Keep Holly Close Read online

  Keep Holly Close

  Book Two in the Remember Me Series

  A.E. Radley

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

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  Reviews

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  About the Author

  Also by A.E. Radley

  Also by A.E. Radley

  Also by A.E. Radley

  Also by A.E. Radley

  Other Books by A.E. Radley

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  Chapter One

  “No.” Victoria slid the page proofs across the desk to Gideon Fisher.

  He softly sighed and picked them up.

  She examined the next set of proofs. These had been back to the art department no fewer than eight times, but something still wasn’t right. She squinted and noticed the hitch. She put them on the desk and slid them towards her director of photography.

  “Also, no.”

  She moved on to the next set. Gideon wisely didn’t ask what was wrong with either set. He’d worked with her long enough to know not ask superfluous questions when she was very clearly in a bad mood.

  She expected her team to be able to do their jobs. If she was required to spoon-feed them every single detail, then they’d be better off looking for employment elsewhere. As the editor-in-chief of the most popular fashion magazine in North America, Victoria Hastings had impeccable standards. Anyone who worked at Arrival deserved to be there, or they found themselves out of the door very quickly.

  Her phone gently rumbled on the desk. She snatched it up and glanced at the screen. It was from Holly, reminding her to issue an invite to Gideon for dinner the following week.

  Holly was very insistent that they socialise with people outside of work. Victoria didn’t really grasp why. She saw Gideon all day every day; why she now had to see him across the dining room table in her own home baffled her.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like Gideon. She enjoyed his company very much. If her arm was twisted, she may even have to admit that she liked the after-work dinners. It was just new, and Victoria wasn’t always a fan of new.

  However, she was a fan of Holly Carter, and that had changed Victoria’s perceptions on many things over the last year.

  She put her phone back on the desk, face down.

  “Holly would like you to come to dinner next week, if you’re free.”

  “Holly would like?” Gideon asked, playfully.

  “We would like,” she corrected herself. She looked up at him over the top of her glasses. “You know what I mean.”

  “I’ll check my schedule,” he teased. “I have a lot of proofs to redo because my boss is being even more demanding than usual.”

  Victoria rolled her eyes. “Well, do let me know as soon as you can. And I’m not being more demanding than usual; my standards are as high as they were last week, last month, or even last year. It’s other people who insist on letting their own standards lapse.”

  “Don’t tell me standards are lapsing!” a newcomer announced.

  Her head snapped up to see who had marched into her office without invitation, but any hint of annoyance vanished the second she saw who it was. She smiled, removed her glasses, and stood up. “Steven, how lovely to see you. Back from Switzerland so soon?”

  Steven Goodfellow was one of the very few people able to breeze past her two assistants in the outer office and come straight into her inner sanctum. His charming persona allowed him to get away with an awful lot that would have other people on the receiving end of an icy glare.

  Steven was finance director for Oculous, the media company that owned Arrival Magazine. Victoria had enjoyed a short fling with him many moons before, and they’d managed to maintain a very pleasant working friendship ever since.

  “Good to see you, Steven.” Gideon got up to shake hands with him.

  “I’m not interrupting, am I?” Steven held wrapped gifts in his hands, so he used his head to indicate the door through which he had just barged. “I can come back later.”

  “You’re never interrupting,” Victoria reassured him. “Besides, I can see you have gifts. The bearer of gifts is always welcome.”

  Steven leaned over the table, and Victoria leaned forward in response. They shared cheek kisses.

  “These are nothing much. Just little things I picked up for Hugo and Alexia,” Steven said. “And, of course, a little something for you. Nothing much. What do you buy the woman who has everything?”

  “I ask myself the same thing every year,” Gideon said. He took the opportunity of Steven’s arrival to snatch up the print proofs from the desk. “I’ll leave you to it. Great to see you, Steven.”

  Victoria watched Gideon make his escape, the wide grin on his face indicating relief at being able to cut their production meeting short. She supposed she couldn’t blame him; she was in a terrible mood following the problems with the photoshoot that morning. And maybe she had been a little finicky with some of the proofs. Not that she’d ever admit it to him.

  “Did I release a rabbit from the trap?” Steven asked, taking a seat in front of her desk.

  “Yes, but don’t worry. He’ll be recaptured before long.” She sat down and regarded Steven properly.

