Hard No: Secret Baby Enemies to Lovers Romance by Hazel Parker (fun to read txt) 📗

Chapter 26 - Trent

Out over the Atlantic Ocean now, shooting along at over six hundred miles an hour, the Gulfstream G650ER is empty of passengers other than myself. That’s to be expected—it’s my plane. I don’t fly intercontinentally very often, and don’t need to in this age of videoconferences, but when I do, I prefer to fly with as few other people as possible.

The flight from London to New York will take seven hours. After refueling, it will be another few hours from New York to Chicago. That gives me an abundance of time to make calls, which is good, and to think, which is sometimes not so good.

I’ve been talking with Scott a great deal, sending him out on factfinding missions. He’s exceptionally good at what he does, and in less than an hour, he calls me back with information.

“Heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system went haywire,” he reports. “HVAC’s where it started, and it swept through the place like…well, like wildfire, Trent. All the people who were there are damned lucky to have gotten out with their asses intact and unseared.”

“Yes,” I agree. “Lucky. I’m guessing the building itself isn’t so lucky.”

“Right you are,” he says. “It’s not a total loss. The ‘bones’ of the building, I guess you’d say, are intact, barely, but that’s about it. You’d be hard-pressed to find anything to sit on if you were to go in there today, which you wouldn’t be able to do anyway.”

“It all went up?” I ask.

“Every stick of furniture, all of the floor, most of the ceiling, all of it charred to briquettes. It’s basically a burned-out shell now.” He pauses, waiting for me to respond. When I don’t, he keeps going. “White wasn’t there at the time.”

“No?”

“Nope. She was working away in one of her other two restaurants at the time. Her sous chef called her from the curb and told her what was going on. Apparently, she dropped everything and hauled ass over there, because she was there almost before the fire department went in.”

“Sounds like her,” I say, smiling a little. “But you say no one was hurt?”

“Right, and that in itself is a miracle.”

“Agreed. Find out for me how restaurant insurance works, if it covers this kind of thing, and if it does, how much does it cover.”

“You want me to find out what kind of insurance White has specifically?”

“No,” I say pointedly. “I don’t want any kind of nosing around done into her affairs. I’m talking about a general idea of what can be done from an insurance point of view for a restaurant…again, in general.”

“That’s surprisingly vague of you, Trent.”

“I’m serious, Scott. I want this kept in the realm of hypotheticals and suppositions.”

“Okay,” he says, “you got it. Anything else?”

I hesitate. “No. Maybe. I’ll call you back. I have to think on a few things. Remember, general inquiries only. No butting in of any kind.”

My next call goes to Curtis. He had seen the breaking news story covering Steph’s misfortune and had called me right away.

“Curtis,” I say. “I’m in the air. I’ll call once we refuel in New York and begin making the hop to Chicago.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry to have you returning home under these circumstances.”

“Not your doing. I’m just glad you called me when you did. I don’t think I’ve touched the local news on the Internet the whole time I’ve been in London, so I probably wouldn’t have heard the news for who knows how long.”

“My thinking exactly, sir.” He stops. I feel like he’s deciding whether or not to say more.

“What’s on your mind, Curtis?” I prompt.

“Shall I call on Ms. White, sir? She has suffered a considerable loss.”

“That’s putting it mildly. And…if circumstances were a little different, I might indeed want you to check up on her. But…” I don’t know how to finish, but as always, Curtis is able to supply the rest himself.

“But circumstances are the way they are,” he says.

“Yes.”

“I understand, sir. What will you do when you arrive?”

“That,” I say, “is something I am still meditating on. You ever pace in a private jet?”

“No, sir, I can’t say that I have.”

“Well, I don’t know if it can be done properly, but I intend to give it my best try. I have a lot of thinking and planning to do.”

I hang up, and almost immediately, Scott calls me back.

“You have a television in your flying fortress?”

“Don’t call it that; it’s not the Batplane. And yes, I have a TV.”

“Evening news has coverage of the fire. It’s coming on after the commercial break, so if you move fast, you can still catch it.”

“Right. Thanks, Scott. And remember—”

“I know, I know…I’ll keep my looking general. I’ll be back in touch soon.”

Pacing can wait. I sit and flip on the forty-two-inch flat screen. After some remote manipulation, I settle on the right channel. A dog food commercial is just ending, and the news is picking back up.

“We’re now going live to the scene of one of the worst infernos in the Chicago business district in recent memory,” says the anchor. “Karen?”

The scene cuts to a view of the front of the restaurant, or rather, what’s left of it. It looks like it’s been firebombed. It’s not quite pandemonium, but there is still plenty of hustling and bustling going on.

The newscaster steps in front of the camera, microphone in hand. “I’m standing outside DuMonde’s, now little more than rubble after a horrific fire broke out earlier this afternoon.”

“Rubble? Very sensitive of you,” I mutter.

“I’m here with—” she goes on, and my heart lifts a bit, then settles back into its accustomed place when I see a vaguely familiar young man on the screen. “—Daniel Jeffreys, who