have no intention of sharing with me.

I stand in the grand lobby of the Hawkston building, with the sensation that the ground is shifting beneath my feet.

Something’s wrong, and I have no idea what it is.

31

NICO

“What the fuck does Martin Brooks want with the spa project?” Jack glances at the sky, where speckles of rain begin to fall in a summer haze. Petrichor fills my nostrils as we pace down the pavement. Side by side, we weave between other city office workers.

"There is no way the man has good intentions,” Jack continues, his voice low. "He knows what Dad did… who he was. I don’t want him anywhere near Kate.”

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