Interlude II

INTERLUDE II

Xavier

“Wait, wait, wait. You’re saying that it’s been four months of back and forth from here to New York, and that little girl still doesn’t know you’re her dad?”

Jagger Harrington sat in front of me with another drink in his hand, but this time at my broad marble-topped bar in London while I fixed him up with a new dish I’d been working on. Jagger was no food critic, but he was a good example of the type of person I wanted to draw at my restaurants: young, stylish, and moneyed.

“I’m giving her time,” I said as I blanched needle-thin noodles in an ice bath. “I don’t want to get too attached if it doesn’t work out.”

I pulled the noodles out to drain, then hand-tossed them with infused sesame oil.

“Mate,” Jagger said evenly. “You’re attached. You just named a restaurant after her. Think you might want to get around to acknowledging her too?”

I scowled. I was starting to wish I’d never told him why I’d landed on Chie as the name of my New York restaurant, due to open imminently. Chie meant wisdom in Japanese. As did Sofia, in its original Greek form.

Jagger made it sound like I was, well, my own father struggling with his illegitimate offspring, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.

“She’s mine,” I practically growled at him. “There’s never been a doubt about that. For one, she looks just like me.”

I grabbed my phone and tossed it to Jagger, who took one look at the lock screen—a picture of Sofia shrieking on a swing set—and smiled.

“I think you made that same face whenever you scored at football,” he said as he handed the phone back to me.

I nodded, looking at the picture once more before tucking the phone into my pocket. “I just wanted to give us time to get to know each other without all the bullshit. You know how crazy my life can be. The last thing I need is the papers getting wind of anything.”

Jagger just blinked. He didn’t need me to elaborate on that.

“Anyway, she and Francesca are both coming to the opening next week.” I coiled the noodles onto a pair of square plates and started working on the garnishes.

“Are they really?” Jagger grinned. “Maybe I should make a trip for the big day. I wouldn’t mind meeting this pearl of wisdom. And her hot mum too. Francesca, right? Sounds like a treat.”

“Francesca is not a treat, and I’ll thank you to keep her name out of your fucking mouth.”

Most men would have run a mile at my tone, but Jagger just took a long sip of his brandy while I chopped some mizuna to cool myself down. Knife work always had a meditative effect on me.

“Calm down,” he said once it was clear I was under control. “It’s just banter.”

“I know.” I was going for light, but the words fell out of my mouth like anvils. Honestly, I was surprised they didn’t crack the marble in half.

“Still hung up on her, then?”

“Absolutely not,” I snapped as I swung around to the fridge and started rooting around for something else. I honestly wasn’t sure what, though.

“That why you turned down an offer last night from two Victoria’s Secret models? At the same time?” Behind me, my best friend whistled. “Shame, that.”

“It has nothing to do with it. They were both idiots.”

“Well, they weren’t offering to give a lecture on Lord Byron.”

I snorted as I returned to the counter holding a carrot and some spring onions. The idea of those overgrown giraffes talking about anything close to poetry was a laugh. Ces, though, could talk circles around just about anyone when it came to all things bookish. Somehow, she made it interesting, too.

For a second, I recalled the image of her sweet lips spread in a smile when she mentioned some random character. Usually one she was imagining as herself.

Right on cue, the other images arose—of those same lips open as she called out her orgasm. Her coke-bottle body spread across counters like a fine buffet. That peach-shaped arse, high and waiting when I bent her over the couch.

Fuck .

It had been a long four months since that night in January when the world made sense again for five fucking minutes. Francesca and I had gone back to being, well, not friends exactly. But at least cordial.

We had worked out a bit of a system. When I was in town, which was every other week or so, she allowed me to pick up Sofia after school and take her to the park or a museum or someplace. In order to avoid her brother, she’d meet us, we’d share a quick meal, and then she’d take Sofia home. Sometimes I could see her Sundays too, when Ces taught one of her aerobics classes. I don’t want to mention the dirty thoughts that went through my mind when she told me that choice bit of information. All I needed was to see her in skin-tight leggings to threaten my self-control.

On a few occasions when her brother had been out, she’d invited me to dinner at the little brick house that was disturbingly like the flat where I’d grown up. Ces was a bit ashamed by its shabbiness, but I felt right at home.

She’d let me cook for Sofia while we made polite, empty conversation. Hello, Xavi. Goodbye, Xavi. How’s the weather in London, Xavi? Have fun at the park. These noodles are great. See you next week.

