Page 36 of Gold Digger
“Well, why the heck not?”
“You would have refused to come, and I needed you here.”
I rolled my eyes. “I knew you weren’t telling me something.”
“I know you did. You can sense omission.”
“Vicky,” I said slowly as Ollie scowled at me across the room. “This is where you apologise.”
“Oh, right,” Vicky said and then paused. “But I’mnotsorry. I need you here.” Vicky had a tendency to see things her way. If she needed me to be somewhere then that to her was the priority.
“Lie to me.”
“You know I can’t do that, and also, you can tell if people are lying.”
I gave up and took a big glug of my elderflower instead, swiping the tiny canapés as the tray went past and shoving one in my mouth. “I could be at home right now eating Chinese food with Hayley.”
Vicky frowned. “Chinese food has MSG in it. You and Hayley should not be eating it.” She paused for a moment, then turned to me. “I donotwant you eating it. I like you and Hayley. I don’t want you to get sick or have reduced life expectancies.”
“Vics, there’re a lot of things I’d do for you, babe. But abstaining from Chinese food for life is not one of them.”
She huffed. “I’ll send you a meal plan tomorrow.”
“We’ve already got the last three you sent over, love. And I hate to break it to you, but there’s no universe where Hayley is going to eat spinach.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s eight, Vicky.”
“Even more important that she eat green vegetables.”
“Can we maybe concentrate on why we’re here?” I said. “I’d prefer to be able to get away the right side of midnight and before I run into your brother.”
“Right, yes,” Vicky said. She looked over my shoulder and then bit her lip. “Er… there might be a problem.”
“What problem?”
“Mr Arkins is talking to my half-brother.”
“Mother trucker,” I muttered. Mr Arkins was the whole aim of tonight. Vicky wanted to invest this man’s money for him. This shouldn’t have been a problem, seeing as Vicky was the best investment broker in the business. But Mr Arkins was not going to be impressed with just the stats and cold, hard facts that Vicky could provide. The man needed schmoosing. Now, schmoosing was not Vicky’s strong point, which is where I came in. I closed my eyes for a long moment.
I squared my shoulders and told myself to woman up. Vicky was paying me to help her with this stuff – I didn’t need to let another employer down. So I forced a smile. “Come on then,” I said briskly. “I’ve got to face your brother at some point, might as well be now.” Anyone else might have heard the shaky nature of my voice or noticed how my hands were bunched into tight fists, but Vicky, bless her, was totally oblivious. In her mind, if I said it was fine to go and see her brother, then it was fine.
So we made our way over there, but it was only when I was feet away from Ollie that I realised I’d made a mistake. Being this close to him again was not a good idea. He was glaring at me, his body language screaming for me to stay away, hatred coming off him in waves, but my heart hadn’t seemed to have caught up to the fact that he wasn’t the potential love of my life. All I wanted to do was fall into him and let him hold me against his broad chest, let him kiss my temple in that unbearably sweet way he had and absorb all the regret and longing inside me, bursting to get out. The feeling was so strong it was all I could concentrate on as I stared at him dumbly. I even felt myself sway towards him slightly, only clawing it back when I saw that his lip had curled with disgust and he had actually shifted back in the wake of my advance.
Abrupt greetings were exchanged between the four of us. I was barely able to form coherent words, let alone be of use to Vicky. And before I could stop her, Vicky had launched into the stats behind her investment strategies, and Mr Arkins’ eyes had started glazing over. I shook my head to clear it and shifted my focus from the furious man across from me to the one Ishouldbe focusing on.
Mr Arkins was leaning slightly away from Vicky. I could feel annoyance, boredom and some frustration rolling off him. So I reached for Vicky’s wrist and gave it a squeeze. Vicky was fine with touch as long as it was firm and deliberate, not lightand unexpected. She knew to expect the wrist squeeze in this situation. It was the signal that we had come up with together to use if she needed to stop and take a breath. Once Vicky started on a subject, she tended to run with it at an alarming pace. She could lose her audience very quickly if we weren’t careful, and right now we were dangerously close to losing Mr Arkins. His eyes were already flicking to either side, looking for some sort of escape. But they snapped back to us when Vicky’s verbal diarrhoea cut off abruptly.
“Sorry, I went off on one,” Vicky explained to Mr Arkins who was looking at her curiously. “Lottie tells me when I do it by squeezing my wrist. I’m not very good at letting other people talk.” He blinked. Vicky looked at him seriously. “Apparently, I bore people,” she said.
“That’s bullshit, Vics,” Ollie snapped at her, then turned to me. “How dare you say that to my sister.”
I ignored Ollie’s furious gaze. All my focus on Mr Arkins. He was a big man, not as tall as Ollie but just as broad, and he didn’t look particularly comfortable in a suit. One of his ears had been mauled at one stage; it wasn’t a full-on cauliflower ear, but it wasn’t that pretty either. And he had a scar on his lip, suggesting it had been busted a couple of times before.
I forced a laugh. “It’s just there’s so much flying around that huge brain of hers,” I explained. “She knows all there is to know about investing people’s money. But then there’s all sorts that Vics knows about. Don’t get her started on the latest rugby stats.”
“You like rugby?” Mr Arkins asked, his eyebrows going up in surprise.
