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CHAPTER THREE (#uf7033259-0a1a-5a8e-9f9b-2a541cab7f40)
HIS DRIVER TOOK him the short distance to the hospital, and to a rear entrance so that he would not be seen arriving.
This must not get out.
Tomorrow morning Jobe Devereux was having a minor planned procedure, but that very knowledge would be enough to spook their shareholders.
Ethan was concerned enough to have flown home.
His PA, Helene, had given him directions and Ethan took the elevator up to the private wing.
His father might as well be in his office, Ethan thought as he knocked on his door and walked in.
Abe was there, and so too was Maurice, their head of PR.
‘Ethan!’ His father, sitting in a leather chair, looked surprised to see him. ‘What can I do for you?’
Do for him?
There was no real welcome, and no invitation to take a seat. Their relationship had long been a strained one—perhaps because they were incredibly alike, and not just in looks.
The Devereux men were all private, but they all had an intrinsic licentious edge.
His father, though, had done nothing in his life to curb it.
‘I came to see you.’ Ethan did his best to keep his voice even. ‘And to see if there was anything I could do to help.’
‘Oh, it’s no big deal,’ Jobe said. ‘I’ll be back in the office on Monday.’
‘How was Dubai?’ Abe asked as he closed his laptop, clearly just about to leave. ‘Did you look at the hotel site?’
‘I did.’ Ethan nodded. ‘But I was thinking...’ He paused. Ethan was rather more interested in the potential of Al-Zahan, but decided now wasn’t the time to talk about it. ‘Helene’s writing up the report.’
‘Good,’ Abe said. ‘Maurice and I are going to get dinner—are you coming?’
Ethan shook his head. ‘I’ve already eaten.’
He hadn’t actually eaten since the plane, and that had been several hours ago, but Ethan simply wasn’t in the mood for more business talk, and with Maurice and Abe that was all it would be.
Once he was alone with his father it was somewhat awkward.
While it might look like a plush office or a hotel room, Ethan could now see the room held subtly placed equipment, and the antiseptic in the air gave it a slight nauseating edge.
‘Where’s Chantelle?’
Ethan didn’t generally enquire about the whereabouts of his father’s latest lover, but five minutes into his visit the conversation had already run out.
‘We broke up.’
‘When?’
‘Do I ask you about your love life?’ Jobe barked.
‘No, but only because I don’t have one,’ Ethan said.
He had a sex life, and fully intended to keep it at that. He’d seen the damage relationships caused. His father’s marital history was on par with Henry VIII’s. Well, minus the beheadings and with the added fact that not one of Jobe’s marriages had survived.
But there had been plenty of divorces.
And his mother had died.
Ethan could not forgive his father for that.
Not her death. More the circumstances.
Ethan had been five when she’d died, but he had been ten, maybe eleven, when he’d finally decided to find out for himself if the rumours about his father having an affair with their nanny were true.
Sure enough, the papers at the time had spoken of a huge argument, and Elizabeth Devereux leaving home sobbing and heading for JFK.
He’d looked at endless photos of the happy family they had once been and had confronted his father.
‘You had everything and you ruined it. Is that why Meghan left?’ he’d asked.
Jobe had sat silently nursing a drink as his youngest son had raged. Only as he’d stormed off had he called out.
‘Ethan! Get back here!’
‘Go to hell!’ He had run upstairs, taking down one of family pictures that hung on the wall and throwing it at him. ‘I hate you for what you did.’
It had never been spoken of again. The picture had been rehung, and to this day remained in its place on the wall, and still they avoided any topics of the personal kind.
But now, given his father was having surgery, Ethan tried.
‘So, what’s happening tomorrow?’
Ethan wanted specifics. But Jobe refused to give them.
‘It’s just a minor procedure.’ His father shrugged. ‘Exploratory.’
‘Can’t they just do a scan or something?’
‘Oh, so you went to med school now?’
‘I’m just saying I don’t understand what you’re going to theatre for.’
‘That’s what we’re finding out.’
They went in ever-widening circles, talking about everything and nothing and getting nowhere fast.
‘I’m going down at eight in the morning and I’ll be back up here by nine. I wanted to stay home the night before the op, but Prof Jacobs insisted I came in.’
‘Because had you been at home you would have ignored his instructions to have only a light supper and forgo your nightcap,’ Ethan said.
‘True,’ Jobe admitted. ‘Look, if you really want to do something for me then you can attend the Carmody function.’
