There was a painful thread of truth in her voice that made Josh step back and take stock. She obviously believed she loved him, which left only one more thing.
“If that’s true, then you now have to make a choice, don’t you?”
“Choice?” Confusion rippled over her features.
“Stand by me or stick with the Palmers.”
“I…”
Her hesitation told him all he needed to know. Josh snorted in disgust. “I thought so. You still choose them, don’t you?”
Callie didn’t speak.
“Get out,” he said, his voice near feral with resentment. “Get out of my house, get out of my life. I don’t want you. Get out now!”
He tried to find some satisfaction in how swiftly she left the room and flew up the stairs. In minutes she was back down, fully dressed and carrying her overnight bag and handbag.
“Josh,” she implored from the doorway, “please rethink this. Promise me you’ll read the letters again. Really read them this time. Talk to me when you’ve calmed down, when you can see reason.”
“Oh, I see reason just fine. You know, you might not be a Palmer by birth, but you’re no different from them at all. You’re still cut from the same rotten cloth.”
The resounding echo of the front door slamming behind her told him he’d made his mark, and yet, in the lingering stench of burned promises all he could feel was an emptiness that cut to his spirit and left him bleeding inside.
Love. What did she know about love? If she loved him, she’d stand by him, not try to undermine what he’d planned since he was eighteen years old.
He knelt and picked up the remains of her destruction and thanked his lucky stars that he’d missed her presence in the bed and awakened. If he hadn’t, she’d have destroyed everything.
A couple of the letters were charred beyond redemption but others had escaped the damage of the flames and the extinguisher. He returned those to the box and carefully replaced it on the bookcase. There was still enough damning evidence to do what he wanted, and he would do it. He’d see this thing through to its bitter end.
Callie entered her office in the Palmer Enterprises tower and fought back the emptiness that threatened to swamp her. She should be relieved that she still had a job to come back to. A job she’d secured by spying on Josh and subsequently ensuring Palmers’ financial viability in the marketplace.
Reluctance now dogged her every step. In the past, she couldn’t wait to start each day at Irene’s side. Everything had brought her a measure of satisfaction and a sense of knowing she’d completed a job well done. But it was as if she operated in shades of grey. There was no colour in her life, no joy.
From the time she’d called a taxi on her mobile phone, from the top of Josh’s driveway, until the second she’d walked back into Irene’s business suite she’d been encased in ice. It was only as she’d opened her handbag and seen that she still had Josh’s notes inside that some sense of life had permeated the frozen shell around her. That life had brought pain. Unbearable, searing pain.
She’d fisted the sheets of paper into a knot and cast them in her wastepaper bin. They’d sat there all day, a constant reminder of a man so hell-bent on revenge that he was incapable of listening to reason. The hands on her office clock had edged their way to 6:00 p.m. when she finally gave in. If she could give the Palmers one more strength, one more piece of armour in this battle between Josh and them, she’d darn well do it.
She smoothed out the sheets and took them straight through to Irene, who was still at her desk.
“I believe you might find these of some use.”
“What are they?” Irene took the creased papers and set them in front of her, adjusting her reading glasses on the tip of her nose. She scanned them for a few minutes then looked up over the lenses. “Callie, you realise what these are, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. They were the last thing I worked on before…” she faltered.
She couldn’t say the words without her throat closing up as if it had suddenly swollen on the lies she’d been forced to live in this desperate tussle between two families.
Irene removed her glasses and pinned Callie under her impenetrable grey stare. “I know this whole situation with Tremont asked a great deal more of you than we anticipated. You can’t let it get to you, you know. If you’re going to succeed in this world, you have to do what’s right—and in this case you definitely did what is right.”
Callie bit her lip. What was right for the Palmers, perhaps—but deep down she knew she hadn’t succeeded. She hadn’t managed to burn all the evidence Josh had against his father. He could still use it to publicly humiliate Bruce and ruin his appointment to Guildara before it happened, even if Palmers was now going to be in a stronger financial position with the Flinders contract secure, and now this one within its grasp.