Jack faced his father and Braydon. He stretched out his arms, ready to block either of them, stand up for the woman who’d been like a mother to him. ‘Go back inside, back to our guests before they start wondering where you are and come out to investigate.’
That seemed to get through to him. Every year the guests revelled in the Churchills’ Thanksgiving Party; it was even featured in the society pages, and Kent wouldn’t want to risk that changing, risk being written up in an entirely different sort of news article for all the wrong reasons.
By the time Jack had ushered Kent and Braydon inside and shut the doors behind them, the woman was already halfway down the steps to run away from the house and Nicole was calling after her.
When she was out of sight, Jack stood behind Nicole looking at the empty space, the darkened path where she’d fled that led out to the New York streets. He put a hand on Nicole’s shoulder as little plumes of her warm breath met the air. ‘Are you okay?’
She shrugged him off. ‘Never better. After all, I know my place now, don’t I?’
‘Nicole—’ His words were futile. She pushed past him and returned inside, slamming the door behind her.
Jack stood outside, his breath fogging into the darkness. His hands were numb and his chest felt the cold snap that wrapped around him. Sometimes he wished he could escape as easily as the woman in the red blanket, get far away from the life he led. But knowing that wasn’t the case, he finally retreated inside.
‘Anything I can do to help?’ He watched Nicole arranging doilies onto a couple of platters, ready to laden them with the finest cooked canapés imaginable. She was a fantastic cook. They’d spent many a night in his teenage years bonding over late night feasts when his father had been working late or he’d been up at night cramming for his exams.
‘I’ve got it, Jackson.’ She was the only person who called him by his full name since his mother died. Occasionally she’d forget, slip up and call him Jack, and it always sounded so odd.
‘My father isn’t a complete asshole, you know.’
When she turned to him, her eyes were filled with tears. ‘Language, Jackson.’
He smiled at their familiar banter and took a bottle of beer from the fridge. Soon he’d be offered nothing less than the finest wine or champagne varieties—the Louis Roederer and Dom Pérignon often made an appearance at these gatherings—and a bottle of beer would seem blasphemous. But right now he needed it to kick-start his ability to socialise with people he had nothing much in common with.
‘What are you up to?’ Nicole eyed the beer. ‘Are you trying to make him even angrier?’
Jack hooked an eyebrow. Last year he had purposefully walked into their summer party with a bottle of beer in hand. His father had hated it! Kent had been parading bottles with labels to impress, but Jack had garnered more attention with his cheap brand of beer, even got several requests for one, much to his father’s dismay.
‘You know how your father feels about you taking part in these gatherings with his business associates and friends. He’s already angry enough with me, so don’t push it, Jackson.’ When he knocked back a swig of beer, she sighed. ‘I guess that’s why you’re doing it.’
He leaned against the kitchen counter as Nicole checked on the Thanksgiving turkey, ran through a prep list and then put the finishing touches to the smoked salmon canapés, topping each one off with a miniature sprig of dill.
‘What leftovers did you give the girl?’ he asked.
Nicole cast him a suspicious look before she realised he was trying to quell her anger and recover a sense of normality. ‘A portion of last night’s leftover chicken casserole. It was a modest amount, nothing to make a fuss about.’
‘Are you going to tell me who she was?’
Nicole pulled another tray from the oven, this one with creamy sausage and stuffed mushrooms. ‘She’s someone who needs help.’
Jack stepped forward and loaded the canapés onto one of the silver oval platters as Nicole took the opportunity to head into the cloakroom at the back of the kitchen. She’d always been the same. She was the housekeeper, her role defined, but she always presented herself well at these events and that meant a dash of lipstick, pinning her corkscrew curls up on top of her head, perhaps a spritz of a delicate floral fragrance Jack had always associated with her.
‘You go mingle with the guests.’ She ushered him with her hands to push him out of the kitchen.
‘I’m finishing my beer. And we’re talking, aren’t we?’
She took the bottle and pushed it onto the countertop. ‘Right now it’s time to go and be business Jack, not my Jackson. And we’ve finished talking.’
He groaned, but lifted his jacket from the back of the chair where he’d left it shortly before the showdown outside. He shrugged it on, adjusted his cummerbund, ensured his bow tie was on straight. ‘Off I go to pretend what happened earlier didn’t happen at all.’
Nicole smiled kindly at him. Jack knew his father was right to get rid of someone trespassing on his land, taking advantage of Nicole’s kind heart and generosity, but he also knew it could’ve been handled a lot more sensitively than it had been. He wondered whether Nicole would speak of it again after the party ended. He was close to her. She’d gotten him through some dark days when there’d been nobody else in the house to soften the edges of Kent’s serious approach, the disappearance of a childhood that had gone in a puff of smoke like a magic trick when his mother died.
Jack took a deep breath and joined his father and their guests in the dining room of the six-storey townhouse. The champagne was flowing readily in this room and Jack took a glass from the silver tray on the sideboard. The table was set, ready for the occasion. Nicole had pressed the white linen tablecloth and napkins that morning, mini pumpkins with tea lights illuminated the centre of the table, hexagonal white plates with gold piping around the edges sat in position, framed by gold embossed cutlery. It was like a scene from a beautiful magazine, a scene from their life, but a life that Jack found increasingly difficult to feel a part of, let alone enjoy.
‘Jack, won’t you join us.’ Braydon, the in-house designer for The Diamond Touch, was a man who had apparently shown his talents first when he joined the company more than two decades ago and later his brashness and lack of social skills. He was a similar age to Kent but much less of a man and Jack neither wanted to socialise with him, nor work with him. Unfortunately, both of those things were unavoidable.
‘Great to see you, Braydon.’ Jack forced brightness into his voice and knocked back the champagne that would undoubtedly get him through the evening. He wasn’t happy Braydon had seen the debacle outside tonight. The man focused on one-upmanship, and Jack had a nasty feeling this was an anecdote he’d no doubt use against them in the future.
‘Let me introduce you to Fern.’ Braydon pulled the woman facing away from him into their space.