  He wore a smart, tailored, faded blue twill suit with a matching waistcoat. The white shirt underneath was unbuttoned at the collar, as Steven abhorred wearing a tie. His thick brown hair showed no sign of thinning, and his tanned skin showed no sign of aging. He was as he had been for the last twenty years.

  “How are you?” Victoria asked. “You look well.”

  “I’m very well. Arrival Switzerland has finished acquiring its main competitor, so the folks upstairs are naturally very happy.”

  “I’m sure they are. How long were you there again?”

  “Eight months. I came home for a brief time at Christmas, but it was only a flying visit. How are you? The children?” He gestured to the gifts on the table. “I nearly got Hugo a Swiss Army knife, but I remembered your rule about him not being allowed to play with weapons as a child. Do I get bonus points for that?”

  Victoria chuckled. Her fling with Steven had been over before it had really begun, but he had always been interested in the children. It was an interest tha
t continued long after they returned to just being work colleagues and something she deeply appreciated.

  “Possibly. I’ll reserve judgement until after I see what you did get him. In answer to your question, I’m well. The children are, too; Hugo just turned sixteen, and I honestly have no idea how that happened. Just the other minute he was my little boy, and now he’s practically a man.”

  Steven laughed. “And Alexia? Still ruling the roost?”

  “Very much so.”

  “She’s nine now, isn’t she?” Steven asked, clearly already knowing the answer as he shook his head in astonishment. “How do they grow up so fast?”

  “I have no idea; I’ve been demanding they stop for a while.” Victoria sucked in her cheek. She needed to tell him. He was a close friend, probably one of her closest. It had been a while since they’d seen each other, and her news wasn’t the kind you shared over email.

  “I’m seeing someone,” she confessed bluntly.

  He grinned and then opened his mouth, pretending to appear scandalised. “Victoria Hastings,” he admonished. “You didn’t say anything.”

  “It was a… unique situation,” she explained. “And it all happened rather quickly.”

  “Well, now you’ve piqued my interest.” He pulled his chair forward and leaned on the edge of her desk. “Tell me everything.”

  She chuckled and shook her head. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “And you’re stalling. Who is he?”

  Victoria swallowed. “She, actually.”

  “Sorry, how heteronormative of me,” he said. “Who is she?”

  Steven had always been open-minded and kind-hearted. She licked her lips and leaned in a little closer, aware that the door to her office was open and that her assistants loved to eavesdrop.

  “You won’t believe me,” she said softly.

  He grinned wider. “This is going to be good.”

  “Do you remember my former assistant, Holly Carter?”

  He nodded. “The girl who left you in Paris, I remember.”

  He appeared to be waiting for the next sentence. She looked at him meaningfully.

  He sat upright; confusion painted his expression. “Holly?” He pointed to the outer office. “Holly Carter? The… your… assistant?”

  “My former second assistant. I know, it’s bizarre.” She smiled, enjoying his utter bemusement. “Have I shocked you?”

  “A little,” he admitted. “When you said Holly Carter, I thought you were going to say you met someone connected to her. I thought she vanished?”

  “Well, she did.” Victoria got up and walked around her desk to close the office door. The mental image that Louise and Claudia were contorting themselves around their desks in an effort to lean closer to the door wouldn’t leave her mind.

  Steven’s gaze followed her around the room. His jaw hung open, and his eyes were wide and confused.

  “As you know, Holly disappeared from my side at Paris Fashion Week two years ago. Last year, I was back in Paris and had forgotten all about her,” Victoria lied.

  Forgetting about Holly Carter had been impossible, although she refused to admit that to anyone. The sudden disappearance of her assistant had been a shock, causing her a great deal of unexpected pain. Not knowing why she had left or where she had gone had played on Victoria’s mind for a number of months.

  She took Gideon’s seat beside Steven. “I’ll cut a long story short; it came to my attention that Holly had never left Paris. She’d been involved in some horrific accident and then been carted off to a hospital. In short, Steven, she had… well, has… amnesia.”

  Steven closed his eyes, shook his head, and then opened them wide, staring at Victoria in obvious amazement. “Amnesia?”

  “Yes. She couldn’t remember a thing: who she was, why she was in Paris, what had happened to her.”

  “And none of that has come back?”

  “No, she has the odd sense of déjà vu every now and then but nothing concrete. Most likely she will never remember hard facts about her life before the accident.”

  “Do you know what happened to her?” Steven asked.

