Chapter 2

TWO

“ W hy all the press?” I asked while we waited for an elevator inside the lobby of a gorgeous Georgian building. In other words, relatively modern as London design went, but still practically ancient to my American eyes.

Mayfair was full of this type of architecture, white stone facades and curling millwork that decorated the outsides of otherwise modernized flats or, if the residents were wealthy enough, three and four-story houses that lined curving streets sandwiched between Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, and the lively Soho district. Xavier’s building was the tallest of them all, high enough that its top floors had a solid view down to the Thames—or so he said.

Jagger had taken the car to attend to whatever restaurant issues needed fixing so that Xavier could accompany me, Sofia, and Elsie up to his apartment.

Beside me, Elsie arched one gray-flecked brow at my question but said nothing.

“Er—” Xavier looked somewhat ashamed. “Sort of bad luck, really. The Guardian ran a profile on me and the Parker Group last week. Part of the new push for Chez Miso and also Chie’s opening in New York. But then the tabloids sort of picked it up alongside my uncle’s disappearance. And then someone tipped them off that you were coming. Then about Sof. And here we are?”

I frowned. “Someone ‘tipped them off’ about Sofia and me? Who would do that?”

He blinked. Elsie looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“To be honest, it doesn’t matter,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter who’s gossiping about us? You and I literally just got back together. Only a few people really even know I exist.”

Xavier just huffed and stared at the ceiling. “Honestly, Ces, if I worried about every cook or hostess who passed on some bit of conversation they overheard in the restaurant, I’d have to fire every person who works for me. It’s not worth our time or energy to figure it out.”

I glanced at Elsie, who was only watching Xavier with an expression that looked almost like regret.

The elevator doors opened, and we stepped inside.

“But why is your uncle still such a story?” I pressed as the doors closed. “You found him, didn’t you?”

Xavier had only shared the bare minimum over the last six weeks, generally preferring to keep our daily phone calls to matters concerning Sofia and our impending move to London. Our conversations had been friendly, but to my disappointment, not particularly deep or emotive. He just wasn’t a phone person.

Although he did like sending suggestive texts. Those were fun.

His uncle, however, was the reason we were in London at all. Henry Parker’s sudden disappearance last spring forced Xavier to cancel his plans to expand his restaurant empire to other cities in the US. Parker wasn’t lost anymore, but not, so far as I had gathered, in a state to continue running the family’s portfolio of holdings.

There my knowledge on the matter ended.

“Well, someone found him, yeah,” Xavier said. “The old man had a stroke when he was hunting in Scotland. Don’t know why he was up there alone in the first place. First rule of stalking—go with someone or tell them where you’ve gone. It’s too easy to get lost in the Highlands.” He shook his head. “Bloody Georgina.”

“That’s your stepmother, right?” I asked, trying to remember our earlier conversations.

Xavier nodded. “Narcissistic bit—of a disaster,” he recovered with a sharp look at Sofia, who was watching him expectantly for profanity. She earned more off her dad than her uncle—and that was saying something, given my brother’s penchant for cursing.

“She’s quite the treat,” Elsie added dryly.

“She’s probably the one who put him up to it,” Xavier added. “All she wants is the place to herself. Can’t stand the way he curbs her spending and the like.” He shook his head with obvious disgust. “Anyway, a sheep farmer found him and brought him to the hospital. Took nearly three weeks for him to get enough speech back to say who he was. That’s why we didn’t find him right away.”

Xavier’s eyes darkened. More than a little guilt was obvious there. As if he could have prevented any of this from happening.

“The papers just like a good story,” Elsie said. “Nothing you could have done about it, boy.”

“Yeah, well, now I have to—” Xavier started before the elevator doors opened, effectively cutting him off.

Sofia bounded out in front of us, eager to move and explore her new surroundings after hours on a plane. Family politics forgotten, Xavier grabbed our suitcases and led us into the biggest apartment I’d ever seen. A landscape full of shine and polish, gleaming chrome, and bright light.

And completely devoid of color.

“Ooh! Comfy!” Sofia’s sneakered feet screeched across a white marble floor that covered nearly the entirety of an enormous loft space and at least thirty feet between the entrance and a giant white couch she had spotted. Under which was a very white and expensive-looking rug.

“Sof,” I called out. “Shoes off, baby girl. Be careful?—”

“Let her be, Ces,” Xavier said. “Well, except for the shoes off. We don’t wear shoes inside, babe,” he told her.

