Chapter 5

FIVE

“ T his wasn’t necessary,” I told Xavier for probably the fourth time that night.

And for the fourth time that night, he just snorted and ignored my comment.

It was quite the little game we were playing. One where I tried to tell him that I didn’t expect anything like this evening ever again, and where he treated my comments like clay pigeons he could shoot out of the sky.

I’d done it while we wandered through the stacks (and kissed behind several) on our way to dinner.

I’d done it again when Xavier had led me to the library’s terrace, where a chef from one of his restaurants had prepared a four-course dinner.

I’d done it again when he took me on a walk through Hyde Park at night to walk off the four-course meal.

And now we were here, standing outside his beautiful building under the twinkling lights of the summer-lit city. I was loving every moment of it. But I wanted him to know too—I didn’t need it.

Xavier joined me on the curb as Ben drove away. Though the street was far from empty, there was still no sign of the press. I expected it was difficult for someone of Xavier’s size to avoid them, but maybe it wasn’t as bad as Jagger had led me to believe.

“One day,” he said as he pulled me to face him, “I’m going to teach you to think far beyond ‘necessary,’ Ces. I’m going to teach you to dream.”

I blinked. I wanted to tell him that everything I had ever dreamed of was right here in this city. Delicious food. Every treasure in the English language. A man who seemed to love me. Our daughter asleep in a glass palace in the sky.

Xavier crouched down, and for a moment, I lost my breath. Was he? No, he wasn’t. Down on one knee, though.

He looked up at me, blue eyes winking in the night air, and for a moment, I saw a dream I didn’t even know I had playing out right in front of me. His mouth was going to open, and he would smile, and then he was going to ask the question I’d unconsciously dreamed of since I’d met him that night in a bar all those years ago.

Four simple words.

Will. You. Marry. Me?

Oh, God.

I—

“Just have to tie my shoe,” he said, then made quick work and stood back up.

I shook my head and shook the heady vision away. Lord, what was wrong with me? Wasn’t this night enough? Weren’t those dreams of books and love and family enough?

Why couldn’t I accept them, then?

And did I even deserve them at all?

Xavier watched, as if he could see the conflict written on my face. Then his gaze drifted to my lips. And stayed there.

Kiss me, I thought. Do it now.

Instead, he took my hand and led me through the lobby to the elevator with a gruff nod at the concierge. It wasn’t until it started moving that I spoke again.

“Why didn’t you kiss me?”

He frowned. “What?”

“Outside, just now. I thought you might—” I took a deep breath. I almost said “propose.” Lord, what was wrong with me? “I thought you might kiss me. But you didn’t. You didn’t at the airport, either.”

“Why didn’t I…” The surprise on Xavier’s face had me mentally kicking myself by the time the question exited my lips, loosened as they were by a bottle of excellent French wine.

I didn’t retract it, though. Hadn’t even realized it had been bothering me all day, like sleeping on a tiny rock—it seemed insignificant at first but bothered me more and more as time went on.

“You hugged Sofia. But I?—”

I dropped my head, unable to continue. I could hear myself. I felt foolish, being jealous of my own daughter. I didn’t ever want Xavier to feel like he had to choose between us—no parent should. But regardless, despite those lovely things he had said to me nearly two months ago now, I still wasn’t sure if he loved me because I was her mother…or if he loved me for myself, this beautiful evening notwithstanding.

Sometimes actions don’t actually speak louder than words.

Sometimes you need to hear the words themselves.

“Ces.”

I looked up, expecting to see shame or disgust. Maybe a bit of pity.

Instead, I met a wall of blue fire.

“Is that what you want?” he asked.

I couldn’t look away. Really, he wouldn’t let me look away. “I?—”

“For me to take you, right there on the street? In front of cars or cameras or anyone else who wants to watch like fucking vultures?”

“It didn’t matter before at the library. Or outside it, for that matter.”

“Well, it matters here. They know where I live, Ces.”

