Part 3
“It has to do with you arriving exhausted and deciding within thirty seconds that I attacked an employee.”
“She isn’t an employee.”
Vanessa blinked.
Julian realized he had said it instinctively. Claire was technically employed through Mercer Residential Services, a small company that handled the owner-occupied units connected to his hotel properties. Her paycheck carried the Mercer name. Her schedule was coordinated through the private residence system.
But she did not work for the hotel in the ordinary sense, and she certainly did not belong to Vanessa.
“She works here,” he clarified.
“That is what employee means.”
“No. It means I’m responsible for what happens to her here.”
Claire looked up at him then.
The cautious hope in her expression was more difficult to bear than fear would have been.
Vanessa saw it too.
“Julian,” she said, and now there was gentleness in her voice. “You have walked into the end of an argument. Claire was upset. I was upset. The decanter broke. She struck the cabinet when she pulled away from me. None of that should have happened, but none of it is what you’re making it.”
“What am I making it?”
“A crime scene.”
He looked at the shattered crystal.
“No,” he said. “You did that.”
The color changed beneath Vanessa’s makeup, not much, but enough.
Claire shifted her weight as though preparing to rise.
A fragment of crystal moved beneath the sole of her black work shoe.
Julian crossed back to her immediately. “Don’t.”
“I can stand.”
“I know.”
He extended one hand. Claire looked at it before taking it. Her fingers were cold and rigid. She rose slowly, favoring her left leg after kneeling too long.
Once upright, she stepped backward from the spill and smoothed the front of her apron.
The gesture was so normal that it made the room feel stranger.
Julian guided her toward the sofa but did not touch her again. “Sit down.”
“I shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
She glanced at the pale upholstery.
It took him a moment to understand.
“You think you’ll stain it?”
Her cheeks reddened. “The cloth—”
“The sofa will survive.”
“I’d rather stand.”
Vanessa picked up her drink.
Julian heard the faint suction as the wet base left the bar.
Claire folded her hands over her apron.
He studied the three of them reflected in the black television screen opposite the windows: himself still wearing the charcoal overcoat he had slept in during the flight, Claire in her uniform, Vanessa brilliant in green.
The arrangement looked almost posed.
Owner.
Housekeeper.
Future wife.
He disliked himself for seeing the hierarchy so clearly only after someone had been hurt.
For months Claire had been nearly invisible to him, not because he did not know her name or speak to her, but because the smooth running of the penthouse had encouraged him to accept her presence as part of the architecture. Fresh towels appeared. Groceries were put away. Dust vanished from the piano. The orchids survived despite his inability to remember when they had last been watered.
He had thanked her. He had paid above the market rate. At Christmas he had sent a bonus.
He had considered himself decent.
Decency, he was discovering, could become another comfortable room a wealthy man lived in without examining the foundation.
“Is your phone upstairs?” he asked Claire.
She nodded.
“Can you get it?”
“I think so.”
Vanessa’s head turned. “Why?”
Julian ignored her. “Do you need help on the stairs?”
“No.”
Claire took one step, then stopped.
A small tremor moved through her right hand.
“I don’t want to go upstairs,” she said.
Vanessa stared at her.
Julian said, “You don’t have to.”
“I left my phone in the laundry room. My bag is there too.”
“We’ll get them later.”
The word we altered the room again.
Vanessa set her drink down for the second time.
“May I speak to you privately?”
“We’re speaking now.”
“I mean without her.”
Claire’s gaze dropped.
Julian saw it happen: the reflex to excuse herself, to make room for the people whose names were on the deed.
He said, “No.”
Vanessa inhaled slowly through her nose.
She had once told him that public arguments were vulgar because they forced witnesses into taking sides. Julian had agreed. His parents had fought with doors open, using household staff and children as furniture around which anger could move. He had spent much of his adult life mistaking secrecy for dignity.
Now Vanessa wanted privacy because privacy favored whoever entered it with more power.
“Fine,” she said. “Then we can do this here.”
She walked from the bar to the windows. Harbor light framed her profile.
“Claire has had a difficult few weeks.”
Claire looked at her.
Vanessa did not.
“She has been distracted. Forgetful. She has broken two glasses, left the terrace door unlocked, and misplaced a package.”
“I did not leave the terrace door unlocked,” Claire said.
Vanessa turned with a weary expression. “You told me you might have.”
“I said I checked it twice.”
“You said you weren’t sure.”
“I was sure. You kept asking.”
“That is not my fault.”
Claire’s lips pressed together.
Julian held up one hand before the exchange could accelerate. “What package?”
Vanessa looked at him.
“A delivery.”
“What delivery?”
“I don’t remember.”
“But you remember that she misplaced it.”
“For God’s sake, Julian.”
He watched her closely. “What was in the envelope?”
Vanessa’s jaw tightened.
“You keep returning to that as though it matters.”
“It mattered enough for you to accuse her of snooping.”
“I did not accuse her.”
Claire said, “You called me a thief.”
Vanessa’s head snapped toward her.
It was the fastest movement she had made.
The silence that followed seemed to enlarge the penthouse.
Claire’s fear returned immediately, but something else appeared beside it. Regret, perhaps, though not for lying. Regret for having stopped.
Julian asked, “Did she?”
May you like
Vanessa’s gaze remained fixed on Claire. “I said that going through another person’s correspondence was theft of privacy.”
“You said, ‘People like you always steal something,’” Claire replied.
