How Sweet It Is (4 page)

The bag slipped off her shoulder. “
What?
”

Her teacher nodded regretfully. “I know how important the program is to you, which is why I’m so concerned about your performance this term. You understand what’s at stake, don’t you?”

Her entire life, because that program was the first step in getting into an excellent writing program at uni. Without it, she’d just be another one of the masses of students who wanted to write.

She wasn’t just going to write. She was going to make her mark. It was in her blood, come to find out. It was the only thing she was good at. If she couldn’t go, what would she have?

Nothing.

Swallowing the fear, she looked her teacher in the eye. “I have to go to the program.”

“I know, which is why we’re going to make sure you pass this term with flying colors. I’ve asked one of my other students to be your partner on the term project.”

“Ooo-kay.” She frowned. “I’m not sure how that’s going to make an impact on the end of the term test.”

“That’s why I’ve asked him to tutor you as well.” Mrs. Watley smiled, obviously happy with her brilliance. “He’s new in school but maybe you’ve met him. Hunter Vicks?”

Chloe froze. Then she shook her head vigorously. “Hunter Vicks is
not
a good choice.”

“He’s quite proficient, I assure you.” Her teacher smiled gently. “And he’s cute. Maybe studying won’t be such a hardship.”

No, it wouldn’t be a hardship, because he was absolutely
hot
. But the last thing she needed was for Hunter Vicks to know that she was an idiot—or that she dreamt about kissing him. She kept shaking her head. “There must be someone else who can help me.”

“Hunter’s the best choice, and he’s already agreed.” Her teacher searched for something on her desk and then handed her a sheet of paper. “He’ll meet you tomorrow after school.”

She read his contact info and felt her cheeks begin to burn. She stuffed the paper in her journal, mumbled something, and left the classroom. She headed down the hall toward her next class.

There he was.

She stopped in the middle of the hallway, barely noticing the person who bumped into her from behind. Hunter’s back was turned to her, but she didn’t need to see his face to know what he looked like—he’d been branded on her brain the day he’d transferred into school.

It was his eyes, though, that always struck her. They were the same gray-green she imagined Marco’s eyes to be, from
The Night Circus
, her all-time favorite book.

She imagined staring into Hunter’s eyes as he tried to explain quantum theory to her and felt her lips begin to pucker.

“Bugger this,” she murmured. She couldn’t deal. She whirled around before he saw her and snuck out of school to get ice cream, even though it was cold and rainy out. Sometimes ice cream was best in the cold, made better by skipping class.

Eating the cone, she stopped to browse in a travel bookstore. She perused a guidebook on Papua New Guinea, which seemed to warn travelers away more than encouraging them to visit.

Finally, when it was late enough, she went back to school to wait in front for Charles to pick her up.

Assuming he’d show, which was a big assumption, because lately he was always canceling.

Pulling her hood up, she huddled into herself, willing him to arrive before someone noticed her standing there.

Charles pulled up to the curb in the new red Ferrari he’d bought last year after her mum had made him move out. Chloe loved Luca’s Ferrari, but her father looked lame driving one. She opened the door, set her bag on the floor, and dropped onto the seat. Charles tapped his fingers against the steering wheel as she buckled in and then pulled jerkily back onto the street.

Awkward. She left her hood up and looked out the window to avoid seeing his expression. She totally related when, in
The Night Circus
, the heroine met her father for the first time and he looked at her and said, “Well, fuck.” Charles usually looked at her like he had no idea what species she belonged to. He only pretended to be interested in her because it’d look bad otherwise. The only things he was interested in were his job, his girlfriend Louise, and this car.

She wished she were going home. At home, she didn’t have to walk on eggshells anymore. If she didn’t want to put her clothes away at night, she didn’t have to worry about a lecture or being chastised or whatever.

At home, she could also keep an eye on her mother. She bit her lip, remembering Sunday night. She’d followed her mum to make sure she didn’t do anything to herself. Viola had looked feverish, or possessed—Chloe couldn’t decide which, except that her mother never got sick.