I obediently slipped off my beat-up New Balance and set them beside his bright Nikes, then straightened the sparkly slip-ons Sofia had thrown toward us.

There. Three in a row, nice and neat.

At least they seemed to make sense together.

Then I turned, and everything else seemed surreal.

I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting. Given the old-fashioned nature of the neighborhood, I’d rather thought the inside would be equally traditional, if anything. But despite being in a neighborhood that looked like it was sketched straight out of an Austen novel, Xavier’s apartment was clean and utterly modern, firmly grounded in the twenty-first century.

It took what seemed like an hour just to tour the cavernous space. The living room alone was bigger than the entire house I’d grown up in, including two seating areas situated around a house-sized gas fireplace that flickered despite the fact that it was the beginning of July. One contained the couch into which Sofia had dived like a swan on vacation, plus two oversized white leather chairs. On the other side of the fireplace stood a white baby grand piano bookended by two light gray Chesterfields for listening. Beyond that, framed by floor-to-ceiling windows through which a panoramic view of London twinkled, was a Lucite dining table that could seat at least twelve with a crystal chandelier bearing at least as many lights.

“I didn’t know you played,” I said, gesturing toward the piano.

“Hmm?” Xavier looked up from his phone. “Oh, I don’t. The designer chose that to fill the space.”

Ignoring the fact that he even lived in a place and had the money to spend on an extremely expensive musical instrument to fill space , I continued to look around.

Xavier headed toward the kitchen, which somehow managed to be the biggest space on the floor. That at least made sense, considering Xavier’s profession. Even so, it was also the most intimidating, set back against the same view of London as the rest of the place, with luxe marble counters that matched the floors. Bright white cabinets shone with the light, surrounding two sets of double ovens, two six-burner AGA ranges, the biggest fridge I’d ever seen, and three separate prep sinks arranged on an island that went on for miles.

Everything was immaculate. Nary a sponge left in any of the sinks, not a smudge on the chrome fixtures, nor a single crumb lingering on the marble. Like everything else in this apartment, it was bright, white, and showroom perfect.

Cue my entrance in stained leggings and a messy topknot, with a four-year-old version of Pigpen in tow.

This was all very pretty to look at, but how in the world were Sofia and I supposed to live here?

“My office is just there,” Xavier said, pointing toward a desk the size of the Mayflower ensconced in a room entirely made of glass. “And then down the landing are the bedrooms and the other bathrooms.”

“Who are they all for?” I asked, wondering why I actually hoped there would be only two. “You, Sofia, me…”

“For all of us. We need our own space.”

He seemed to think he was giving me something. And he was, I supposed, though I didn’t know why the idea of living separately made my heart sink. Then again, we’d known each other—really known each other—for only six months or so. Why should I expect to move into his bedroom in that short a period? He’d invited me to spend the summer with him, not marry him, for Pete’s sake.

Right?

Elsie cleared her throat loudly but appeared to be inspecting the counters in the kitchen.

“Er—and for the rest of your family, should they ever want to visit,” Xavier amended.

The rest? I had five siblings, two of them with spouses and kids, plus a grandmother and an errant mother. Xavier was perfectly aware of this. Just how many other rooms were there?

I found I didn’t want to know. Not yet.

“Why do you always get the penthouse?” I wondered as I tiptoed into the kitchen. “I’m assuming that’s what this is. We’re too high up for it not to be.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Xavier had a thing for the top floors, even springing for the Plaza penthouse in New York as his primary residence for the last several months, despite the fact that it must have cost more than Ivy League tuition.

“Because he wants everything to be as tall as he is.” Elsie chuckled before crossing the room to sit with Sofia.

Xavier only offered a crooked smirk while he shoved his phone into his jacket pocket.

“Why?” I found myself pressing. “Considering how much you travel, it seems like you’re barely here to enjoy it.”

“I spent long enough at the bottom of things,” Xavier said quietly. “Now I prefer to be above it all. Is that so wrong?”

I frowned at the defensiveness again in his tone. We were the ones with jet lag, but that was the second time I’d heard that kind of fatigue. “I was just wondering.”

Xavier cast a sort of shy glance my way before striding to where I stood, picking up my hand, and pressing a quiet kiss to my knuckles. “Take a look around. It’s your home now, too.”

Home?

