His Forever (His #3) (6 page)

“Do you know when Hayden will be coming back?”

“
Yes.  Oh dear…yes.”  The smile was gone from the man’s face now and he looked upset.  “He couldn’t find you to say goodbye so he asked me to tell you he’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.  But then one of the new assistant chefs accidentally caused a small grease fire and, well, in all the commotion I guess I forgot to give you the message.  I’m very sorry.”

Come to think of it, there was a faint scent reminiscent of burnt toast in the air. 
I’d been too distracted to notice it until now.  That brought me down a notch or two and I came to an abrupt standstill.  “Oh.  Was anyone hurt?” I asked, genuinely concerned when I saw how nervous the portly middle aged man was.

“No ma’am, but we’ll all be fired if you tell the elder Mr. Slate about the mishap.
  He isn’t exactly known for being a forgiving boss.  He fires his employees at the drop of a hat.” 

That wasn’t surprising at all.  It seemed so like Henrik to push everyone away.  In some ways, it was a wonder that Hayden was such a relatively well-adjusted guy
given what he’d grown up with.  Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that Hayden had been sent off to boarding school instead of being raised in close proximity to his father.  At least Henrik’s personality hadn’t rubbed off on him – much. 

“I won’t
say a word,” I assured the head chef.  “But if you want to keep the fire under wraps then maybe you should open a window.”  I had bigger things to think about than a tiny grease fire, and who was I to mess with someone’s livelihood?  It hadn’t felt good when Mark had tried to destroy my career so I wasn’t about to do that to Henrik’s staff members. 

“Thank you, Ms. James,” the head chef said gratefully.  “I’m forever in your debt!
  We all are!”

I didn’t answer.  I was too
busy racing to call Hayden. 

Infuriatingly, it seemed
his cell phone was shut off.  I left him an urgent voicemail begging him to call me immediately, but the phone didn’t ring.  Chances were he was tied up in a meeting…or maybe he’d just had enough business for one day and had turned his phone off to disengage from his father.  No matter what the reason, it didn’t exactly help me.

As irritating as it was, it seemed Henrik just might get his wish after all.

Frustrated, I retreated to my bedroom and stripped off my ruined black silk dress.  I traced my fingertip lightly over the discolored, alcohol-sodden fabric and then gently set the garment aside.  I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the armoire mirror then, and saw my anxiety written all over my face. 

The necklace I wore
around my neck gleamed, the many diamonds in it reflecting the light.  I paused then and put my hand to my throat, feeling it.  It helped calm me down by making me feel a bit closer to the man I loved. 

“Everything will be alright,” I whispered to myself as my fingertips gently traced the contours of the gorgeous necklace, my eyes fixed to my image in the mirror.  I wasn’t sure I believed my words but I said them anyway, hopeful that they’d prove to be true.

Hayden had given me that necklace, buying it and earrings to match the bracelet he’d gifted me back before our relationship had really taken off.  Those exquisite pieces of jewellery were among the few items I’d made sure to pack before leaving my life in Burlington behind.  They were a reminder of happier times, before I’d been dragged into the tangled web of lies concocted by Henrik Slate. 

The connection Hayden and I had shared had been new and much less complicated then, full of excitement and wonder.
  I hadn’t expected to think back on those days with nostalgia so soon.  It stung a little to know that the relative simplicity that had once been was now gone.

Maybe we could recapture that, I thought to myself hopefully as I fumbled
clumsily with the delicate clasp.  I wished Hayden was standing behind me to unfasten the necklace for me before setting it aside and taking me in his arms… 

Hayden would be livid when he found out what his father had done.  That was a given.  But later, once his anger had subsided, he’d see that we were finally free.  No one was after us
, nor had anyone ever been.  We wouldn’t have to hide or look over our shoulders any longer.  We could live our lives together exactly as we saw fit, two people coming together to unite as one.  It was like a dream come true.

But first we needed to deal with the ugly truth.  I knew there would be pain before there could be any pleasure.  I hated the thought of Hayden being hurt even more than he already had been…but there was no way around it. 
All I could do was be there to console him when he learned just what his father was capable of.  Sadly, I wasn’t even convinced Hayden would be all that surprised.  He’d come to expect bad behavior from his father.  It was just a pity that Henrik kept proving his cynical son right.

“Shit!” I exclaimed as the clasp of my diamond encrusted necklace broke.  I fumbled for it but missed
catching it and the gorgeous piece fell to the floor with a clatter.  I fell to my knees in front of it, afraid of what I might find.  If it was badly damaged I’d be devastated.

Thankfully it appeared the only part that had broken was the clasp.  The rest of the necklace remained intact, still every bit as beautiful as it had once been.  But what good is a gorgeous necklace without a working clasp?  I tucked it into my purse carefully and made a mental note to
take it to a reputable jeweller as soon as things settled down.

Maybe I couldn’t repair the fractured relationship between Hayden and his father, but I could at least get the necklace fixed.

“I’m here,” I announced, my arms crossed tightly over my chest.

It was
mid-morning and I was standing in the doorway of Henrik’s office.  I doubted very much that anything he said would change my low opinion of him but I nonetheless wanted to hear him out.  Besides, I still hadn’t been able to reach Hayden and I needed something to distract me or I’d go crazy dialing his number over and over only to hear voicemail pick up.

“I can see that,” Henrik said.  He was seated behind his desk
with an untouched cinnamon bagel and neatly-folded newspaper in front of him.  He had bags under his eyes and a bottle of painkillers was sitting on the desk next to his coffee mug.  “I must say, I expected you to be here much earlier.”

“I had things to do.”
  My answer was deliberately vague.  My comings and goings were none of Henrik’s business, and particularly not when I knew he’d disapprove of what I’d done.  My morning had been busy indeed.

