The Rake (Boston Belles #4)(78)

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Get those flowers ready and go back to work, Joanne. And if you want to quit, leave a resignation letter on my desk.”

She turned around and stomped away, muttering under her breath.

For the rest of the day, she did not try to engage me in small talk whenever I left my office, nor attack me with new pictures of her grandchildren, nor give me a snack she’d packed especially for me from home—usually in the form of a healthy peanut butter and granola cookie.

At six o’clock, when I exited my office, a large bouquet with white roses, peonies, and ranunculus waited on her desk with a note.



Mr. Whitehall,



You’re about to lose everything for nothing. Congratulations!

P.S. Consider this my official resignation letter. I quit.





—J


Throwing the note in the bin, I grabbed the flowers and headed downstairs.

My phone began ringing in my front pocket with an incoming call. Mum.

It was outrageously late in England. Or extremely early, depending how you looked at it.

I picked it up on a whim, knowing that I shouldn’t.

“What now?” I growled.

“Devvie!” she cried in delight. “Sorry. I won’t take a lot of your time. I would love to throw an engagement party for you. The spring is a lovely time for celebration. Is there any way you could take a weekend off and hop on a plane with Lou?”

It didn’t sit well with me. The fact that Ursula naturally assumed Louisa and I were already engaged.

Additionally, the thought of being in a closed space with the Butchart brothers and a few dozen more stuck-up royals made me want to seek asylum on another planet.

“Work is hectic right now.”

“You only get married once,” she argued.

“Not necessarily in the twenty-first century.”

“I hope it’s not about that dreadful woman again. If she gets into trouble, it’s on her, not on you.”

That dreadful woman had a name, and frankly, my mother didn’t deserve to utter it out loud. But something struck me.

No. Don’t go there. There is simply no way.

“Why would she get into trouble?” I asked, throwing open the driver’s door to my Bentley before slipping inside. I put the phone on speaker and tossed it to the central console. “What do you know?”

What if she was the one who was harassing Sweven?

She had all the discriminatory characteristics: a motive, a grudge, and an end game.

She knew where I lived, which meant that she knew where Belle lived.

And whatever information she was missing could be filled in by a private investigator.

But was she really capable of such a thing?

“I know nothing,” my mother gasped, trying to sound offended. “I just said it because you told me she was a stripper. They tend to get into hot water. Your life choices say a lot about you. Why, what are you insinuating?”

“What are you hiding?” I countered.

“I’m not hiding anything. But I know you, and you are a caregiver by nature. I don’t want you to give up on things because of her.”

“I’m starting to think you know more than you let on.”

This made her blow out a sharp breath.

“You’re becoming extremely paranoid. I’m worried about you. You’re losing it. Coming back home would do you good. Please think about it.”




Dinner was, as expected, perfect.

The setting, the room, the meal, and the woman. All five stars.

Louisa sat across from me in the grand suite she was housed in, clad in a black evening dress, flawless for the occasion.

We dined on roasted lobster with red potatoes.

The french doors of her balcony were open, the spring breeze wafting inside carrying with it the scent of blossom.

It reminded me of Europe. Of lazy summer breaks on the shore in the South of France.

Of unprocessed meats and cheese so smelly it would make our eyes water, and bronzed skin, and chateaus I’d get lost in.

And I realized I missed home.

To a point where it started to hurt.

“You know, I tried to move on from you. I even succeeded, for a little while,” Louisa admitted, running the pad of her finger over the rim of her wine glass. “Frederick was an incredible man. He taught me how to believe, a power I didn’t think I had anymore. I used to walk around with this godawful sense of failure. After all, my entire purpose in this life was to marry you, and I’d managed to somehow scare you away.”

“Lou,” I groaned, feeling terrible, because in a sense, she was still doing just that. Trying to win me.

“No, wait. I want to finish.” She shook her head. “When I met him, he spent an entire year just peeling away my insecurities, layer after layer, to try and find out who I was. It was hard … and it was a long process. He had no idea what made me the way I was. Why my wounds had refused to close. But he was patient and sweet.”

I fractured the lobster with the cracker, feeling kinship to the dead animal. And for Frederick, who sounded like a good man, who deserved better.

And also a weird sense of revelation. Frederick had the ability and endurance to stick around for Lou when she was impenetrable to him—why couldn’t I do so with Emmabelle?