“Um, Maxim Cade,” she says with a chuckle. “Sorry. How’s it feel to be back in the States after such a harrowing adventure?”
Impatience flashes in those peridot eyes I thought I knew so well.
“Uh, great,” he says, pushing a shoulder through the crowd.
“And you were scheduled to go to the Amazon next,” another reporter shouts at his back. “After such a close call, will you be rethinking that?”
Not breaking stride, his long, lean legs taking him closer to the luxury SUV waiting on the tarmac where his father stands, he glances over his shoulder and shoots the crowd that pirate’s grin. “Hell, no. I’m still going. Why wouldn’t I?”
Too many emotions roil in my belly. Too many thoughts whisk in my head. Betrayal. Fear. Relief. Something tender, an unopened bud that I crush before it can fully open.
“That’s him?” Mena asks, her eyes fixed on the screen as Maxim climbs into the vehicle behind his father.
“No,” I say, blinking dry eyes and knocking back her whiskey. “I don’t know who that man is.”
32
Maxim
“I wanted to thank you for everything, Dad,” I say, sipping the water served with the elaborate meal my mother had our chef prepare. I haven’t been in this house in years, and wasn’t sure I’d ever return.
“No need to thank me, son.” My father takes a bite of his steak and points to me with his fork. “Coming home where you belong is thanks enough.”
I stiffen, knowing where this is going and how it will end. This détente will be short-lived because, as much as I appreciate my father’s assistance, I can’t give him what he wants.
“Yes,” Mom rushes to say, her look bouncing between my father and me. “So good to have you home. We’ve missed you, haven’t we, Warren?”
My father sips his red wine and nods. “I hope this last incident got all this Greenpeace shit out of your system. Cade Energy needs you.”
His words fall into a vat of tension-laced silence. I finish chewing and carefully place my fork on my plate. “I’m not working for Cade Energy, Dad. You know that.”
His jaw ticks, the muscle flexing along his strong jawline. My jawline. My cheekbones. My eyes. My face.
My stubborn will, 1.0.
I’ve never admired and resented one person so simultaneously as I do my father. When he looks down the table at me, I know he feels the same way.
“You ungrateful fool,” he says through clenched teeth. His fist slams the table, clanging the glasses and silverware. My mother jumps and closes her eyes, resignation in every line of her body and on her face. “I rescue you and your conservationist friends. I fixed your stupid boat. I fly you home, and what do you give me in return? Defiance and rebellion.”
“No one asked you to,” I fire at him, my voice tight with anger.
“And what should I have done? Let you die?”
“If you saved me only to control me, then yeah.”
“Maxim,” my mother protests. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, we’d save you.”
“Maybe if he’d known I wasn’t going to toe the line, he wouldn’t have bothered,” I say.
“That’s a fucking lie and you know it, Maxim,” my father says, his eyes narrowed and his body tense. “All I’m asking is for a little bit of gratitude.”
“Which you have, but I’m not changing the course of my life to make you feel I’m sufficiently grateful.”
“What course? Another useless degree? More wandering the world collecting mud samples? You call that a career?”
“I have a career. I have a plan that has nothing to do with you. You’ll see, Dad. You have no idea who I am.”
“No, you have no idea who you are,” he bellows, leaning forward over the table. “You’re a fucking Cade, and you’re running around like you’re a nobody. Well, be a nobody, Maxim. Meanwhile I’ll keep running one of the most successful businesses in the world and your brother will become president of this country. You go save whales.” He tosses a linen napkin over his unfinished meal. “See if I give a shit.”