Usually Tuesday night drinks with her sisters made her mother happier, but Chloe had been at Charles’s last night so she hadn’t been able to check.

One thing was certain: Something wasn’t right.

Chloe wanted to think it out in writing, in her journal, but putting her fears onto paper would make them real, and she didn’t want that. Viola was just going through a phase. She’d looked it up online. She knew divorce was supposed to be hard on the children, but the day her parents had told her they were getting a divorce a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Her mother wasn’t taking it well though. Who would, if the guy you were into decided to see someone else?

She thought about Hunter Vicks. She pictured him holding someone else’s hand, like Shelby Castleton’s. Hunter Vicks wasn’t even her boyfriend and still the feeling was awful. How could it be for her mother?

Still, Viola was a
mother
. She was supposed to pay attention. She used to know when Chloe needed her.

“Are you coming, Chloe?”

She blinked and looked up. They were parked in front of his new building.

Charles was already out of the car, impatience turning his mouth down. “Pay attention, Chloe. And hurry up. I have a conference call I have to make. I already had to reschedule it to pick you up.”

“Sorry I’m such an inconvenience,” she mumbled under her breath as she scooted out of the car.

“What did you say?” he asked loudly, slamming the door shut.

“Nothing.” She hiked her bag onto her shoulder.

Shaking his head, he strode ahead of her.

Sighing, she hurried after him, wondering why he spent any time with her when she obviously annoyed him so much.

Chapter Four

Finn couldn’t have painted a better caricature of a museum curator. If he judged Abigail Potter by her clothing, he’d have thought she was an old country squire in drag. She wore tweed, head to toe, complete with an argyle vest. Her hair was matronly, a thin short blond bob that angled at her square jaw. Her ankles were thick, her eyes were watery, and her voice was so shrill that he had to stand a few feet away from her to avoid having his eardrums pierced.

“It’s just terrible,” she said for the hundredth time since he’d met her ten minutes before. She hurried through the corridors of Westminster Abbey, expecting him to follow. “I can’t believe this has happened. To King Edward’s Chair, too!”

Finn hummed sympathetically because it seemed the polite thing to do. “What has happened, precisely?” he asked for the ninety-ninth time.

“I’m glad you could come so quickly.” She worried the buttons on her suit coat as she bustled along. “An absolute tragedy.”

When a curator was faced with a problem it was always a tragedy. Exhaling, he told himself to be patient and follow her. She wasn’t going to give him any details until they arrived wherever it was they were going.

She led him through long, nondescript hallways, into the bowels of the museum. If she’d looked more like a mad scientist, he’d have worried that she was taking him to a laboratory to do strange experiments on him.

Finally, she stopped and swiped her badge against a pad. The door clicked unlocked, and she pushed it open. “I hope you’re prepared for the horror of this.”

“I’ll try to cope,” he murmured.

Inhaling as though gathering her courage, she swung the door open and led the way in. She turned on the room’s lights.

It wasn’t a typical restoration room. There were no tools, no tables, no solvents or any other solutions and equipment. The only thing in the room was one worn chair on a short pedestal in the middle.

The curator flipped another switch and a spotlight lit the relic. “The Coronation Chair,” she said in hushed awe.

Finn strode toward it, taking it in as a whole. Potter was rightfully awed—the chair was magnificent. High-backed and regal, gothic in style, with four lions as the legs. The gold that had covered it completely in the past was faded except on the lions and the trim at the base.

“The history of the chair includes much vandalism,” Potter said, wringing her hands. “Choirboys carving initials in the wood. Graffiti by tourists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A bomb attack in 1914. But it’s never been this bad.”

To look at it from the front, it looked whole. He walked around to the back. Nodding, he saw what she meant: one of the lion’s heads appeared to have been hacked away, and a considerable portion of the frame and back were splintered. He bent down and ran his hand over the damage. “Do you know how this was done?”

“A billy club,” she said, sounding like she was on the verge of tears. “I’m ashamed to say that one of our guards had a moment. It seems his wife left him for a member of the nobility. He’s been let go, of course.”