  “Some kind of accident resulting in brain trauma,” Victoria answered. She batted the point away with a flick of her wrist. “Anyway, via this French journalist, I managed to find her and brought her home to New York. It was all completely innocent at the time, but it blossomed into so much more.”

  “And now you’re… together?” Steven questioned.

  Victoria almost felt sorry for him; the more she explained, the more confounded he seemed.

  “Yes. We live together; we have for almost a year. It was platonic at first, of course. When we first came back from Paris nothing was happening, but it grew into something else. And I don’t mind admitting that I… well, I think she’s the one.” Victoria hadn’t admitted that out loud before. It felt strange to hear the words leave her mouth. Strange but wonderful.

  Steven’s bamboozlement continued.

  Victoria looked at him passively, waiting for him to catch up with what she’d been saying.

  He shook away the cobwebs and smiled. “Wow, that’s wonderful. I’m really happy for you. Wouldn’t have seen that coming, but… wow!”

  “You’ll have to come over to dinner one night. I’d love for you to meet her. Well, meet her again. Did you ever meet Holly? I presume you did?” Victoria stood up and returned to her own chair. She was aware that this short, unscheduled meeting was no doubt already squeezing out another. She glanced at her laptop, checking her planner.

  “I’m sure I did,” Steven said, “but it was a while ago, and you go through assistants like I go through socks.”

  She gave him an exasperated look before returning her attention to her screen.

  “It must be strange to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t remember…” He trailed off, seemingly struggling to find the right words.

  “What a monster I was to her?” Victoria questioned.

  “No! I mean, does she not remember anything from before the accident? Or the accident itself?”

  “Not a thing.” Victoria clicked away a couple of reminders.

  “How strange that she was still in Paris. Didn’t we all assume she’d had a moment of madness and just left her post?” Steven asked.

  “Yes. She walked away, and later her things were gone. We don’t know what happened precisely, but we assumed that she made the decision to leave, packed up her belongings, and then… something happened. We all thought she had been mugged. She’s never been the best judge of a location; the idea around the office was that she was probably walking through the roughest area of Paris in her Louboutins.”

  Victoria could understand Steven’s curiosity regarding Holly’s amnesia, but she really wished that he would focus a little more attention on the fact that she was in a loving and happy relationship. Then again, he wasn’t the first person who had wanted a full blow-by-blow account of the entire series of events.

  The conversation with her sister, and later her mother, flashed into her memory. She blew out a frustrated breath. Her sister was still convinced Holly was a gold digger and completely refused to come and meet her in person.

  “It’s a crazy old world,” Steven said.

  “It is,” she agreed. “But in this case, I won’t complain about the results.”

  “You sound happy,” Steven commented, a smile on his face.

  “I am. For the first time in a long time, I feel fulfilled.” Victoria wasn’t going to elaborate. A declaration of love, in her office, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, was quite enough.

  He smiled again, seeing right through her façade. “That’s fantastic news, Victoria. It really is. I’m so busy at the moment with the move back to the city, but once I’m unpacked, I will be in touch. We will have that dinner, and I will get all the gossip from the lovely Holly.”

  “See that you do. It’s been far too long since we’ve had time to talk properly.”

&nbs
p; The muffled sound of people gathering by her office door indicated that the attendees of her next meeting had arrived.

  “That’s my cue.” Steven pushed himself up from the chair. “I’ll be in touch soon, have a delightful meeting.” He laughed heartily, knowing full well that none of her meetings were ever anything less than a test of her patience and endurance.

  She allowed herself a small chuckle. Seeing Steven was a lovely respite from her day of terrible meetings. A respite that was now, sadly, over.

  He opened the door and greeted some people in the outer office; she could hear him wishing them good luck. She shook her head before removing all trace of emotion from her face.

  “Please, do continue to stand idly in my doorway. I’ll thoroughly enjoy shouting myself hoarse so you can all hear me,” she drawled quietly, knowing that everyone would hear her and jump to attention.

  She looked at her watch and already knew she’d be a little late getting home that evening, something that she had been trying and failing to avoid. The meeting attendees quickly filed into the room, and Victoria put her glasses back on.

  “Now, in as few words as possible, explain to me how we’re going to rescue the abomination you previously presented.”

  Chapter Two

  Holly peered into the large saucepan with trepidation. It was a new recipe, one she thought sounded easy but that had become a lot more complicated as she progressed through the recipe. Holly had taken to making the family dinner at least three times a week, with varying levels of success.