Nothing had been more uncertain than that concept was at this moment. Now that my brother was getting married, home wasn’t necessarily the red brick house in Red Hook anymore. Nor was it my grandmother’s place in the Bronx, where I hadn’t lived for over four years.

But it wasn’t this place either, cold and white and sterile. I was already imagining spending the next two months hovering around Sofia to make sure she didn’t inadvertently turn something pink with a broken marker or leave footprints across the marble. Could anyone really come back here and feel as comfortable and safe as one needed for a place to be considered home?

“‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,’” I murmured as I continued to look around.

Well, if that was the case, was Xavier taking us in here because he felt like he had to? Or was there an expiration on this invitation?

I guess we were here to find out.

A set of fingers slipped under my chin, and I looked up to find Xavier watching me with another crooked smile.

“Another quote?” he wondered.

“Robert Frost,” I replied with a low exhale. “One of my favorites.”

Xavier tipped his head. “You know, Ces, I wonder sometimes if you use other people’s words to avoid saying what you really think.”

One black brow rose, as if to dare me to admit the truth. But before I could, we were interrupted by Sofia’s loud squeal.

“Mama, watch me!”

I turned to find Sofia running all out from the dining room into the living room, then stopping suddenly to slide several yards in her socked feet across the marble. Right toward the edge of another plush carpet and a coffee table with a very expensive-looking planter in the center of it.

“Sofia!” I cried. “Oh, honey, wait!”

But before I could stop her, her feet caught on the rug, sending her head-first into the plush white expanse. She somersaulted across, knocked into the bottom of the coffee table, and sent the planter with the biggest white orchid I’d ever seen—and its collection of soil—flying.

“It’s okay, Mama,” Sofia said, sitting up proudly as if she’d just completed an impressive stunt on the jungle gym. “I’m all right, see?”

“I’m glad, Sof,” I said, hurrying over to squat next to her. “But I’m not sure Daddy’s carpet is.”

Sofia looked to where I was trying to gather the remains of the orchid into its glass container. Unfortunately, the more I dug for the bits of soil, the more they seemed to sink into the strands, which were far too soft to be made from something as pedestrian as polyester or even wool.

“Relax,” Xavier said, coming to stand next to us. He bent down to pick Sofia up. “It’s just a stuffy white rug. I don’t care about it, anyway.”

Behind him, Elsie’s brows practically touched the roof, and I thought I heard her mutter, “Since when?”

“Xavi, oh, I’m so sorry.” I wagged my hands around, unsure of what I should do.

I’d never stopped to wonder what his home might be like before we agreed to come here. For some reason, I’d pictured him in a flat like the one he’d described from his childhood, but of course, he wouldn’t be content with a one-bedroom apartment over a restaurant. This was Xavier, who liked things big and luxe and wasn’t afraid to foot the bill. Of course, he would own a penthouse in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in London. And, of course, it would be almost exclusively decorated in things that could be stained in a half second.

Perfect for a rich bachelor who was hardly here.

Less than perfect for a spill-prone daughter and her mommy.

“Elsie,” Xavier called to his assistant. “Can you?—”

“Already on it.” She squatted next to me with a miniature vacuum, a spray bottle, and a rag. “It’s a good job, too. Otherwise, we’d never get this mess out. Ruin a twenty-five-thousand-pound rug.”

My jaw dropped. The rug alone cost more than half my entire salary.

“I think we need to make a few changes in the decor, Els,” Xavier said, still holding Sofia’s hand. “Not quite appropriate for Little Miss here, and I’m sorry I never thought of it. Can you get Rose to redo it?”

Elsie nodded. “I’ll see what her schedule looks like.”

Xavier turned to Sofia. “I do have one more thing to show you. Would you like to see your room?”

“I have my own room here, Daddy?” Sofia wondered. “Just like at home?”

Xavier winced slightly at the mention of home. “Of course you do, babe. What kind of dad would I be if I didn’t at least give you that?”

Sofia giggled. “Show me!”

To the tune of Elsie’s vacuum saving the day, I followed them down a long hallway, counting at least seven doors before we reached the end, where two opened into a large bedroom that I guessed was the primary suite, and another that appeared to be for Sofia.

“I seem to remember someone loves a certain Disney movie,” Xavier said as he led us into the smaller of the two. “I hope you’re all right with a Moana -themed bedroom, babe. Because that’s what I told the designer.”

