‘Miss Johnson.’ He offered a thin smile and a vice-like handshake but even if his stance was polite, his black eyes were unfriendly and the message was clear—You are not welcome.
‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ Aubrey offered, surprised that he knew her name and realising it hadn’t been chance that she had been allowed into the service. Perhaps they knew about Jobe and her mom after all. ‘It was a lovely service.’
He didn’t respond.
‘I was actually just leaving,’ Aubrey said.
‘Perhaps that would be for the best.’
Ouch.
Khalid now came and stood at her side, like a security guard, Aubrey thought, and it angered her, for they all clearly thought she was either trouble or not good enough to be here.
Aubrey was actually now tempted to accept a drink from the passing waiter just to throw it in Abe’s face, to tell him that his father had never looked at her or her mother with such contempt. She was suddenly sick of the Devereuxes and their closed ranks and minds, and tired of being looked at as if she’d brought in dirt on her shoe.
Khalid could feel the tension rip through her, and privately he considered it deserved—Aubrey had been nothing but polite and discreet and had clearly been about to leave.
It was too late for that now, though, for Chantelle had arrived.
Ah, Chantelle.
Khalid inwardly sighed.
She had never quite made it to wife and remained bitter about that fact. Her hair was coiffed to perfection as always, yet her face was flushed from champagne and, if there was such a thing as too many diamonds, Chantelle, to Khalid’s mind, was just that.
‘I don’t believe we’ve met,’ she said to Aubrey. ‘I’m Chantelle, Jobe’s partner.’
Khalid felt his jaw grit a little. Chantelle had been Jobe’s date on many an occasion, yes. But the great man himself had kept her at arm’s length before his demise.
‘I’m Aubrey,’ she said, and held out her hand. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’
Aubrey’s hand wasn’t accepted.
‘The correct thing to do, at an occasion such as this,’ Chantelle hissed, ‘is to say who you are and your relationship to the deceased.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Aubrey said, refusing to let on she was terrified. ‘I wasn’t aware of that—it’s my first funeral.’
And Khalid, who rarely smiled, especially on a day like today, found that he was suppressing one, as Aubrey sidestepped the demand for more information as to who she was.
Yet Chantelle, having spent a week locked out of Devereux discussions and attorneys, having spent a week being less than magnanimously told that while she could join the family at the service, the fact was she wasn’t one of them.
The Devereuxes were bastards to those not their own.
And Aubrey, alone, stood in the volatile thick of it.
‘So where have you travelled from?’ Chantelle asked, assuming correctly that Aubrey wasn’t from the East Side.
‘Vegas.’
‘Oh.’
Yes—oh.
Just. How. Old. Is. She? Chantelle’s eyes screamed as she spoke. ‘Do you get to Manhattan much?’
‘It’s my first time here,’ Aubrey answered.
‘And you know Jobe, how?’
He had a long affair with my mother, Aubrey was tempted to sweetly reply. He adored her and treated her like a queen. They used to play strip poker in our trailer. Not while I was there, mind. Jobe was a gentleman like that. He really was. I only found that out the other day when my mom was reminiscing. I was there, though, when he drank cheap whiskey while my mom cooked him spiced chicken wings. They were his favourite, not that you’d know.
He helped with my homework. You’d twist that and make that sound sleazy, but it never, ever was. He took us to Disney and to see the Hoover Dam and we went in a helicopter over the Grand Canyon. Me! A girl from a trailer park who’d never had a daddy, let alone been on a holiday, flew over the Grand Canyon in a helicopter.
They loved each other and my mom never took a single red cent. Not even when she got so burnt, so broken she couldn’t afford her bills, still she didn’t let him know. She wanted him to remember her as the beauty she had been and the love they had once had.
But, of course, Aubrey didn’t say any of that.
She had nothing left in the tank. Fuelled on no sleep and a single granola bar, suddenly she felt a little sick and also terribly close to tears when Chantelle, her eyes bulging, finally snapped. ‘Who exactly are you?’
Aubrey could feel all the eyes on her. She had no idea what to say and was ruing her decision to come. Her heart felt as if it had moved up to her throat and she wanted to turn and run.
Khalid could feel her silent agony as she stood before the inquisition.
While his brief was to protect the Devereux family from Aubrey, his instinct was suddenly to protect her from them. As much as he loved them, Khalid knew their might and, aware of their ruthlessness with outsiders, he stepped in. ‘Aubrey is here with me.’
Aubrey blinked as he spoke and dared not turn to him; instead she watched as Chantelle turned from angry, to confused, to mollified, right before her eyes.
‘Oh...’ Chantelle’s pursed lips parted in surprise. ‘I must apologise. I didn’t realise.’
‘Why would you, Chantelle?’ Khalid responded. ‘I never discuss my private life.’
‘So, how long have you two been—?’ Chantelle persisted, but Khalid would not be interrogated by anyone and interrupting the question he turned to Aubrey. ‘Come on.’
Oh, the blessed relief of walking out of the wake with Khalid by her side where it felt no harm could come to her. She liked it that he did not take her hand or snake an arm around her waist, just because the scenario he’d created possibly meant he could, and in the foyer Aubrey turned and faced him, and was suddenly shy. ‘Thank you for that.’
‘It’s no problem.’
‘I just didn’t know what to say...’
‘You don’t have to explain your dealings with Jobe to me.’
Dealings? Aubrey frowned at his choice of word, unsure quite what he meant. ‘Well, thanks again.’ She offered her hand and perhaps that was the wrong thing to do, for he did not accept it, though for a reason Aubrey hadn’t thought of—‘Isn’t that a little formal when we’re supposed to be a couple? Chantelle is just over there.’
‘Oh, yes.’ She nodded and pulled her hand back, and then nerves caught up and generated the most stupid thing Aubrey could possibly say. ‘Perhaps I should have kissed you instead?’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Khalid responded.
She flushed in embarrassment at her stupid words but then he stepped in and saved her there to. ‘Aubrey, even were you my date there would be no affection between us and Chantelle would know that.’
‘Oh.’ She smiled in relief and even made a little joke. ‘So, no public displays of affection. Noted.’
Khalid was about to correct her—no, no affection. Period.
But that would have led them into dangerous waters indeed, for she might ask him to clarify just what he’d meant by that.
And Khalid would love to clarify.
They