Page 105 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
“Of course, sir.” Heath bobbed his head briefly and left, closing the door with a satisfying clunk behind him.
“Miss Harding, eh?” Zara went straight for the jugular. “Is that the betrothed one or the single one you once smacked in the face with a cricket ball?”
“It’s the one that’s none of your business,” I replied without missing a beat. “You don’t get to come back here after the shit you’ve pulled and start being a dutiful sister. Be a dutiful wife and mother before you start worrying about me. I’m perfectly fine.”
“Ouch.” She looked down at her hands, and a brief flash of guilt swept over me.
Only a brief one.
“If you want me to apologise, I’m not going to,” I warned her. “Because I’m not sorry.”
“I don’t want you to apologise. You can’t apologise for speaking the truth.” Her voice was soft. “I know I’ve not been great to anyone, least of all Beth and Danny. I don’t really have an excuse.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” I saved the document I was working on and minimised it. “We’re all struggling, Zara. You’re not the only one still trying to accept Dad’s death, but your outright refusal to face up to your grief is burdening the rest of us, including your wife and child. Do you think I’ve had time to process my own emotions while running this estate and looking after the family?”
“No. You’re right. I’m sorry, Tom.”
“Don’t be sorry. Being sorry won’t fix it.”
“I know. If it makes a difference, the first thing I plan to do after this Christmas is find a therapist to help me deal witheverything.” She put the mug down and swapped it for her bag. “Actually, on that topic, I have something I need to give you.”
“What could you possibly need to give me?”
She got up and passed me a brown envelope. It was unsealed, but light.
With a frown, I took it from her and removed the contents. “Is this… your CV?”
“Yep.”
I met her eyes.
“Why are you givingmethis? I know where you’ve worked and what grades you got in school.”
“I quit my job.”
I stared at her. Was I hearing her correctly? Or was my lack of sleep last night catching up to me? “You did what?”
“I quit my job,” she repeated, folding her arms across her chest. “They wanted me to stay even longer, so I told my boss to shove his presentation up his arse until it does a couple of loops around his digestive system and walked out.”
Yeah.
That sounded like the Zara I knew.
“So, what am I to do with this?” I held up the sheets of paper. “Are you asking me to go over it and tweak it for you? Maybe put in a few good words?”
I knew what she was asking for.
“You know why,” she said, clenching her jaw.
“If you want to use your get out of jail card with me, you’re going to have to do better than that.”
She held her jaw tightly for a second, then relaxed it and walked back around to the chair to sit down again. “I was going to quit in the new year anyway. I can’t keep going back and forth. It was only supposed to be a short-term thing, but I got too comfortable avoiding everything here. I told myself it was a goodthing, that I was making more money for my family, but like you said, all I did was abandon them.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her.
“Dad would have come down and dragged me back by now. I was half-expecting you to do the same.”
“Well, that’s why you got away with it for this long. He babied you. Personally, you’re old enough to deal with your own shit, so I’m not going to drag you anywhere to fix your problems.”