It was every little girl’s dream—especially Sofia, who immediately catapulted onto the bed in the center of the room. The walls were painted with a tropical mural of palm trees and water with decals of the Disney characters from the movie integrated into the scene. The bed itself was shaped like one of the Polynesian ships the characters took and draped with blue and green veils of silk to recall the sea, while the rest of the furniture similarly evoked the aesthetics of life in the South Pacific. There was even a replica of Maui’s hook on one wall, an array of Disney princess costumes hanging on the other side of the room, and every single character in stuffy form lay waiting for Sofia to explore on the bedspread.

“I hope it’s not too much,” Xavier murmured as I came to stand beside him.

“Oh, it’s definitely too much,” I replied. “But look at her. She’s so happy.”

“Well, I’ve got some years to make up for. Figured I’d start here.”

“I think you’ve filled your quota.”

But Xavier just shook his head while he watched Sofia discover a dollhouse in the shape of a Polynesian hut. “Not even close. Come on.”

He took my hand, and we left Sofia introducing herself and Tyrone to a new collection of dolls while he guided me into the room next door. Well, sort of room. Suite. Apartment. Mansion-sized wing. Airplane hangar.

“This is my room,” he said.

Technically, it was a bedroom, if you could call something that might shelter a small jet a bedroom. It was covered wall- to-wall with the same plush carpet that made up the rug in the living room, with a four-poster bed swathed in near-transparent white fabric that matched the linens. A couch faced another fireplace near a window overlooking Hyde Park and a sliding glass door opening onto a terrace. One of two other doors opened into a bathroom the size of the Taj Mahal, continuing the same gorgeous marble as in the rest of the apartment, with a tub that could fit four Xaviers, a shower for as many, and a double sink lit with mini-crystal chandeliers that sparkled light all around.

I wandered back out to the bedroom, where I found Xavier leaning casually against a long bureau, thumb to his lip while he watched me pensively.

“Well,” he asked. “Like it?”

I couldn’t quite read his face.

“It’s beautiful,” I agreed, somewhat nervously. This felt like a test.

“But?”

I sighed. “Why do you think there’s a ‘but’?”

He folded his hands over his belt. “Because I know that look on your face, Ces. It’s your ‘good mum’ look, when you’re checking for danger.”

I grimaced. “That obvious, huh?”

Sometimes I could be a good mom or a good girlfriend, but certainly not both.

Xavier just shrugged and waited for a reply.

“I am a bit afraid to touch anything,” I admitted as I looked around again. “Especially after what happened out there with the planter. But you’ve already called your designer. It’s fine.” I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to spoil things with criticism before they’d already started. “Do you want to show me my room now?”

“Your room?”

I turned. Xavier’s tone was even sharper than before, and he stood tall now, on alert.

“ Your room?” he asked again. “The fuck do you mean, your room?”

I looked around, feeling even more like I was messing things up. “Out there. All the bedrooms. You said…we…we all needed our own space. I figured one would be mine. I just assumed—wha!”

Before I could finish, I was literally swept off my feet, then tossed onto the cloud-like bed with a distinctly ungraceful thump. The duvet floated up around me, then back down as Xavier crawled up my body and pinned me to the mattress while he framed my face with his hands.

For the first time since I’d arrived, our differences faded away. Here, I couldn’t see the contract between our clothes, housing, or anything else that made me feel so utterly inadequate compared to Xavier and all his glory.

Here, it was just his beautiful face, with its full lips, angular jaw, and penetrating blue eyes peering down at mine.

“Francesca.”

The formal use of my full, given name sent ripples up my spine. Xavier slipped a hand down to my waist to hold me still. As if I could move at all, caged under his big body.

“I thought you were smarter than that,” he said as he peered down at me, dark eyes fathomless, unmoving.

“I—I am smart,” I stuttered, though I’d never felt more like a fool.

“Then how in bloody hell could you think I’d ever let you sleep alone under my roof?”

Oh.

Realization and relief flooded me all at once. And finally, that tightness in my chest started to unravel.

I tried to move, to get out from under that penetrating gaze, but he was stone, holding me in place.

“Woman,” he pronounced, keeping my chin firmly in place. “I thought I made it clear. You belong to me. Just like I belong to you. You’re not sleeping less than two feet from me anymore, much less in another fucking bedroom. Is that clear?”

We gazed at each other for a few seconds until it became obvious he wasn’t joking. Or looking away until I answered.