He didn’t press the matter. 
“Come in, sit down.”

“I’d rather stand,” I retorted just to make it clear that I wasn’t about to take orders from him.  Henrik might think he could control everyone and everything, but he couldn’t control me.  H
e’d conspired against the man I’d fallen hard for and because of that, I wasn’t about to go easy on him.  I’d arrived ready to go to war against him if need be.

“Would you like some coffee?”
he offered politely.

“No.”
  My parents had always taught me to mind my manners, but this time I purposefully didn’t say “no thank you.”  I could practically hear my mother’s cluck of disapproval in my head.  I punctuated my one word sentence by throwing the uncashed check Henrik had given me down on his desk.  “I’ve changed my mind about this,” I informed him icily.  “I don’t want your money.” 

It was the only way I knew how to make it perfectly clear to Henrik that I could not be bought.

If he was hurt, he didn’t let on.  Ignoring my abrupt tone, Henrik smiled up at me apolitically as he rubbed his temples.  “Clearly I had far too much to drink last night,” he said.  “I regret you seeing me in such an undignified state.  And, of course, I very much regret the things I said.”

“Enough with the pleasantries,” I said sharply.  “What’s this about threatening Hayden?”

“The threats were never real.  He’s my son and my sole heir.  I’d never hurt him,” Henrik assured me.  “The threats were simply meant to keep him compliant and, for the most part, they worked.  Hayden is impulsive and reckless.  Maybe you haven’t seen that side of him but I assure you, it’s there.”

“What do you mean?”

Henrik’s face darkened.  “When he was fifteen he stole my yacht and went joyriding.”

“And…?”
I prompted after waiting expectantly only to get silence.  To me that sounded more like the rebellion of a bored rich kid than anything.  I looked at Henrik, wondering what else he had to say about his only son.

“
After that it only got worse.  A year later he threw a massive house party at my mansion while I was out of the country, even going so far as to give my staff the weekend off so he could get away with it.  What’s worse is he didn’t invite the classmates from his private boarding school – he threw a party for
homeless people
and gave away half the contents of my grand parlour!”

“I see,” I said, swelling with pride a little.  That was my Hayden.

Henrik was on a real tangent now, unloading a lifetime’s worth of disappointment on me.  “And when Hayden was nineteen he disappeared for a week!  A whole week!  He nearly flunked out of college because he missed his exams!  And do you know where my staff eventually found him?”

“Where did they find him?” I asked, disturbed only by the fact that Henrik had sent his staff to bring Hayden home rather than going out searching for him himself. 

“He was washing dishes in a soup kitchen!” Henrik exploded.  “He was ten pounds underweight because he’d given away the
generous
monthly allowance I’d provided him with and said he felt too guilty to eat at the soup kitchen when someone less fortunate could be benefiting.  He was…he was
dumpster diving
to survive, and sleeping on the street like a vagrant!”

Henrik seemed genuinely distraught by what Hayden had done, but I thought the whole thing was incredibly altruistic.  It was a shame Hayden’s own father hadn’t recognized his efforts to help those around him.  Instead, Henrik had only hampered them. 

It was as though he thought Hayden’s rejection of his lifestyle of excess was a personal rejection.

“I still don’t understand how Hayden’s behavior led you to threaten his life.”

“
Pretend
to threaten his life,” Henrik corrected me.

“Fine, whatever…”

“When he graduated college I informed him he was to work for me.  He wanted to open a restaurant or some foolish thing, but there’s no money or prestige in that,” Henrik scoffed.  “It would have been a waste of a fine education and I wasn’t about to let him pour my fortune into a failing business.”

It pained me that Henrik assumed Hayden’s business wo
uld fail.  Wasn’t a parent’s role to nurture and encourage a child rather than force them to go down a path that was of no interest?  But I kept my mouth shut, preferring instead to simply listen.  I was listening to what Henrik was saying but more importantly, I was listening to the things he
wasn’t
saying.

“
I thought if I gave him an opportunity to really make something of himself he’d finally see that I’ve known all along what’s best for him.  He’d abandon his preposterous notion that he ought to feel guilty for being born wealthy.  He’d learn to be the man I wanted him to be.”

“But…?”

“But little by little he stopped taking my instructions.  He was good at his job but he thought he knew better than me.  And he started going back to his old ways…he wasn’t reformed at all.  He’d merely gotten better about hiding what he was doing from me.”

“You mean giving money away to charity and that sor
t of thing?” I asked for clarification.

Henrik nodded.  “
I confronted him.  I told him I was going to be monitoring his spending very closely from then on because he couldn’t be trusted not to squander my fortune.”

It was hard for me to bite my tongue.  I was tempted to ask Henrik how helping those less fortunate was “squandering” but shelling out millions of dollars on every excess under the sun – like Henrik’s ever-growing art collection – wasn’t.  But attacking him would probably just make him shut down.  I wanted him to open up to me. 

I had a feeling Henrik hadn’t opened up to anyone in a long, long time because it was like a dam had burst.  I didn’t think I’d be able to quiet him even had I wanted to.  Once he got started, he just went on and on…

“Hayden
threatened to quit working for me entirely.  He said he’d go open a restaurant and didn’t want a dime.  Then he and Steve Martel concocted a plan to extort money from me and that was the last straw.  So I started making threats to keep Hayden in line.”

“Wait…what?  Hayden didn’
t know anything about the stolen painting or the extortion,” I insisted.  I’d been there and I’d seen Hayden’s surprise when he’d learned what Steve had done.  There was no way to fake that sort of reaction.  “It was Steve’s doing and Steve’s alone.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.  I know Hayden.”