Page 36

"Tomorrow at noon, Mr. Parker!" Emma called back with a wave.

A few doors down, an older woman stepped out of the bakery. "Emma, dear! Tell Joe—oh, heavens, I'm sorry, habit. How are you holding up?"

"I'm doing okay, Mrs. Marble. I'll drop off some of those lavender cookies you like on Friday," Emma promised.

Victoria watched the interactions in silence. She observed the effortless way Emma navigated the village, the genuine affection in the eyes of the locals. Emma was anchored here. She belonged to these people, rooted in a way Victoria—who lived in sterile penthouses and first-class lounges—could barely comprehend.

They reached the café, pushing through the glass doors and stepping into the blast of cold air conditioning. They slid into a vinyl booth in the back corner. The café smelled like fried onions, a heavy scent that seemed to ground Emma’s frazzled nerves. Victoria ordered a black coffee while Emma ordered a plate of salted fries and a diet soda, visibly desperate to counteract the sugar she had inhaled all morning.

"You are a local celebrity," Victoria observed dryly.

"It's a village of eight hundred people, Victoria. If you don't wave to the butcher, the gossip circle will declare you a sociopath by dinner time."

"It is more than polite familiarity," Victoria noted. She tilted her head, her gaze piercing right through Emma’s deflection. "The pastries you baked today were extraordinary. I have dined in Michelin-starred restaurants that could not produce a tart with that level of technical precision."

Emma blushed, picking at a tear in the seat cushion. "Thanks."

"Where did you study?" Victoria asked. "Le Cordon Bleu? A culinary institute in London?"

Emma let out a genuine laugh. "Victoria, culinary school costs upwards of thirty thousand pounds a year. I learned how to bake from Joe's wife's old cookbooks and watched a giant amount of YouTube tutorials at two in the morning."

Victoria frowned, her brain struggling to process the math. "You're exceptionally good at this, Emma. Why didn't you leave to do it properly? A bank would have funded you in a heartbeat."

Emma stopped laughing. She looked down at the table. Victoria watched the sarcasm drain out of her, replaced by a sudden, striking vulnerability.

"I couldn't leave," Emma said softly, her voice shielded by the clatter of silverware.

"Why not?"

Emma traced a scratch in the table with her thumbnail. "Because of my mum. She had a type. And her type was usually unemployed, angry, and prone to packing up a car in the middle of the night to skip town on rent."

Victoria didn't interrupt. She sat perfectly still, holding space for the confession.

"We moved a lot," Emma continued, a familiar shame bleeding into her voice. "I never went to the same school for more than eight months. I never had a bedroom that actually felt like mine. By the time I was fifteen, she met this guy... Dave. He had some idiotic business idea and decided they needed to move to Germany."

Emma stared down at her hands, forcing the tightness in her throat into submission. "He didn't want a kid tagging along. He kept telling her I was dead weight. So, they packed the car. They were arguing right out on the high street, in the rain. I was standing there on the pavement with my duffel bag, listening to this guy tell my own mother that she had to choose. And she was going to choose him."

Victoria looked down at her coffee mug, feeling the air thin out between them. She didn't know what it was like to be left on a street corner, but she knew the specific, quiet ache of watching the people who were supposed to stay vanish into thin air—first her mother, then Joe, taken away piece by piece until only Harrison’s sharp expectations remained in the quiet rooms of that Manhattan apartment.

"Joe was walking back from the post office," Emma said, a sad smile touching her lips. "I was already helping him at the B&B to earn some money, you know… Anyway, he saw me and stopped, listened for about two minutes and then walked right up to my mother. He was so calm when he looked at her and said, 'If you don't want her, leave her here. I'll look after her. She deserves someone that loves her.'"

Emma finally looked up, meeting Victoria’s gaze. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "She got in the car and drove away. Just like that. Joe picked up my bag, walked me to The Amber House, and gave me a room. He gave me a job in the kitchen. He taught me how to belong somewhere. This village, that B&B... it’s the only real home I’ve ever had. Joe was my family. I wasn't going to leave him to go bake cakes in London."

A dull ache settled beneath Victoria’s ribs. Looking across the narrow table, all her usual defenses felt suddenly useless. She saw the quiet grit behind Emma’s easy smiles, the fierce loyalty of someone who had built an entire home out of another person's kindness. Victoria wanted to make it better. It was an instinct she didn't fully understand, but the urge to offer Emma an easy path forward was sharp and immediate.

"It makes sense," Victoria said gently, looking at Emma's hands. "Why you fight so hard for this place. But Joe wouldn't have wanted you to be trapped here forever."

Emma froze. "Trapped?"

Victoria nodded, her tone shifting slightly as she outlined the logical solution. "As a fifty-percent owner, the sale of the estate will provide you with a massive influx of capital. You will finally have the resources to leave. You can go to London, Paris, anywhere you want. You can open your own pastry shop. This is your opportunity to be free to do what you actually want."

Emma pulled her hand back as if she had been burned.

"The death of the only real family I've ever had is not a business opportunity for me, Victoria," Emma whispered, her voice trembling with sudden fury.

Victoria blinked, taken aback by the hostility. "Emma, that is not what I meant. I only meant that you have options now—"

"I didn't want options! I wanted Joe!" Emma hissed, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. The vulnerability was gone, replaced by a reckless anger. "I don't want to be 'free' of him. But I guess you can't possibly understand that, can you? You never gave a shit about him. He was just a nuisance to you."