Sophie (The Boss 8)

El-Mudad sighed deeply. "I know you both are worried for her. And I know you want what's best. But I think you both should disentangle yourselves from this."

"Disentangle? She's living in our guest house," Neil said ruefully.

"And believe me, I am not tangling with Valerie in any way, for any reason. I've finally got the perfect excuse to ignore her forever if I wanted to," I said with a laugh.

"You would never," El-Mudad said without a hint of teasing in his voice. "You couldn't."

"Oh, I think Sophie might like to try," Neil said, still not quite grasping the seriousness of El-Mudad's tone.

But I wouldn't brush it off. "You're making it sound like I'm as Valerie-obsessed as Neil."

"I don't think Neil is Valerie-obsessed." El-Mudad leaned back on the rail and crossed his arms. "I think you are."

My jaw dropped.

Neil shifted away from me to sit up taller against the back of the lounge. "This has taken a fascinating turn."

"Don't be too pleased with yourself," El-Mudad warned. "You're the reason Sophie is obsessed with her."

Neil made an amused noise of outrage.

"Explain yourself," I demanded.

"As someone on the outside of the dynamic, I've had a chance to watch the two of you interact with her and with each other over her. And I'm comfortable saying that, Sophie, you are incredibly threatened by Valerie," El-Mudad said calmly.

Neil chuckled. "That isn't the revelation of a lifetime."

"And you like that she threatens Sophie."

Now, I sat up straighter, and Neil wasn't laughing.

"I could never put my finger on why I didn't like your relationship with Valerie, Neil." El-Mudad paced back and forth in front of the lounge like a detective at the denouement of a country house murder plot. "It wasn't that I thought you'd run back to her and abandon us. I've honestly never even considered that you might cheat on us with her. While you were in hospital, our conversations clarified much of how you felt about her and the mistakes you made in your relationship. But then, when we were all back together, I realized that you've been, hopefully subconsciously, happily pitting Sophie against Valerie for some time."

"That's what I'm saying!" I sprang to my knees in my excitement to finally have an ally. "I mean, it's not. Because if I had figured that out myself, Neil would be in a hell of a lot of trouble."

He might still be. The "subconsciously" part of that sentence was the fulcrum upon which the plank of my anger teetered.

To my great relief, he gasped, "I do not!"

Even the greatest actor in the world wouldn't be able to pull off the guileless affront Neil had poured into that exclamation.

"At least it's subconscious," I muttered under my breath.

"All right." Neil held up his hands in defeat. "Show your work. I'll entertain your thoughts impartially."

"No, you won't. But I will give them to you, anyway," El-Mudad graciously conceded. "You invited Valerie to your wedding."

"Against my wishes," I reminded Neil.

"She's my friend! It would have been strange to exclude her." It was the same defense he'd used at the time. The tense had just changed.

"Sophie, how would you have spent your wedding?" El-Mudad asked.

When I imagined her there, watching the ceremony, sitting at the reception, probably even being in photos with us, I wanted to gag. "I would have been miserable.”

“But…” Neil began, stopping himself before he went so far as to argue. He knew it was true; he’d probably known it at the time.

“And Neil? How would you have felt if Valerie had been there?” El-Mudad asked.

“I didn’t miss her presence the day of, if that’s what you’re implying,” Neil responded pointedly. “To be perfectly honest, my entire focus was on Sophie. And our family, of course.”

“So, why did you need to invite Valerie at all?” El-Mudad let the question hang there for a long moment. Neil nodded slowly, then dropped his head to his hands. “Sophie. I am—”

“Don’t,” El-Mudad said sharply. “We must help Valerie, even if that means she’s only just down the driveway for a while. But that’s where it ends. No more visits down there. No more checking up. If she needs something, trust her to come to us. But after all that she has done...the knowledge that she could still stand in the way of the adoption…” He took a deep breath. “Perhaps Sophie is the better person. Because she did not ask this of you, but I will. Neil, this is where your friendship with Valerie ends. We can help her through this difficult time; of course, we will. But you are no longer friends. You can’t keep tormenting Sophie. And you can’t ask me to trust the woman who tried to take Olivia from us.”

I expected Neil would blow up. I thought he might argue that it was none of El-Mudad’s business, as he had asserted to me on occasion. But he didn’t. He just...nodded.