Page 18 of CEO April: Zed Barker
Chapter Seven
There were no awkward goodbyes the following morning. No,let’s keep in touch.We didn’t even exchange mobile numbers, and Duke was remarkably quiet about his previous invitation to his estate. We did hug and I was told by most that they looked forward to seeing me again. I had no idea if there would be anagain,but I hoped so. Perhaps, now I was on the list, I might get another invite but it would have to be one Rebecca wasn’t attending. That would be strange, for sure.
I think I smiled most of the way back. I knew I would be left with some fond memories of the weekend, and I would need to make sure to stop to get Rebecca a large bouquet of flowers. My smile only dipped with I thought of Laura. I knew I’d need to push her from my mind. I didn’t know her surname, or even if Laura was her real name. I had no idea where she lived, what she did for work, and other than contacting Angela, no way of knowing more.
I sighed, I could only hope she’d attend another party.
* * *
“So?” I heard. I peered around the large bunch of colourful lilies. “I take it those are for me?” Rebecca said, reaching out for them.
“They are,” I replied, ignoring her firstquestion.
“You have a smile I haven’t seen in a while,” she said, following me into my office.
“I feel good. Refreshed. Ready to take on the world again.”
“And you do have me to thank for that, remember?” She cocked an already very arched eyebrow at me.
“I do. Thank you. I won’t ask how you knew about those parties, but, as I said, I feel good.”
“I can’t wait to hear the gory details,” she said, shouting over her shoulder while skipping away.
“You won’t hear them from me,” I called after her, and then laughed. Rebecca had been a good friend, but I did hope discretion was kept by whoever she thought she’d get the gory details from.
What I’d said was true, I felt completely refreshed. I’d had a weekend of not having to think about work, about financials. I’d done nothing but satisfy myself with willing partners. I smiled some more, it was my kind of weekend, for sure.
I picked up the manuscript I’d been devouring before and without worrying about getting to the end, I decided I wanted to set up a meeting with the author.
I grabbed the details and then blinked a few times. D Harrington lived in Devon, owner of an estate of some thousand acres; he lived acharmedlife, according to his bio. I started to laugh, praying that this wasn’t Duke and the book he had told me about.
“No way,” I said to myself. Duke had indicated his story was about his sex life with the rich and famous. However… I scanned back through some of the pages and although the book had some racy parts, there wasn’t mention of rich or famous. However, had Duke been clever enough to conceal identities?
Before the weekend I knew the story was something my publishing house wanted. It had come to us via an open submissions weekend, something we did once a year and rarely found such a gem. I would be foolish to ignore it simply because I’d been privy to some of Duke’sactivities.
“What’s funny?” Rebecca came into my office holding a mug of coffee for me.
“I think this is from one of the guests at the party,” I said. She picked up the pages I’d printed off and read the bio.
“Who do you think it is?”
“There was a guy, he said he was a duke. I don’t know if he even told us his name but we called him Duke.”
She pursed her lips and slowly shook her head while reading. “Not familiar to me. Sometimes there are members of the aristocracy, but I don’t recall meeting anyone called Duke.”
“How often have you attended those parties?” I asked.
She sat on the edge of my desk and hummed. “Years. Okay, I’ll tell you the truth. I started them.” She scattered some paperbacks as she shuffled around laughing.
“What do you mean?”
“Angela and I weretogetherfor a while.” She did the quote marks in the air thing when she spoke. “We thought it was fun. It started just by inviting some friends to join in, and then to paying guests and a B & B style holiday.”
“I don’t believe you. Why are you working here? You can’t need the money.”
She picked up a stack of paperbacks, recent books that were currently sitting top of the charts. “No, I don’t need the money. But I do need the escape these give me.” She waved a book around.
“What happened to you and Angela?” I asked.
