Page 472 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
I looked around at them. What the heck was going on? “It sounds like it was funny.”
One of the women broke away from the group. A man, someone I’d worked with for at least five years, looked me up and down and made no secret of checking me out.
Realization hit me like a ton of bricks.
They knew.
Somehow, they knew what Chadwick and I had been up to. My face burned white hot from humiliation. I turned away from them immediately, rushed past the bar, abandoned my half-empty glass of wine, and hurried to the elevator. I got on without looking back and punched the lobby button eight times before the doors started to close. With my heart in my stomach, I rode the elevator down.
Who did I think I was fooling? Of course they knew.
They knew I was the foolish girl who’d fallen for Chadwick’s playboy moves. My eyes stung with tears. Moments ago I’d felt high on life, and now? Now I wanted to hide and never show my face here again.
CHAPTER 26
CHADWICK
Tinsely had missed eight of my calls since last night, when I had emerged from my office at the staff party and scoured the entire Bamford floor for her. My search came up empty, and an employee, who noticed I’d been looking for her, finally told me they’d seen her get on the elevator and leave over an hour ago. The timing lined up in my head that she’d basically ducked out as soon as she left my office.
Something was wrong.
My father looked down at my fingers as I drummed them on the kitchen counter at our family’s estate.
“Your mind is elsewhere,” my father said.
My fingers stilled. Tonight was about my father. It hardly seemed fair for me to tell him about my worries with Tinsely. All around us kitchen staff hurried from the stove to the island, collecting dozens upon dozens of hors d’oeuvres and whisking out of the kitchen to bring them to the guests at the party.
My father swiped two small cups off a tray full of spiced meat, pastry, and chutney. Growing up, my mother, who was French Canadian, had always prepared a dish called Tourtière on Christmas Eve, which we shared with dozens of family members who often spent the night, so we all woke on Christmas morning surrounded by family. My cousins and I were condemned to our beds and not allowed to leave our bedrooms until seven in the morning, giving the adults time to sleep in. Looking back, I knew the truth of it. They needed the extra hours of sleep to try to recover from their hangovers.
Us kids would go shooting down the stairs into the grand living room, where the eighteen-foot live Christmas tree winked and glowed in the dim morning light. There was almost always snow outside, and the older kids would go to the windows while us young kids would slide on our knees into the Christmas tree skirt, hellbent on finding which packages were for which kids. Nobody unwrapped a single bow, however, until all the adults had their coffee in hand and were comfortable on the sofas.
I scooped a mouthful of the disassembled Tourtière into my mouth. It tasted exactly as our mother’s used to—crumbly pastry with a sweet and subtle flavor, delicately spiced meats, tart chutney.
“Is this her recipe?” I asked.
My father nodded. “Been a little while, hasn’t it?”
Over five years, I thought.
“She’d say the pastry is too dry,” I said.
“And the meat is too wet,” he added.
We both chuckled and finished the small servings.
My father tipped his head toward the exit of the kitchen and said he should probably join his guests. I was about to follow when I called for him.
“Dad?”
He turned to me with an expectant raise of his eyebrow.
“You haven’t heard from Tinsely at all tonight, have you?”
His brow furrowed and he shook his head. “I haven’t.”
Damn it.
“Is something wrong?” he pressed, the concern in his brow deepening the furrows.