The vitriol in his voice had me back against the wall. Suddenly, Xavier seemed to fill the entire car. I wasn’t riding up with my boyfriend. I was trapped in a box with a feral animal.

“I—I didn’t mean?—”

In a few short movements, my arm was pinned to the small of my back, and I was snapped back into Xavier’s arms, lifted off my feet, and shoved against the elevator wall.

“Your kisses are for me,” he growled. “Not the fucking papers.”

Then his mouth crashed into mine, daring me to resist a thorough, breath-stealing, mouth-plundering kiss that I swore shook the car itself. It certainly erased every doubt I had.

When at last, he released me back to my feet, I was gasping. Xavier just coolly adjusted his collar and offered that characteristically sharkish grin of his.

“Next time, just ask,” he said as the elevator door opened. “Come on, then. I want to show you one last thing.”

So focused was I on the way my mouth was tingling, I didn’t realize until we were totally outside that we hadn’t returned to the apartment, but instead were walking into one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen.

I gasped. “Oh…wow.”

It was the last thing I expected to be atop a restaurant mogul’s bachelor pad. In theory, I’d known it existed—he had mentioned a rooftop garden when giving me the tour earlier. But I’d imagined the sort of place that would host glamorous parties. A collage of chrome furniture to match the interior, a garish barbecue area, perhaps. Maybe an infinity pool or a jacuzzi.

This was a sanctuary.

The entire roof was sheltered by carefully organized greenery. Full-grown trees in car-sized clay pots lined the periphery, more than a few already heavy with fruit. Apples, some of them. Cherries, maybe. Others looked like some kind of nuts. Across carefully raked pea gravel, multiple trellises held the remnants of summer blooms, wisteria and hydrangea among them, waving in the breeze as if to say hello. Smaller plots held a variety of flowers and edible plants.

Of course , I thought. What world-famous chef wouldn’t cultivate his own food, London be damned?

“This is my favorite spot in the whole city.” Xavier released my hand, allowing me to explore on my own. “It’s where I come to think.”

As I floated my fingers over a planter of fragrant mint, I could certainly see why.

It was a Zen garden in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world. Tranquility permeated the entire space, seeping into my pores, my mind, my heart.

“Camellias,” I murmured, as I found another familiar flower. I touched their light pink petals, velvet soft under my fingertips, as I was transported back to our walk last December.

“You remember?” Xavier asked.

I smiled, thinking of our snowy walk after he chased me out of that party. It seemed like kismet now, running into each other like that after five years. The odds of it happening were so infinitesimal.

And along the way, of course, we’d encountered a few camellias, just like these, and he’d told me about their connection to his mother. And their meaning.

“Of course I remember,” I said. “Red for passion. White for waiting. Pink for…longing, you said.”

“I had them put in after New York,” Xavier replied quietly. “They seemed to fit.”

The levity in his voice was gone as I turned back to him somewhat shyly. “Are you longing for anything now?”

He watched me carefully, sapphire blue eyes shining, as deep as an ocean and twice as opaque. “I think I’ll always long for you, Ces. Even when you’re right here.”

I opened my mouth, taken aback by the statement. I found I understood it, though. Maybe it was because, like me, Xavier understood the phrase that always rang through me like a bell, no matter how good things might be. That one single fear.

Not enough.

“It’s so…peaceful here.” I turned away from the camellia bush and his woeful expression, desperate to get away from that feeling. I’d been running from it my entire life—why confront it now and ruin such a beautiful night?

Instead, I focused on the rest of the garden, on the serenity laid out before me. But before I could take any more steps, a pair of hands encircled my waist, and I was tugged back against Xavier’s broad chest as he set his chin atop my head.

“Like it?” he asked for the second time that night. This time, however, the words were threaded with more than a bit of vulnerability.

I twisted to look up at him. “You are full of surprises, you know that?”

The shy, crooked smile that was quickly becoming my favorite version of Xavier’s rare grin made another appearance. “Got one more for you, if you’re willing.”

