Looking for work. Sure, it was the truth. Maybe. But scouring a city for your next restaurant wasn’t exactly washing dishes and chopping onions.
“Anyway, almost ten years later, and here I am, CEO of the Parker Group and the most successful restauranteur under forty in Western Europe.”
Xavier’s mouth quirked again into something resembling a hint of a smile. But it wasn’t the fake predatory grin he served. This was real satisfaction. Pride. And then back to annoyance.
“But I underestimated my father,” he continued. “The old ass was even more stubborn than I was. Started showing up at my restaurants. Hired someone to tail me, know where I was going to be on any given night.”
“He sounds very controlling,” I remarked.
“Obsessive was more like it. I must get it from him. And I knew what he wanted. It wasn’t a son—he’d never cared about me enough for that, you know? He wanted an heir to secure his legacy. But little by little, he wore me down.”
“What do you mean, he wore you down?”
Xavier glanced toward the exit, as if now he was the one who wanted to escape. “I suppose it was curiosity, really. When I was a kid, I used to wonder who my father was. Dream he’d come find me one day. Rescue me and Mum from our life over the restaurant, have some good reason for staying away. Finally, he did show up. Maybe I was a grown man, but there was a part of me that wanted to know what he was all about.”
I didn’t like the way this conversation made me feel. Guilt swept through me, partly hearing the echoes not only of my own childhood wishes from my mother, but from the questions I was fielding from Sofia more and more often. Wishing to God it was something much stronger, I tossed back the rest of my tea like a shot, then swallowed the rest of my pride.
“Can you imagine what it’s like?” Xavier asked. “To have a parent who ignores you, treats you like you’re nothing, and yet there’s still a part of you that loves them, wants them to love you back?”
I stared into my teacup. For a few long moments, it was my mother’s face I saw in muddy brown liquid. Her muddied expression when she came home from work after sneaking shots behind the counter of the Dollar Store. I could see the way she’d bat me and Marie and Joni away when we cried for attention, only to fall down on the sofa and pass out, leaving Matthew, Lea, and Kate to do the work of parenting for her. I could hear Joni’s unanswered whimpers when we slept together on the bed.
“Yes,” I finally managed. “I can imagine that exactly.”
Xavier looked like he wanted to ask why. Just like he hadn’t divulged much about his upbringing back then, I had never told him much more than the fact that I was raised by my grandparents instead of the mother who was still living. Neither of us had wanted to discuss the past. The present had been much more alluring.
But instead of pressing me in the exact way I’d been pressing him, Xavier had the good sense to finish his story.
“Anyway,” he said. “After my second restaurant opened, I finally accepted his invitation to dinner. And then to spend the Season with him and his family.”
“The London Season? Like in the books? The Royal Ascot, the Jubilee, all of that?”
Xavier looked uneasy. “Er, yeah. A bit. Most of the events are sponsored by large companies, so all sorts get invited. But yeah, the Ascot is part of it.” He snorted, clearly with some strange memory. “Dad acted like I was a fucking debutante. I wasn’t received at court—they don’t do that anymore—but I did meet the queen at one of her garden parties. Can you believe that? Me, his half-breed bastard, in front of Her Majesty. He was lucky I even showed up.”
It was hard to imagine. He was dropping words like “Royal Ascot” and the “Season” in his South London drawl, and all I could imagine was the Prince of Wales and the cast of Downton Abbey. It was a world I could only understand through books and television, maybe the occasional tabloid story. Nothing about it seemed real.
“You can imagine what that lot thought of me,” Xavier said. “Slant-eyed bastard of the—of Rupert Parker. Treated me like I was no better than the dirt on their shoes. Except for Lucy.”
“Your…fiancée?”
“My friend,” Xavier corrected me. “She was nice, Ces. Not much of a looker, to the point where the others made fun of her. She was sick a lot of the time, you see. Something called mast cell activation disorder. It was why her cancer spread so fast.”
I nodded. I had a student last year with the same issue. He had a tendency toward sudden anaphylaxis and a whole host of seemingly random medical issues that made it very hard for him to thrive.
Xavier continued. “I didn’t care. She talked to me like a normal person, which was more than I could say for anyone else. Explained the rules of games I didn’t know, helped me learn the people worth talking to, and those who weren’t. Lucy kept me from making a total arse of myself. Turned out to be my best friend.”
The vise around my chest squeezed even tighter, and I had to put my hands in my lap to hide the fists they were making. Pity mixed with complete and utter jealousy. It was pathetic. This woman—this dead woman—he was describing sounded perfectly delightful. Kind and generous. All the things I wasn’t. Not right now.
Right now, I hated her. So. Much.
“So you fell in love with her.”
It wasn’t a question. There was dread in the statement as I grabbed my fork and knife and started sawing at my cold toast with bitter regret.
Xavier looked up from his pint glass, his gaze straight and true. “No.”
I still wasn’t sure I believed him. But before I could say so, he reached across the table and grabbed my hand. The sudden contact sizzled like I’d touched a live wire. But he wasn’t letting go.
“No,” he repeated when my eyes, prickling with irritating tears, met his. “Ces, I was not in love with her. Nor was she with me. We were friends. Best friends. And so when her parents kept trying to marry her off to any idiot who’d take her hand—and her inheritance—I offered to fill the role. At least until she met someone she actually wanted.”