Sometimes, though, if she managed to get Sofia to sleep quickly, Francesca would come back downstairs, lips curved into a suggestive smile as she accepted a second glass of wine and let me join her on the sofa. I’d asked her about what book she was reading (there was always one), and then listen as she launched into a retelling of some random novel. I should have been bored. But I was fucking transfixed.

Maybe it was the way the wine stained her lips just a bit darker. Or the way she rolled her ankle hypnotically while she spoke. Or maybe it was the curve of her smile when she remembered some forgotten passage, like the characters themselves had asked her to keep some scandalous secret.

Whatever the draw, it was in those moments that a few other choice phrases floated into my head. Things that were the opposite of nice, but somehow exactly what I wanted to say.

Do you still think about that night too?

Do you also wake up at three every morning grabbing for me in the dark?

Do you wonder if we made the wrong fucking decision?

I blinked and shook my head, forcing my focus back on julienning the carrots. I’d made this choice on my own. My absence during the first four years of her life had already fucked up my daughter enough. I wasn’t going to do more by messing around with her mum. Didn’t matter how tight her arse looked in those bloody yoga pants or that after I left, I usually had to take a very long, cold shower at my hotel. I had to do what was right. I owed Sofia nothing less.

I finished chopping the carrots, then moved on to the dipping sauce, taking shoyu, mirin, and a few other choice ingredients from the fridge.

“I should tell you, I’m probably going to stay on that side for a bit after the opening,” I said, finally broaching the topic that I’d been putting off for weeks. “Most of the summer, probably. Maybe longer.”

Jagger looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “You can’t be serious.”

“I can. And I am. Look, Chez Miso opened smoothly with you here. I was barely needed.”

“Xav, you had to fly back four times just to tell that frog where to shove it. He bloody well doesn’t listen to me. What am I supposed to do if you’re gone?”

I shrugged. Jean Le Ver was a legitimate pain in the ass, but now the menu was set and things were running smoothly at Chez Miso. A Michelin star, probably two, were in the wind. It was inevitable.

“If Chie does as well as we think, it would make sense to start a New York office for the Parker Group,” I said. “I can open up a few more spots there, maybe one in Boston, and another in Philadelphia. Washington. Miami. Maybe expand west eventually.”

“What about Paris?” Jagger asked. “Not to mention the new Dublin pub and the bistro in Prague? Xavier, you’re throwing out the entire roadmap here.”

I knew why he was arguing. This wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounded, and it was about to cause a massive headache for my CFO. The Parker Group was mine in name, but we had investors to answer to. A business plan to follow. One that would probably have to be tossed right out the window if we did what I was suggesting.

I just shrugged again and started grating ginger into the sauce. “Americans are rich, and they love to eat, Jag. There’s a lot of people on that side of the ocean. I’d be an idiot not to have a go.”

Jagger just stared at me for a long time. Then, as I’d seen him do all the other times I’d made horrifyingly rash decisions (some of which had made us both very rich men), he tossed back the rest of his drink and slammed down his empty glass. “Well, that explains it.”

I looked up from the cutting board. “Explains what?”

“Why this flat looks like it’s half-emptied already. You might have told me you wanted to relocate the business a bit earlier. I could have helped.”

I frowned, first at the spring onions, then back at my flat. I hadn’t realized it, but he did have a point. Half my shit was already piled into boxes. But that’s because I’d been trying to get rid of things, not because I was moving.

Right?

“I didn’t know,” I said as I sprinkled the onions atop the coiled noodles, then grabbed the pièce de résistance—the melted uni sauce I’d been working on since that trip to the fish market with the girls—and dribbled it over the rest of the meal. “If I had, I would have told you.”

Without waiting for him to answer, I slid the bowl across the counter and offered my friend a pair of chopsticks. As always, he didn’t wait to dive into what I’d made.

“Shiiiiiit,” he muttered through a mouthful of noodles. “Fuck me, that’s good. What is it?”

“House-made somen noodles with uni, truffle-infused sesame oil, and mizuna,” I said. “I made it for Sofia last weekend, and she went bonkers. Thinking I might put it on a kids’ menu at the next spot. Something cute for a placemat or what.”

Jagger blinked at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

“Placemat?” Jagger repeated when I told him. “Kids’ menu? I’m sorry, who the fuck are you, and what have you done with my best friend?”

