Page 86 of Slow Burn Summer

“Come,” she barked. “And close the door.”

He took a seat opposite her. She let out a long, exaggerated sigh and lowered her glasses to stare at him.

“Charles,” she said, with the smallest shake of her head.

No one else had ever called him Charles, not even his father.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“Evidently so,” she said.

She wasn’t someone who fidgeted with the end of a pen or bit her lip. She laced her fingers on the desk, diamonds flashing, a power move she’d perfected over the years.

“I release you,” she said.

He stared, thrown off his stride. He’d come to talk to her about his place at the agency. It was so like her to pre-empt and control the direction of the conversation.

“Youreleaseme?”

“You’re a good man, Charlie, and you’ve got the makings ofa decent agent, but you simply don’t want this the way your father did. You don’t have his fire. You need to want it with every fiber of your being to be the best in this business.”

She was right, of course.

“The other day,” he said, “when you said I’d become too personally involved with Kate to have sound judgment—it’s true.”

She rolled her eyes. “Business and pleasure don’t mix. You have to choose one or the other.” She paused. “Choose wisely, Charlie.”

He glanced at Fiona’s tell-tale blue-and-orange-marbled pen tray, and then at a framed photograph on the windowsill. To the casual eye it was just a natural shot of his father laughing at someone off camera, Fiona presumably, but the now-familiar riverside setting behind him told a much more personal story.

“I went to the Henley apartment,” he said, watching her eyes, seeing nostalgia soften her resolve as she glanced at Jojo’s photo too. The prolonged silence sat between them like a third person in the room, someone in a wrinkled linen blazer with a decidedly loud bow tie.

“He and I were too alike,” she said eventually. “Too driven by our reputations, too aware of what other people would think.” She stopped, choosing her words carefully. “We’d been business partners and friends for a very long time. He was a tower of strength for me when Bob died.”

Charlie could remember Fiona being around when his mother died too, her no-nonsense presence holding his father together. He’d never picked up on any sense of romance between them, but then he’d spent little time around them in their later years, too busy living his own life in the United States. He realized now that they’d become more to each other in the years after Bob died, that somewhere along the line their friendship had deepened into love. The Henley apartment made perfect sense—a place out of time, somewhere only they knew, impersonal by design, personal to them.

“I remember Kate,” Fiona said, jumping around the timeline. “She was a loose cannon even back then, too much hair and a laugh that rattled the office windows. All that vulnerability and strength came over clearly onscreen, she was a director’s dream.” She shook her head, still looking at Jojo’s photo. “Your father adored her, said she reminded him of Jane Fonda inBarefoot in the Park.”

Charlie swallowed the sudden lump in his throat, moved to know his father had held Kate in such affection. “Thank you for telling me,” he said.

“He was crushed when she left. I feared history might repeat itself when she blew back in, another Francisco heart to break.” Fiona sighed and looked back at Charlie. “Hugh’s book is selling because he speaks with such tender truth about grief. He used the manuscript almost as a portal, somewhere to release the enormity of his emotions. Readers can relate, because sooner or later we all lose someone we love.”

She was talking about the book, but also, he realized, about Jojo. Fiona’s personal connection to the story had always been the driving force behind getting it published, and perhaps also the reason she’d begrudgingly accepted Kate’s involvement too; in her own inimitable way, the whole thing had been about honoring the memory of the man she loved.

“What will you do if I leave?” Charlie said, because however serious she was about releasing him, he couldn’t imagine her running the agency alone.

She shrugged. “I’ve been considering winding things down since he died.”

An unsettling thought crossed Charlie’s mind. “You didn’t keep things going because of me, did you?”

Her eyes flickered to the photo of his father, then back to him. “Oh, don’t give yourself so much credit, Charles. I think I’ll try a longer cruise. Eat shrimp. Read some books.”

Charlie looked away, choked up. Fiona had been in his life forever, and in his parents’ absence, she’d been watching over him without him realizing it.

“I release you, Fi,” he said. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw tears gather in her eyes. “Can I hug you?”

“You most certainly cannot,” she said, sliding her glasses back up her nose. “Ask Felicity to bring me some coffee on your way out.”

He nodded, getting up to leave.

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