If Ethan hadn’t known already that something was seriously wrong with his father, he knew it then. The Carmody function had been an annual feature on his father’s calendar for as long as Ethan could recall. Amongst the many pictures on the walls of his father’s home was one of his parents standing on the red carpet there.
The ball was more than two weeks away. For his father to be pulling out now sent a shiver of dread down Ethan’s spine. Not that he showed it. Instead, he agreed to attend in his father’s place.
‘You’ll need a date to take with you,’ Jobe huffed.
‘I’m sure that can be arranged.’ There was nothing left to say. ‘I’ll come and see you in the morning.’
‘No, don’t,’ Jobe warned. ‘The damn press is on to me. I’m sure of it.’
‘On to what?’ Ethan challenged.
For a moment near identical black eyes met, but Jobe wasn’t about to open up to anyone.
‘Just carry on as normal. The professor will let one of you boys know when I’m back from the OR.’
Boys.
His father still referred to him and Abe as boys, when they were thirty and thirty-four respectively, but there was no affection in the term. If anything, it was said dismissively.
With the duty visit done, Ethan walked through the private wing and towards the elevator, turning right with little thought even though he’d never been there before.
Then he halted.
Ethan had been there before.
Shards of memory felt as if they were working their way to the surface of his brain as he stood waiting for the elevator. He looked down the corridor and could almost see himself—five years old and dressed in his new school uniform, accompanied by his new nanny and walking beside Abe as they headed out from a waiting room to go and visit their mother.
To say goodbye.
He took the elevator, trying to banish the memory, yet as he stepped out into the brightly lit foyer he recalled it again. The press had been waiting outside, but their instructions that day had been different from usual—Don’t wave or smile. Look sad.
Who had told a couple of kids that? Ethan thought as he walked quickly to the waiting car. Who the hell had told them how to act, how to react, on the day their mother died?
His long stride halted as the answer came to him—the new nanny had.
His driver was waiting, but Ethan dismissed him. He wanted to walk—to get rid of the hospital scent which still filled his nostrils.
Suddenly, twenty-five years on, he was back to that day and the utter bewilderment he’d felt.
The grief.
And the guilt—oh, yes, the guilt.
Because he hadn’t missed his mother as everyone had assumed he must.
Meghan.
It was his nanny, Meghan, he had missed at that time.
* * *
The gallery website was a constant thorn in Merida’s side.
Clint had been supposed to update it before he’d headed off to an art fair, though of course he hadn’t.
And with Reece being away Merida needed to change the opening times advertised there. Especially as she wouldn’t be here tomorrow morning because of her audition.
It was for a prime-time television show and, while excited, Merida was incredibly nervous about it. She had to get the part. Although theatre was her passion, Merida desperately needed credits to her name—and as well as that she loved the show. It would be a huge boost for her résumé as well, and who knew what doors it might open?
So she updated the opening and closing times on the website, and a few other things, and then, instead of clicking off and closing down the computer, Merida couldn’t resist looking Ethan up.
God, he was beautiful.
His dark, slightly hooded eyes were so brooding, and in every photo she saw, that mouth utterly refused to smile.
Just as it had refused to smile with her.
For a moment she let herself wonder how it might feel to be in the path of his gentler gaze.
Merida drank the glass of champagne that Ethan hadn’t wanted and nibbled on the caviar blinis he’d declined as she gazed upon his image.
Then she ate dark-chocolate-covered blueberries and read about the man who quite simply intrigued her.
Reece had been right. His life was a quagmire indeed—and Ethan Devereux’s playboy status was well-documented. His older brother Abe’s was too, although he seemed to have settled down a touch of late. As for his father...
Goodness!
It would seem that all the Devereux men dated and discarded with ease. It was Ethan she wanted to find out more about. Yet they all seemed inextricably linked.
Merida clicked on a recent news article: Twenty-Five Years On.
There was a photo of the Devereux men in dark suits and ties at what appeared to be a memorial service. Merida read that a quarter-century ago his mother had been involved in an accident in the Caribbean. She had been flown back to New York, but had died two days later.
The country had mourned—particularly here in New York City—and there had been accusations against her husband.
Merida topped up her glass as she read about the rumours that Jobe Devereux had been embroiled in a salacious affair, rumoured to be with the nanny, and that that was the reason poor Elizabeth had fled.
Merida raised her eyebrows.
Certainly if she found out her husband was sleeping with the nanny she’d be kicking him out, rather than running off.
Still, it made good reading.
