When I was very small, I found out that our family had money and that this had come from a very savvy ancestor who invested a substantial amount in a small rural holding and proceeded to grow grapes and lavender and invested his profits wisely. I remember asking my father "If we have money why do you work?" his reply "I can never ask others to take pride in their work for me if I haven't the pride to work for myself", a strange concept to a child, but one which I as an adult I have come to comprehend and appreciate. My father did the same as our ancestor, just on a larger scale and I was destined to follow in his great footsteps one day; it must have broken his heart when I told him I wanted to go into interior design. We compromised, I got to go to design school on the proviso that I took economics and business classes in the future and learned how to cope with the family business. Now I am a senior designer working for a firm which deals with a select set of clients, which is how I met my future father-in-law and fiancé. It's also how I ended up moving to London on the hottest weekend at the end of July.
Mitchum believes that I don't know about his son's pre-marital affair so it was infuriating see him patting himself on the back for the way he orchestrated my move from Paris 4 months ahead of schedule; ensuring that she could not make any more surprise visits to the apartment in Holland Park. He used my work to bring me over "Odette, I have the perfect job, we just purchased another apartment in London overlooking the river, it needs some work and we'd like you to design it I've spoken to Stephan and he's willing to push our job up the list to July". If I didn't know better it would have seemed like a nice gesture, but he doesn't say or do anything without manipulating a situation. And so here I am.
Magically a box or two of "Logans" items have been put into storage to make space for the things I need, except his stuff is all still here; and so here we are, the start of August and maybe the plan worked in part as he slowly showed me more attention if not affection. That was until the phone call. It was late and I was half asleep, Logan had been working and then "Ace… Hi" I panicked, feeling sick I froze in the bed pretending not to notice the concern in his voice, the way he asked her not to cancel their pre-arranged liaison and then he suggested (or agreed) to bring her visit forward. I can cope with knowing I am not his priority, or that there is someone he loves ahead of me but knowing that he's arranging secret meetings while I lay in his bed…. Something in me breaks a little and I must hold my breath to stop crying.
The following week his behaviour did a 180. He was tender, passionate and he started calling me Duchess again which he hasn't done since they started seeing each other, I suspect he's ended it but I know how much he still loves her, but for now I want to keep trying without being the other woman.