I smirked, then gazed out at the panoramic view of London my flat afforded. For years, this was the only place I found much solace. I’d come from nothing, maybe stepped on a few shoulders, but in the end, found myself on top of a city so many said could never be mine. I would come here at the end of every day, and the sight of London would remind me that I wasn’t all the labels that were thrust upon me. I was the man I wanted to be.

But for the last few months, when I would enter this tower in the sky, I felt as alone as I did right after Mum died. When I had to sleep in our flat by myself, wondering if there would ever be anywhere in the world I could call home if she wasn’t in it.

I’d thought I didn’t need a home. I’d thought I didn’t need anyone.

Now I knew it was a lie.

I wanted to be with her. Them. There was a piece of my heart living across the ocean, and she was about three feet tall with a smart mouth that could challenge the Prime Minister.

I was just about to admit it too when there was a loud knock at my front door. Jagger and I both turned toward the sound.

“Doorman?” Jagger asked.

“Must be.”

I went to open the door and found a small man in a tracksuit with an enormous wood box balanced on a cart.

“Xavier Parker?” he asked.

“That’s me. Did David send you up?” I wondered, thinking of the doorman.

“He did when he saw who sent me,” said the man with a distinctly northern accent I wasn’t particularly fond to hear. “Sign here.”

I accepted the clipboard and offered my signature. The delivery man took one look at the name, then glanced back at me curiously.

“Not what I would have thought you’d have looked like, Your Grace, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“I absolutely mind,” I informed him. “And it’s Mr. Parker, thanks.”

The delivery man just blinked. “Whatever you say. Where do you want her hung, then?”

“Her?” I asked.

“What is it?” called Jagger.

The man didn’t seem to care. “That wall’s bare. I’ll put it there.”

“Put what there?” I demanded as he wheeled the box around me toward one of many white walls in the flat.

“Your clock.”

With a loud snap, he opened the lid of the box with a crowbar. Jagger had come to stand next to me, and we both watched as the man unloaded a brown clock approximately the size of my briefcase, but completely covered in ornate carvings, its face bearing two gilded hands and a bloody great pendulum that gleamed the same gold.

“Doing a bit of redecorating?” Jagger looked doubtfully at the timepiece. It was a far cry from the modern decor around us.

“Definitely not.” I glanced back at the delivery slip. Cumbria. I flipped it over. Oh, fucking hell.

“All right?” asked the man.

“Return it to the box,” I ordered. “And send it back to the bastard who sent it.”

“Can’t do that,” he said. “I think it would look quite nice here. Though your flat’s a bit modern for this piece.”

“Back in the fucking box,” I snapped as I snatched an envelope off the top of the lid, tore it open, and began to read the letter within.

Boy—

I growled. I fucking hated when he called me that, and he never stopped, did he?

Since you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge any part of your distinguished lineage, I’ve taken the liberty of sending a piece of that heritage to you. This clock was presented as a gift from his tenants to the Duke of Kendal when he received his title in 1597. Local legend says that its maker’s wife was a powerful witch who tied the wealth of the Kendal estate to its legacy. She instructed only the Duke of Kendal may wind the clock, lest the entire estate fall to ruin.

The clock has sat at Corbray Hall for nearly four years. I’ve been patient since your father died, but it’s time to do what’s right. The vultures are descending. I’m sure you know whom I mean.

You’ve had your fun, but it’s time to come home. I’ve fulfilled my duty as steward, but you cannot evade your responsibilities forever. Starting with this one.

I expect your reply promptly, as well as your return, with the wound clock, to Corbray Hall before summer, when I fully expect to take a long due holiday in Scotland.

Do not disappoint.

— H. Parker

I stared at the letter for a long time, then looked back at the clock, now sitting on its box. The man was completely mad. Vultures? Really? Who was at Corbray Hall other than villagers and the house staff? He couldn’t mean…

I shook my head. No, it wasn’t possible, not after what had happened at the funeral. They wouldn’t dare. Uncle Henry just wanted to be done with the books so he could have more time to hunt. That was all.

The delivery man had long since left, leaving me there with my letter, wondering what the fuck I was going to do with a clock and my uncle’s request.

“Fuck off,” I muttered, then tore up the note before tossing it on the counter.

“Who’s it from?” Jagger asked, eyeing the bits of paper even as he returned to his seat and pulled his plate of noodles closer.

“No one,” I said. I wasn’t giving Henry Parker the time of day when I had too many more important things to do. “Now eat up. I’ve got a plane to New York out of Heathrow at seven, and I’ve still got to pack.”