He led me through the garden to the very edge of the building, where eventually, I noticed steam rising into the night, directly from the leaves of a lush set of—or no, not from leaves at all. As we approached, I found, to my shock, that there was a pool out here after all. Of a sort.

“One of my favorite parts of Japan was the onsen,” he said. “The hot springs. There is something like twenty-five thousand of them, with bathhouses built around them where people can just…relax. When I came back and bought this place, I missed them. So I built one for myself.”

I blinked, taking it all in. It wasn’t a typical pool—smaller but looked more like it was built into the side of a mountain than an apartment building. The garden extended up the sides, which was framed by a variety of river rocks, complete with ferns and other sorts of greenery growing between cracks and crevices.

“You must have loved having that to escape to,” I said. “This is so beautiful.”

“They’re not all like this. And I wasn’t allowed to go to a lot of them, you know. Because of the tattoos.”

“Oh?”

My face heated at just the thought of Xavier’s tattoos, elegant and sharp, curving over his shoulder and neck.

“Tattoos aren’t very popular in Japan,” he told me. “For a long time, people assumed they were marks of the Yakuza, so a lot of the onsen don’t permit them at all, hoping to avoid that sort.”

“When did you get yours?” I wondered.

He’d had some when we met, though not nearly so many as he had now.

“Actually, I got my first, just these characters here on my shoulder, when I visited with my mum and we stayed with my grandfather. I was thirteen, I think?”

“You got your first tattoo at thirteen ?”

I’d heard of kids doing that back home, but they were usually the kinds who were involved with a gang of some sort. Or maybe I was just too much of a prude to have known anything more.

Xavier just smirked. “Yeah. Far too young to be inked, but everyone thought I was older. Anyway, my grandfather and I got into some sort of fight. He said I was rude, disrespectful, no better than the criminals. So I decided to go out and mark myself like one just to spite him. It’s the characters for Sato, the family name.” He chuckled. “God, he was so mad. Said I’d dishonored the family by marking my skin. Mum was not pleased either.”

At the mention of his mother, all levity vanished.

“And the rest?” I wondered, hoping to pull him out of that sudden sadness.

“The rest I had done in America when I was at Dartmouth for a bit.” He gestured to his left arm, where I knew there was some kind of serpent ringing his biceps, attached to a much larger tattoo that crawled over his left collarbone and moved down his side. “The ones on my arm and wrist after I opened my first restaurant.” He shrugged. “Ojiisan was right, you know. I’m not a particularly nice man now, and at twenty, I was a right shit. I fought with everyone. Never stopped, really. I’m just as difficult at thirty-two as I was at twenty, wouldn’t you say?”

He seemed to find it funny. I had to be honest, I did not.

“You do fight a lot,” I observed.

Xavier looked up, humor gone once more. It wasn’t an opinion. He couldn’t really argue with it.

“Yeah, well. That’s what you do. I had a choice. Accept what everyone said I was and what I had to be—a bastard, right? Or else fight to be what I wanted and make my own way.” He shook his head. “Some things just become habit.”

“It sounds…difficult.”

I reached out and touched his hand, which didn’t move. He was lost in some sort of memory.

“Sometimes I wonder if I can stop,” he admitted as he stared at the pool of water. “I want to. For Sof, especially.”

Something else he said was bothering me, though. “You keep calling yourself that. A bastard.”

His brow crinkled. “Yeah, so? It’s what I am.”

“I’m not saying I like it. But if it’s true, then how could you inherit your father’s title? I thought titles and things like that only pass to legitimate offspring in England.”

He peered at me with more than a little suspicion. “You looked that up? Everything about peerage inheritance laws?”

I nodded, feeling a little embarrassed. “Well…yeah. I wasn’t snooping or anything. It’s just that…I was thinking that our kid could be, what, a duchess one day, too, right?”

“Er,” Xavier said, almost amused. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

I blinked. He hadn’t thought about it? Not in the six months since we’d run into each other and he’d discovered he had a daughter? He hadn’t even considered the fact, as the holder of one of the oldest titles in England (yes, I’d looked that up too).

