‘Good,’ Graydon said gracelessly, and hung up.
Mason Parker gripped the steering wheel of his Tesla Model S tightly and gritted his teeth, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.
‘You’re mad,’ said Flora.
‘No, I’m not,’ Mason grumbled. ‘I’m disappointed.’
He was driving her to JFK, something he’d hoped to be doing tomorrow, en route to their long-planned Bahamas vacation.
‘I’m disappointed too. But what was I supposed to do?’ Flora asked plaintively. ‘Turn down the job?’
Mason shrugged sulkily.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Flora. ‘If you’d been asked to work on some deal at the last minute, or to fly to meet an important client, you wouldn’t say “no”.’
‘That’s different,’ said Mason, taking the exit for the airport and immediately running into a solid wall of traffic.
‘How is it different?’ Flora bristled.
‘Because my job actually pays the bills,’ Mason snapped, in a rare loss of self-control. ‘Our bills. I’m sorry, Flora, but I’m done pretending our careers are on some sort of an equal footing.’ He paused meaningfully before the word ‘careers’, putting it in audible quotation marks. ‘I work really hard and I don’t think it’s too much to ask that when I plan, and pay for, an expensive vacation, my goddamn fiancée comes with me.’
Flora opened her mouth to speak then closed it again.
I work really hard?
What, and I don’t?
She was angry, but at the same time she knew that she was the one who had let Mason down. She was the one who’d changed their plans at the last minute. It was only natural that he should be disappointed.
Reaching out, she put a conciliatory hand on Mason’s leg. ‘We’ll do it another time, honey. Soon, I promise.’
‘I’m doing it next week,’ said Mason.
‘You’re still going?’ Flora failed to keep the surprise out of her voice. ‘On your own?’
‘Sure. Why not? The villa’s already paid for and I closed my deal. The Coateses are gonna be out there, so I won’t be on my own. And Chuck and Henrietta.’
Flora’s stomach lurched unpleasantly. Charles ‘Chuck’ Branston was Mason’s best buddy from Andover, and would be best man at Mason and Flora’s wedding next year. His sister Henrietta had always held a torch for Mason, and made no secret of her dislike for Flora, although Mason claimed not to see it.
Oh God, Flora thought miserably. He’ll be mad at me, and drunk half the time, and she’ll be all over him like a rash. In a tropical paradise.
What am I doing? What am I doing?
Mason pulled over and turned off the engine. How had they gotten here already?
‘Please don’t be mad,’ said Flora, this time with tears in her eyes. ‘I love you so much.’
‘I love you too.’ Mason softened, pulling her to him, inhaling the sweet, gardenia scent of her Kai perfume. ‘I’m only mad because I miss you, Flora. I want you with me. Now. All the time.’
‘I want that too,’ Flora whispered, relief flooding through her. He wasn’t going to run off with Henrietta Branston. She would get things started at Hanborough, then fly back and make it all up to him. Everything was going to be OK.
They both got out and Mason lifted Flora’s case out of the trunk.
‘Maybe we should bring the wedding forward?’ he said, setting it on the ground.
‘Bring it forward?’
‘Sure, why not? We could do it at Christmas.’
‘Christmas?’ Flora stammered. ‘This Christmas?’
‘I know it’s quite soon.’ Mason grinned, slipping an arm around her waist. ‘But just think, by this time next year we’d already be married and settled. How great would that be? You might even be pregnant.’
Flora forced herself to smile, shutting out the clang, clang of prison doors closing.
‘OK, well, let’s think about it.’ She kissed him. ‘I’d better run. Don’t want to miss my flight.’
‘Don’t talk to any boys on the plane!’ Mason yelled after her.
‘I won’t,’ Flora called back, waving and smiling till he was out of sight.
By the time the plane finally took off, engines roaring as it shook and juddered its way up into the clouds, Flora was so physically and emotionally exhausted she fell instantly asleep.
When she woke up three hours later, drenched with sweat after a horrible dream, the cabin lights were off. For a moment Flora felt the blind panic of not knowing where she was. But as the familiar sights reasserted themselves – blanket-covered passengers, smiling, red-skirted stewardesses – she exhaled, tipping her chair back and trying to relax for the first time in at least twenty-four hours.
It wasn’t easy.
Going back to England was a big deal for Flora, even without the tensions with Mason. The dream hadn’t helped.
It was the same dream she’d had hundreds of times before. She was back at Sherwood Hall, the English girls’ boarding school where she’d been so happy until the awful day her father had been arrested for fraud, and her world had collapsed around her like a straw house in the wind. She was walking up to the auditorium stage, about to receive the prize for Art & Design, when two things happened. First, her halterneck dress somehow untied itself and fell off, leaving her standing in front of the entire school naked. And second, Georgie, Flora’s most hated enemy at Sherwood, had popped up out of nowhere and started taking photographs, tossing her long blonde hair behind her and laughing spitefully as Flora frantically tried to cover herself with her hands.
God, that laugh. It was as if Georgie were right there in the Virgin Upper Class cabin with her, tormenting her, taunting her about everything from her transatlantic accent to her clothes to her weight to her (nonexistent at that time) love life.
‘You know what they say about Flora: it’s easy to spread.’
How many times had Flora heard that ‘joke’ at school? Hundreds? Thousands?
Georgie was far prettier than Flora, at least in Flora’s opinion. Yet she must have perceived Flora as some sort of threat. Either that or she was just a sadist who enjoyed humiliating people. Come to think of it, that was actually perfectly possible.
Before Flora’s dad went to prison, her Sherwood friends would stick up for her and protect her from the worst of Georgie’s barbs. But, after that, there was nothing. Everybody dumped her, like a hot lump of coal. The life Flora had believed she had – her friends, her family, her school, her entire place in this world – had evaporated like water spilled on a stove, instantly and completely. Sherwood became every bit as much of a prison for Flora as Mount McGregor Correctional Facility had been for her poor dad. Although Flora’s sentence was shorter. Unable to pay the fees, her mother had been forced to withdraw her and enrol her in public school back in New York. That would turn out to be a different form of prison.
But the point was that Flora had never been back to England since that awful time.
Until now.
Of course, now everything was different, she told herself firmly, pressing the call bell for the stewardess and ordering herself a belated dinner of steamed chicken and saffron rice. She was an adult