Page 142 of The Fiancée Farce
Gemma’s elbow slipped off the conference table, her jaw going slack.
Mr.Barnes smiled, looking puzzled. “That’s nice, dear.”
“Nice?Nice, my ass. This interruption is not only irrelevant; it’s, quite frankly, a waste of everyone in this room’s time.” Sterling sneered, so closely resembling his son in that moment that she could hardly stand to look at him, let alone meet his eyes. “Your schoolgirl idolatry has no place in the boardroom, young lady.”
A scoff slipped from between her lips, unbidden. All eyes turned to her, her cheeks heating. In for a penny, in for a pound... “I don’t think I like your tone, Mr.Van Dalen.” She stood a little straighter, shoulders rolling back. “As a matter of fact, I know I don’t like it.” Her heart thundered inside her chest, words escaping in a rush now that the floodgates had opened. “Maybe myschoolgirl idolatry, as you put it, has no place in this boardroom, but neither does your condescension.”
“Be that as it may, Miss. Adams, Mr.Van Dalen has a point,” Mr.Barnes said. “This is a private meeting, and we really must be—”
“I have a point,” she said. “I promise.”
Mr.Barnes smiled tightly. “Might I suggest you get to it?”
“This is absurd, Barnes,” Victor argued. “You’re going to letthis girl ride roughshod over this meeting? We have important business to discuss.”
“Shut up,” Gemma said, eyes never once leaving Tansy, putting a funny but not altogether unwelcome lump in her throat. “Let Tansy speak.”
Tansy took a deep breath in. She could do this. “I lied. Gemma and I, we weren’t really dating.”
“We’re all too aware of the fact that you lied, dear,” Mr.Barnes said, brow furrowed. “Everyone from here to Hawaii is aware you lied.”
“Hawaii?” She frowned. “That’s all?”
Mr.Barnes moved his finger in a counterclockwise circle. “Easternly.”
Oh.Wow, that was the whole planet. “That’s... subjectively horrifying, but objectively impressive.”
Gemma laughed, quickly clapping a hand over her mouth.
Her laugh,thislaugh, was Tansy’s favorite sound. Not a bitter-edged laugh born from despair, but bold and bright, bursting from between her lips like she was incapable of keeping it contained. Tansy beamed at her.
Mr.Barnes smiled. “Your point, MissAdams?”
Her point. Right. She should get to it before they booted her from the room, perhaps bodily removing her. She wouldn’t put it past Tucker to try.
“I don’t exactly have the greatest relationship with my family. My stepfamily,” she started over, from the beginning, or as to close to the beginning as anyone in this room needed to hear. “They don’t... well, to be honest, they don’t exactly like me.”
This was her greatest shame, and here she was about to share it with a roomful of strangers, Gemma’s family, andTucker. But if it meant she had even a shot in the dark of salvaging her relationship with Gemma, she’d bare herself for everyone to see, for everyone to judge. If that’s what it took, so be it.
“I couldn’t stomach the idea of attending another family dinner alone, sitting there and listening to my stepsister make snide comments about everything from my name to the way I dress to the way I talk to the fact that I rarely ever go on dates. I couldn’t sit there as my step-cousin laughed along and my stepmother did nothing, all whileTuckersat across the table from me, and no one seemed to care that—that he took advantage of me when I was sixteen as part of a cruel prank andIgot treated like some sort of desperate, delusional pariah because of it.” She blinked hard, vision blurring. “So, I lied and told my stepmother I was seeing someone so I could get out of family dinners without telling everyone how I actually felt, because as much as I hate how they treat me, the thought of not having a family at all was worse.”
“Glitter was too good for you, you lily-bellied, yellow-livered, son of a one-eyed prairie dog,” Teddy snapped. He frowned. “Wait, that’s not right. Lily-bellied—no, lily-livered, yellow—you know what? Fuck you.”
The corner of Tucker’s mouth curled in a sneer.
“And—I’m sorry, you are...?” Mr.Barnes asked.
Teddy stood taller, adjusting the collar of his mostly unbuttoned shirt. He jerked his chin at her. “Theodore Archibald Barnaby Reginald Francis Ferdinand the fifth. And I’m with Tansy.”
“All right,” Mr.Barnes said faintly. “Tansy?”
“You can’t be serious.” Sterling stood, shoving his chair back against the wall. “You have lost control of this meeting. I move that we remove these—these trespassers at once.”
“Seconded,” Tucker said.
“You aren’t a board member,” Gemma snapped.
“Isecond the motion,” Victor said, brows rising haughtily.