“But then,” I rattled on, “I found that she wouldn’t inherit anyway since you and I were never married.”

Xavier’s amusement immediately morphed into a scowl. “Sofia is not a bastard. And I’ll rip out the tongue of anyone who says so.”

It was clearly a sensitive topic.

“Well, technically, she is,” I pushed, though I didn’t particularly care for that designation myself. “That’s sort of my point.”

The scowl deepened. “What do you mean?”

I huffed. He was playing dumb. He had to know what I was getting at.

“Xavi, UK law is pretty clear, if I was researching correctly. Only legitimate offspring can inherit a title. Since Sofia can’t become a duchess, how could you become a duke if you were also a—” I cut myself off, trying to move past the word that clearly triggered Xavier so much.

“A bastard?” he supplied anyway, quite testily at that.

I heaved a great sigh but didn’t reply. Instead, I just waited him out.

It took a while. But eventually, Xavier huffed, like he had to admit something horrible.

“Technically, I suppose I’m not a bastard after all,” he said.

I frowned. “What do you mean, technically?”

His long nose wrinkled. “It’s a bit muddy, to be honest. After my mum died, and I got kicked out of uni for maybe the second time? I’m not really sure. Anyway, my uncle Henry found a marriage certificate. Apparently, my parents were married at one point. In Japan, at a Buddhist temple. Just by the time they came back, the Parkers made it clear they wouldn’t accept Mum, so they split up and never registered the marriage in the UK.” He shrugged. “So I became a duke, after all. Despite what everyone said my entire life, I was in fact the legitimate offspring of Rupert Parker, Fourteenth Duke of Kendal.” He cast me a narrow glance. “Disappointed?”

I blinked, confused. “I mean…no.”

“Well, I was.” That tenacious scowl reappeared. “I never wanted that. Any of it. Certainly don’t now. No one wanted a tattooed half-Japanese giant to hold one of the oldest titles in England, and I certainly wasn’t interested in fitting the mold for it either. It’s why I let Henry take over the estate, the family’s portfolio, all of it. He cared. Not me.”

Henry. The uncle who had hovered in the background of Xavier’s life since he was sixteen or so. I had gotten the impression that he was sort of the second fiddle of the Parker family. The spare, so to speak, both to his brother and then to his nephew.

Yeah, I knew the feeling.

“But he needs you now, doesn’t he?” I asked quietly.

Something passed through Xavier’s expression that I had never seen before. A different kind of vulnerability mixed with fear. That’s why he had come home, of course. I just wasn’t sure what he planned to do with it. Or how Sofia and I fit into the grand scheme of things.

“Trust me,” he said. “It’s better for Sof anyway if she doesn’t inherit. No one needs that kind of pressure. Not me. Definitely not my little girl.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure. Not that I cared whether Sofia became a duchess, but more the question of whether or not she would want the choice.

After all, who wouldn’t?

Or was there a different reason he didn’t want her—or me—to be a part of that world?

I turned to the pool, unwilling to entertain that question for now. We’d opened up enough baggage for the evening. This was supposed to be a reunion, not a therapy session.

I sighed, my muscles suddenly aching for release. “Well, your onsen looks divine. I can’t imagine anything but total tranquility in there. Bliss.”

“Ces.”

I turned to find the crooked smile I loved so much had reappeared. Like a direct call to my heart, it made me sing from within.

“I’m really fucking happy you’re here.” Xavier’s deep voice carried over the breeze, like he himself was a part of the lush surroundings. “I might forget to say it sometimes. I’m not very good at saying how I feel. But I am.”

I swallowed, heart so full it felt stuck in my throat. “I—thank you. That makes me happy to hear. Really happy.”

The smile widened, and Xavier reached out to take my hand. His thumb drifted over my knuckles, then he pulled me to him and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Good. Now, about this pool…” He stood back; one black brow rose impishly. “Want to relax with me?”