“Ask me if I care.” Nate wondered if he should indulge his new enthusiasm for punching people by bashing in his majordomo’s nose. That would shut him up.
“Oh, you’ll care all right,” Hartman said ominously, and Nate came to a stop with a curse so foul it made his majordomo wince.
“What is it, then?” he snapped, feeling like he would go crazy if he heard any more bad news.
“Your father invites you to join him for a private dinner with Chairman Belinski and his daughter this evening.”
Nate blinked and shook his head. “Wait. That’s what you think is so important? A dinner invitation?” One Hartman had to know Nate would refuse out of hand.
“It conflicts with your currently scheduled plans,” Hartman said. “The dinner is scheduled for six o’clock.”
Of course it was. Right during the heart of the retreat’s visiting hours, so that Nate wouldn’t have time to drive out there either before or after the dinner. “You can send my father my sincere regrets,” Nate said, but he knew it wouldn’t be that easy. The Chairman was a bastard, but he wasn’t stupid, and he knew exactly what kind of response his invitation would elicit.
Hartman nodded. “He told me you would say that. He said to tell you your mother might appreciate some company. He said you would know what that meant.”
At first, he didn’t. What did his mother have to do with any of this? But it only took a moment for it to make sense. If Nate didn’t show up for the dinner tonight, the Chairman would recommend to the Lakes that they send Nadia to the Preston Sanctuary, the upstate retreat his mother had holed herself up in for the past decade. It was the kind of place where visitors were as rare as four-leafed clovers, and from which Executives rarely emerged. In one of those places, Nadia might well disappear from his life as thoroughly as his mother had. She might be destined for such a place anyway, but if his father “recommended” it, the Lakes would surely obey.
“Do you still wish me to send the Chairman your regrets?” Hartman asked. There was a disquieting glint of satisfaction in his eyes. He wasn’t used to winning arguments with Nate, and it seemed he was enjoying the novel experience.
Nate was angry enough—and felt helpless enough—that he was tempted to fire Hartman on the spot just because of the look on his face. He controlled the impulse with embarrassing difficulty. Hartman didn’t understand the threat he was making on the Chairman’s behalf, and Nate had to admit he wasn’t the easiest person in the world to work for. He suspected Kurt was the only person who’d ever been on his household staff who didn’t want to smack him every once in a while.
“Tell him I accept,” Nate said, because he had no other choice. But he was going to do his level best to make Chairman Belinski think twice about the marriage arrangement. His own father didn’t give a rat’s ass about Nate’s happiness and well-being. Nate could only hope Chairman Belinski was a more loving and protective parent.
Wednesday was the closest thing Nadia had had to a good day since the moment she’d first set foot in the retreat. Thanks to the phone Dante had smuggled to her, she had a connection to the outside world, even if she could only use it in case of emergency. And she knew he would be waiting for her outside the fence again at midnight. She probably wouldn’t be as desperate for a friendly face today as she had been in the past, because it was an official visiting day, but she would sneak out to meet him anyway. If he was going to go through all the bother to come to the retreat every night, the least she could do was to show up, if only to thank him again.
Nadia occupied her morning with a number of spa appointments, picking services where she didn’t have to undress. Having learned her lesson when her underwear was whisked away that first day, she wasn’t leaving the phone out of her reach for an instant.
The afternoon, she spent reading on the spa’s rooftop veranda, which provided a panoramic view of the grounds. It was a beautiful spring day, and there were moments when Nadia was actually able to take a deep breath and relax for the first time in weeks. Those moments never lasted long, but she appreciated them anyway.
She was down in the visitors’ lobby at exactly five o’clock. She didn’t know who was planning to show up or when, because that would have required communication with the outside world, and she wanted to make sure she didn’t miss a single minute of her time with her loved ones.
The visitors’ lobby was festive and comfortable. Chairs and tables were arranged in intimate clusters so that people could visit in a semblance of privacy. There was a table of hors d’oeuvres set up near the entrance, and retreat staff prowled the room to take drink orders. A merry wood fire crackled away in a recessed area in the middle of the room, and Nadia could see the carpeted stairs leading down to the fireplace were a popular seating choice, the room being surprisingly chilly considering the outside temperature.
Except for the fireplace with its enormous mantel and the chimney that disappeared into the ceiling, the lobby had an open floor plan. Standing in the doorway from the dormitory wing, Nadia could see practically the whole room without having to move. The visitors hadn’t been granted entry yet, so all she could see were retreat employees and fellow inmates like herself. It was a veritable sea of powder-blue uniforms, and Nadia swore that when she got out of here, she would never again wear so much as a hair ribbon in that color.
The visitors began to trickle in within a minute or so of Nadia’s arrival, and she waited and watched breathlessly as people in street clothes entered the room. There were some enthusiastic greetings, complete with hugs and kisses, but mostly everyone was quiet and reserved, as if they were meeting at a funeral. Nadia supposed the circumstances that had driven most of the guests into the retreat cast a pall on their relationships with friends and family.
By six o’clock, the steady stream of visitors had slowed to a trickle, and no one had come for Nadia. She circled the room restlessly, feeling like a lost soul. Of course, she reminded herself, the retreat was almost an hour and a half’s drive from Manhattan, so it would take a while for any of her visitors to arrive. Neither her father nor Gerri would leave work early for anything short of a crisis, and her mother would wait for them before coming out herself.
Nate’s absence was a little harder to explain away, as he was liable to duck out of work on the flimsiest of excuses. She knew he was trying to become more responsible, but she didn’t think his newfound sense of responsibility would keep him in the office when he had a chance to visit her, especially when they hadn’t seen each other before she’d been spirited away. He would want to put in an appearance to give her some moral support, if nothing else.
Nadia finally got tired of her restless pacing and plunked into a seat where she’d have a good view of the entrance. She wasn’t the only retreat guest not to have any visitors yet, and she supposed she could go sit with some other lonely guest so they could keep each other company. But the guests were far from the most social bunch, and Nadia was so much younger than everyone else it was hard to find common ground. She felt like a complete pariah sitting in the corner by herself, but that wasn’t enough to motivate her to move.
The hollow feeling in Nadia’s stomach worsened as every minute ticked by. She checked the time compulsively, deciding that she couldn’t reasonably expect anyone to show up until 6:30 if they didn’t leave Manhattan until 5:00. When 6:30 rolled around and there was still no one, she told herself they probably didn’t leave work until 5:30, and therefore she shouldn’t expect anyone until 7:00.
When 7:00 came and went and she was still alone, Nadia ran out of hopeful excuses and started entertaining the possibility that no one was coming. At first, she could hardly believe that was the case, but as the hands on the clock continued their relentless circling, it became harder and harder to deny it. She considered fleeing the visitors’ lobby and heading back to her room before visiting hours officially came to the end, just to escape the humiliation of being so thoroughly abandoned, but a stubborn kernel of hope refused to die. She would stay and wait until the retreat staff kicked the visitors out, just in case someone was running terribly late and would show up at the last moment.