The Billionaire's Allure (The Silver Cross Club Book 5) (28 page)

* * *

On Saturday, as always, I went home for brunch. Beth had sent me a single text message:
Just give me some time
. I was of the opinion that I’d already given her more than enough—almost two weeks, at that point—but she was doing her best Rock of Gibraltar imitation and refusing to budge. So be it.

Rosemary greeted me at the door, wearing one of those floor-length caftans that were inexplicably in style. “Where’s your present for Mother? You remembered that it’s her birthday, didn’t you?”

I froze.
Shit
. I had, in fact, forgotten completely.

Rosemary read the guilt right off my face and had the audacity to laugh at me. “She’s out on the terrace with Jack right now. She doesn’t know you’re here. You can still go out and buy something. Jack got her some food, and I got her toiletries, so I recommend flowers.”

“You won’t sell me out, will you?” I asked. I fumbled my phone out of my pocket, and sure enough, there was the reminder:
Mother’s birthday, May 21.
Beth had me so distracted that I had forgotten all about it.

“I’ll probably make you buy me some new shoes,” she said, “but I won’t tell.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, I guess.” It was 10:48; I had twelve minutes before I was officially “late.” That should be more than enough time to run down the street and buy some flowers.

It was the season for peonies, which were my mother’s favorite flower. I bought a huge bouquet of cut stems, pale pink and sweet-smelling. When I returned to the apartment, my mother was just coming in from the terrace, coffee cup in one hand, her arm linked through Jack’s. She released him when she saw me and sailed across the room, her arms outstretched. “My eldest son, here at last!”

I kissed her cheek and handed her the flowers. “I’m right on time, Mother. Happy birthday.”

“You’re only on time if you’re early,” my father said from behind his newspaper.

“Peonies!” my mother exclaimed. “Oh, Max. How did you know?”

“Because you complain whenever someone brings you anything
other
than peonies,” Jack said. “Honestly, Mother. We aren’t totally unobservant.”

“Only mostly,” Rosemary said, and Jack flipped her off.

My mother pressed a hand against her chest, either feigning shock or genuinely incredulous that one of her children would do something so crass. “Jonathan Archibald—”

“Why don’t we eat?” my father interrupted, setting aside his paper. “Breakfast smells delicious. Did you have Helen make croissants?”

Helen was my parents’ housekeeper. “Isn’t she a wonder?” my mother said, distracted from scolding Jack by this talk of pastries. “Just as good as anything you’d get in Paris.”

“Oh my
God
,” Rosemary said. “Can we just eat?”

We ate. My mother went into the other room to find a vase for the peonies, which she then set in the middle of the table, blocking my view of Jack. It was just as well. He was going through some sort of late growth spurt, and he shoveled food into his mouth with a focus that precluded conversation or even good table manners.

Jack and Rosemary were both finished with classes for the semester and—as far as I could tell—doing very little but lazing around, and in Rosemary’s case, spending a lot of time lying on the terrace in a bikini. Without school as a topic of conversation, my mother focused her interrogation tactics on me. After a series of questions about my apartment, income, and diet, she said, “And what about that young lady you were telling me about? What did you say her name was—Beth, wasn’t it?”

Jack and my father both kept eating, but Rosemary perked up and looked in my direction, one eyebrow raised, and I bit down on my tongue to keep myself from visibly reacting to my mother’s question. If Rosemary thought there was a good story here, she would hassle me about it until the end of time. “She’s doing well,” I said. “She’s a good friend. I haven’t seen her much lately. She’s busy with work.”

“Who’s Beth?” Rosemary asked, and I took a sip of coffee to hide my dismay.

“Beth is a young lady he knows from that unfortunate time in his life,” my mother said, the
unfortunate time
being her euphemism for my brief stint as a runaway.

“Oh, you mean when he ran away, and we never talk about it,” Rosemary said.

Silence. I set my coffee cup on its saucer. Jack kept eating. My father took a bite of his croissant and looked at me.

“It’s stupid that we don’t talk about it,” Rosemary said, undaunted. “Why don’t we? Mother spent six months crying about it, and then he came back and it was like nothing ever happened.”

“You were in a coma,” I said stiffly. “You don’t know what happened.”

“Oh sure, you guys talked it all out in the
one month
I was in a coma,” she said. “I definitely believe that. And the fact that nobody has ever mentioned it since isn’t at all an indication of seething dysfunction. I know we’re WASPs, but this Stiff Upper Lip nonsense has gotten old.”

“This isn’t the time or the place, Rosemary,” I said. I was hugely uncomfortable. This was
not
a conversation I ever wanted to have, much less during brunch on my mother’s birthday.

“I disagree,” Jack said, finally looking up from his plate. “Nobody ever talks about anything in this family. I want to know what happened.”

I looked around the table. They were all watching me. My mother had one hand over her mouth. My father looked amused. I wondered if that was the secret to running a successful multinational corporation: take nothing seriously, and appreciate family drama for the entertainment value.

“Well?” Rosemary said.

“Okay,” I said, giving in to the inevitable. “Fine. You win. What do you want to know?”

Between the two of them, Rosemary and Jack got the whole story out of me: where I had gone, why, and with whom. My father listened and sipped his coffee. My mother rested her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. I realized, after some time, that she was crying.

I stood up and crossed to the other side of the table to sit beside her. Her shoulders shook minutely. I put my arms around her and patted her back. “Mother, please don’t. I’m sorry.” I turned and glared at Rosemary. “I hope you assholes are happy. It’s her
birthday
.”

To her credit, Rosemary looked a little chagrined.