“Yes,” I said, feeling a bit like a chastised schoolgirl, albeit a very turned-on chastised schoolgirl. “That’s clear.”

His grip on my jaw softened, and Xavier closed his eyes. When they opened again, the anger was gone, replaced by something gentler and yet somehow more potent.

“I missed you,” he admitted as his thumb stroked my right cheekbone.

The tension in my chest loosened a bit more. “I’m glad. But you could have said so once in a while, you know. It was a long six weeks of five-minute phone calls.”

Xavier shook his head, causing a lock of black hair to fall forward and tickle my brow. “Honest? I think I was afraid to say it. If I admitted how much I really missed you and Sof, I’d have flown right back across the ocean to find you again. And I had to wait. I had to be here.” His forehead met mine again. “But I promise, I hated every fucking second without you.”

Trying to encourage his timorous touch, I nuzzled him back. “Well, I missed you too, Mr. Parker. A lot.”

Those full lips smiled against mine. “Yeah?”

“So much.”

He kissed me, sweet and slow, as he cradled my face between his broad palms and worshiped my mouth for several minutes. But just as I was about to slip a foot around his calf and tug him close by the belt loops, he rolled to one side, freeing me from my Xavier-shaped cage so we could look at each other.

“I want you to be comfortable here,” he told me. “Both of you. I know it’s not right yet. The furniture, the colors, everything. But we’ll make it right for all of us. Whatever you want. The cost is no matter.”

I stayed quiet, unwilling to admit, either to myself or to him, that I wasn’t sure I could ever be comfortable in such grandeur. Back home, I hadn’t even graduated from a landing at the top of a stairwell to a full bedroom of my own yet. And Xavier wanted me to accept a palace?

I couldn’t help wondering how Elizabeth Bennett might have felt on her first day at Pemberley. It seems all happiness and sunshine in romance novels. No one ever writes about what happens after you say “I love you.”

“Earth to Ces,” Xavier murmured, taking me by the chin again to pull me back to the present. “Stay with me, babe. Don’t go daydreaming too far just yet.”

“I—let’s just take one step at a time,” I said. “Like getting to know each other again. Maybe go on a date first, before you let me redecorate your house.”

He examined me for a moment or two before apparently making a decision and pulling me back against his body, tucking me into the crook of his arm so he could curl around me there on the bed.

The effect was immediate. From the moment I’d left New York, it had been nothing but chaos. But here, cocooned against Xavier’s warm body, I started to truly relax for the first time since getting on the plane. I had a feeling it was less to do with the sumptuous bed and more with the iron-strong arm draped over my waist and the solid heartbeat under my cheek.

Maybe Robert Frost was wrong. Maybe home isn’t where they have to take you in, but where they’ll always want to.

Would that ever be the case with Xavier?

I found I hoped it could be true.

Xavier’s lips touched my brow. “Better?”

I hadn’t said anything, but he had still sensed my discomfort.

I inhaled his clean, strong scent and sighed. “Better.”

“Good.” He shifted, moving as if he was going to get up.

“ No ,” I said, burrowing further into his chest. “I don’t want to get up. I’m finally comfy. Six hours in coach with Sofia sleeping on my lap isn’t comfort.”

“I said you should have let me pay for first class,” Xavier chided. “Anyway, this was just a preview. Elsie is on duty for the night, Ces. If I leave you here, you’re going to fall asleep too. Up you get.”

And then he was gone, bounding off the bed and through a door that apparently led to a walk-in closet the size of his kitchen.

I pushed up from the pillow, my limbs heavy. Lord, I was tired. And it was only four o’clock.

“You up?”

I rolled over as Xavier appeared from the closet dressed in only his jeans, putting his impressive physique on display. I sat up with appreciation, taking in the stacks of lean, sinuous muscle that paved its way down his stomach and past the denim waistband, including a winding tattoo that covered most of his left shoulder and arm and curved just up his neck. For such a large man, he was really quite graceful.

“Mmm,” I hummed at the view.

He turned from the dresser. “Like what you see?”

“I do. I’d like to see the rest of it, too, if you’re willing.”

Suddenly, I did not want to get out of bed at all. But I didn’t want to go to sleep either.

“Oh, no,” he said with a grin I mentally noted as his “cheeky one.” “Remember, you’re the one who said you wanted me to pretend to be a gentleman. So we’re going out before that jet lag sets in for good, lady. Pop an espresso and let’s go.”