Page 50 of Seven Nights

No such listing appears.

A month has passed and Katelyn hasn’t cashed the check I left on the entryway table. Between leaving Century Club and knocking on her front door, I filled out two checks. The first was for one hundred thousand, my “last chance” offer amount. Right before I knocked, I scribbled out a second check for fifty thousand in a moment of self-doubt that proved all too accurate in her rejection of me.

I never wanted to be an asshole with Katelyn, I just wanted to be me. Apparently I am an asshole. Or a coward—or both. I couldn’t say the words that would keep her by my side, couldn’t show the emotion she needed to see.

So, if anyone broke the contract, it was me. After all, I am the idiot who included the proviso that “honest communication” was essential to performance. Katelyn was honest. I was anything but. She deserved the fifty thousand.

That’s why I left the check. I also left it because I didn’t want her to sell the lamp. It was clear how much the object meant to her emotionally. For all she sacrificed for her mother, she deserves to keep the lamp.

It looks like she sold it. She hasn’t cashed the check. And my security chief tells me an auction house in Aurora sold a nautilus lamp less than a week after Katelyn’s departure from Chicago. They don’t come up that often. To have one on the block so soon and so close geographically is not a coincidence.

It sold for thirty-five thousand. I doubt she received more than half that sum, but even half will keep her afloat for a decent amount of time. She was traveling light, too. She could go somewhere cheap, start over. She’ll look for jobs in different fields—and that is a tragedy. I know from her resume she’s dedicated to helping others. Even afterOne Well At A Timeimploded and she couldn’t find similar work, she kept volunteering at a mental crisis hotline until the place ran out of money.

But she won’t go back to charity work because she can’t support herself that way. Few of those jobs pay their staff a salary anymore. They have all the free interns and bored socialites they can find desks for. Katelyn will not allow herself to slip back into the financial position that coaxed her into accepting my offer.

No, damn it. It wasn’t the money. That was the sweetener, of course, the excuse she gave herself. But she wanted me just as much as I wanted her. The only difference was she didn’t try to hide it, it was there in her gaze, the tremble in her lips, the ways in which she wanted to touch me in return.

Either way, it’s still a fact—I took away the last of Katelyn’s hope.

I wonder what’s fueling her now. Obstinancy, probably.

Shaking my head, I catch my finger hovering over the touchpad, ready to hit refresh. I laugh at myself. I ignored the account statement the first two weeks after walking out of Katelyn’s life. The third week, I checked every other day. The first few days of this fourth week, I scanned the statement once at the end of the day.

The remaining days?

“Pitiful, Montgomery.” I hit the power button on the laptop then stride into the reception area outside my office. Despite the twelve hours a day I spend in the building at work, I have few in-person visitors. The waiting area is blissfully empty.

I turn to Liz, the more senior of my two personal assistants. With the other assistant, Maggie, on maternity leave since last Friday, Liz is also the only one working today.

She smiles at me, her expression slipping as I continue staring. She lifts a hand to brush at the carefully styled gray hair that ends at the upturned collar of her blouse. Finding me still silent, she folds her hands in her lap and gives me a pointed look.

“You need something, Griffin?

“Miss Willow,” I start. My cheeks redden at the slip. “Have there been any messages from her?”

Ever the professional, Liz looks a little irritated at the question. I should know, her expression tells me, that she gives me all my messages at the earliest opportunity.

“All of your regular messages have been delivered.”

She rises from her seat and approaches Maggie’s desk.

“I was just finishing up the P&E compilation you requested before I addressed the unsolicited correspondence Maggie didn't have time to sort before—”

I snatch the thick pile from her hands. “Is this all of it?”

“It's all that the mail room has delivered.” She smiles, her pale blue-gray eyes sparking with soft amusement.

I meet her smile with a scowl. “Don't look at me like that, Liz.”

“My apologies,sir.” She forces her eyes and the corners of her mouth down. “Should I ensure the mail room and front reception know Miss Willow's messages are not unsolicited?”

I answer with a sharp bob of my head and a narrowed gaze before I prowl back to my office, shutting and locking the door behind me. Pulling all the unlikely, oversized envelopes from the pile, I put them on the corner of the desk.

Still not looking at the mailing labels, I quickly sort out the metered mail. That leaves me with thirty or so envelopes to examine. I finger through their top left corners. Two prep school “buddies” whose names I vaguely recall, a one-night-only pet, alumni from college…

Damn it!

Almost finished with this first pass through the stack, I have a hollow feeling that Katelyn shredded the check with the intent to leave it out there as a constant “Fuck you, Griffin Montgomery” reminder until I cancel the instrument or it otherwise slips from my memory.

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