“I never knew any of those things,” my mother said, her voice muffled by her hands. “I imagined it so many times. But I never knew what it was really like for you.”

Guilt stabbed at me. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done it. I didn’t think—it was never about punishing you. I didn’t intend to make you worry.”

She sniffed and wiped at her eyes, then settled her hands in her lap and looked at me. Her eyes were red and puffy. “We found you, you know. About a month after you ran away. Your father hired a detective. But he said you seemed content and in no immediate danger, and we decided it was best to leave you be.”

I sat back, stunned. I’d had no idea. “You
found
me? How did you—”

My father laughed. “Max, you were a sheltered teenager. I’m sure you thought you were very clever, but you didn’t cover your tracks very well.” Then he sobered. “And even if you had, we would have spared no expense to find you. Don’t underestimate the degree of our concern. Rosemary wasn’t exaggerating when she said that your mother cried for six months.”

“Well, now I feel incredibly guilty,” I said. “So thank you for that, Jack and Rosemary. Mother, how can I make this up to you?”

“You can’t,” she said. “And I don’t want you to. I know what you’ve been doing in Brooklyn, with your youth shelter.” There was an accusing note in her voice, and I bristled, but then she patted my knee and smiled at me. “Our experiences shape us. Yours have certainly shaped you. Your running away was one of the hardest times of my life, but it turned you into the man you are today. I’m very proud to call that man my son.”

“Touching speech,” Jack said sardonically, and began clapping.

Rosemary threw half of a croissant at him.

I ignored both of them, and leaned in to kiss my mother’s cheek. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know that doesn’t change anything, but I am.”

“You can make it up to me by bringing that young lady over for dinner,” she said.

I winced. That was one promise I couldn’t make.

Just give me some time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Beth

The day after Max came to visit me—accost me?—at the club, I woke up early and started on a new book.

I had been thinking about my conversation with Claudia, but I hadn’t done anything about it yet. That morning, I sat at my kitchen table with my laptop and read over my book, the few sad chapters I had pieced together over the past year. If I was being honest with myself, it wasn’t very good. The characters were paper-thin. The plot didn’t make any sense. I spent so much time trying to craft perfect, lyrical sentences that I had lost sight of the story’s beating heart.

Which was, of course, and always, Max.

Claudia had told me that my writing was too constrained. Okay: I would free myself from all constraints. I would stop worrying about writing The Great American Novel. I would write this book for myself.

I went to my desk and got started.

I wrote furiously, for hours, the words pouring out of me in a torrent. For once, I didn’t go back and revise. I just wrote. I finished an entire chapter. It was more than I had written in one day since—well, maybe
ever.

As the light changed toward evening, I saved my work and went down the street to the copy shop to print it off. It was my night to present at my writing group.

For once, I wasn’t nervous. I felt good about what I had written. Even if nobody in the group liked it, I was still content with my work. Claudia’s hippie crystal vibrations talk mystified me most of the time, but maybe this was what she had meant about the story that was heavy in my heart. Now that the words were on paper, I could rise again. I felt lighter than I had since I’d opened Renzo’s letter, like I had shed the weight of my worries. I felt like I could move forward now, into whatever came next.

I walked to the coffee shop in the warm spring twilight. All of the restaurants in my neighborhood had opened their outdoor patios for the season, and people were drinking wine and laughing in the fading light. Ahead of me, an elderly couple walked hand in hand. The city pulsed with life, and I was a part of it, a single cell in the vibrant, organic structure of New York. In that moment, all the pain I had felt, the betrayal and uncertainty, fell away.

I could be angry, and self-righteous, and spend the rest of my life regretting what I had lost. Or I could choose forgiveness, and love.

Put it like that, and it was no decision at all.

The coffee shop glowed from within like a lantern. I went through the front door into the warm and fragrant interior. Everyone was gathered in the back, sitting in a loose circle. I’d had some printer problems, and I was the last to arrive. I set my bag down on the one empty chair and said, “I hope I’m not late.”

“You’re right on time,” Claudia said, beaming at me. I looked around the room. Everyone was smiling, happy to see me or just to be there. I wasn’t alone. I had a whole meaningful life, even without Max. I didn’t
need
him. But I
wanted
him. He made everything better. He made
me
better.

I took a seat and settled my stack of papers on my lap. The pages were still warm from the printer. I hoped that everyone would like what I had written. But if they didn’t, that was okay, too. I would still keep writing. There were other stories to tell.

Claudia clasped her hands together. Her many rings sparkled in the light. “Shall we begin?”

Evan went first, with his sci-fi novel. His latest chapter outlined the hero escaping from the space station. It was fast-paced, tightly plotted, and thrilling. I read through it so quickly that when I looked up, everyone else still had their heads bent over the pages. Evan glanced over at me, his eyebrows raised in a silent query. I flashed him a thumbs up, and he smiled.

When everyone was finished reading, Claudia said, “Who would like to begin?”

“This is fantastic!” Maggie said, without even raising her hand. “Evan, I’m ready to throttle you for ending the chapter there. You can’t make us wait another six weeks to find out what happens next.”

He grinned. “So that was an effective scene break, I guess.”

“Sure, if you’re
evil
,” Maggie said. “Readers will be up all night finishing your book. Do you want to be responsible for that much sleep deprivation?”

Everyone laughed. Claudia jingled her bracelets and said, “What other feedback do we have for Evan?”

Paolo raised his hand. “I have to disagree with Maggie. I thought the action sequence was trite and unoriginal. Really, crawling around in the air ducts? Evan, you can do better.”