“Of course.” Finn lowered his chin so she wouldn’t see his amusement.

“Unfortunately he did quite a bit of damage before we were alerted of the situation.” She sniffed, as though deeply upset. “I need it restored right away.”

He stood and faced her. “Expecting a coronation any day now?”

“The Queen Mother
is
getting on in age.” She must have realized what she said, because she gasped and covered her mouth. “Not that I’m wishing an ill on the queen, may she live forever.”

“Indeed,” he murmured.

“But it’s my responsibility to make sure the chair is ready for the next coronation, whenever that is, and I’ve shirked my duty. If word gets out that King Edward’s Chair is unprepared, I’ll be sunk.” She leaned in, her face pale. “Cyril Archer has had his eye on my position for ages. If he finds out, he’ll use this to oust me and take over.”

“I see.” Office politics. He could care less about mutiny—preserving the work of a master was his concern. Shaking his head, Finn kneeled again and ran his hand along the destroyed piece.

“Philippe LeConte mentioned that you’d done a project at Versailles, as well as Notre Dame.”

“Some woodwork at the altar was defaced by a tourist.” He shook his head, getting angry by the fools who had no respect for history or art, who thought carving their initials into it was a good idea. “Fine woodwork is my specialty.”

She leaned in. “So you’ll be able to fix it?”

He got a whiff of mothballs as he stood. “It’d likely take three weeks to restore this properly. Some carving, but mostly treating the wood so that the new piece had the same patina of age as the rest of the chair. And then adding the gold foil. That’s the trickiest part, making the gold appear seamlessly matching and appropriately worn away by age.”

“But you can do it?” she asked again, her tone urgent.

“Of course.” It was precisely suited to his skillset, not to mention that he’d give a lung for the commission. Whoever restored the Coronation Chair would be noted in history.

Potter heaved a sigh of relief. “Philippe assured me you were the only person for the job. And you’re British, which I would prefer. Though I don’t understand why a proper gentleman would live in Paris. It’s the city of the depraved.”

He arched his brow. He knew he shouldn’t take offense, but Paris was his heart. It’d treated him well the past twenty years. “Perhaps I’m not a proper gentleman.”

She blinked at him in surprise, stepping back as though she just realized that she perhaps invited a wolf into her den. “But you can fix it?”

“I can definitely fix it.”

Wilting in relief, she clapped her hands together. “I knew when Philippe sent you, you had to be the right person.”

“When could you send it to me?”

She recoiled, a horrified look on her face. “Never. You’d have to come here to do the work.”

He shook his head. “I work out of my atelier in Paris.”

“The chair belongs to England. It can’t leave the country. Even if I were willing to send King Edward’s Chair away, there are a number of reasons why I can’t. Cyril Archer would find out it was gone, most definitely.”

“How are you going to explain that it’s not in its normal place?”

“Routine cleaning,” she said instantly. She worried her hands. “No one should ask to see it, but if they do, I’ll let them peek into the room. From the front you can’t see the damage. So you have to work on it here.”

“I never said I’d take the job.” He stepped away from the piece, giving it one last look. He really would have loved to work on it.

“But you just said you could do it,” she sputtered helplessly.

“Whether I’ll do it is another matter. All my tools are in Paris.”

She took out a small pad and pen from her pocket. “Give me a list of what you need and I’ll make sure you have everything.”

“That’s accommodating of you, but I can’t stay that long in London.” After Henry died, he’d vowed that nothing could drag him back to London.

King Edward’s Chair wasn’t
nothing
.

Still, three weeks was out of the question. He nodded at Potter and began to head to the door. “Thank you for your time.”

“Wait.” She bustled after him, her hand out. “Just consider it for a few days and then let me know.”

He didn’t need to think about it—he didn’t want to stay in London. But she looked so desperate that he couldn’t bring himself to tell her no. “I’ll think about it,” he murmured, though he knew he wouldn’t do it. Not even the recognition was worth the chance of seeing his father.

Though the chair … He glanced back at it. Working on King Edward’s Chair would have been amazing.