Interlude III

INTERLUDE III

FIVE YEARS EARLIER

Xavier

“ I tell you, boy, you will come home !”

Henry Parker’s voice thundered on the other end of the line, to the point where I had to hold my phone away from my head so as not to break my eardrums.

“You promised, Xavier,” he was saying when I brought it back. “And now, after all I’ve done to?—”

“All you’ve done?” I interrupted. “What have you done? It’s my idiot father who shoved all this on me. Shoved you on me. I didn’t want it. I would have been fine being his bastard the rest of my life if he preferred it.”

“YOU ARE NOT RUPERT PARKER’S BASTARD!”

I held the phone away once more until Henry was done shouting, then tentatively brought it back, nursing my beer bottle as I did.

“All right,” I said. “Calm down, Hal.”

“Say it, then,” he ordered. “I want to know you understand.”

I gritted my teeth. Why was it so hard to say something that, by all accounts, should have been a relief? “Fine. I’m not a bastard.”

It was like I could hear his shoulder relax through the phone’s speaker.

“Good,” Henry said. “Now that that’s cleared up, you need to come home. You’ve a duty here. You learned to cook, as we promised, and then you went off to Japan too. Now, you can’t just keep flitting about the earth like a migrating bird, Xavier. You must come back and take your place at Kendal.”

“Why?” I shot back. “So the old geezer can keep me around as a punching bag? I’ll wait until he’s croaked, thanks.”

“You don’t have to live at Corbray Hall. What will do it? Perhaps another restaurant? There’s a pub in town?—”

“I want more than a pub, Henry,” I said. “I want an empire. I can’t build that in the middle of the fucking Lake District.”

He mumbled something on the other side of the line that was unintelligible.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I said it’s the first time you’ve truly sounded like a Parker.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but it was like he’d struck me dumb. How was I supposed to respond to that?

“And what about Lucy?” he asked.

That really was jabbing below the belt. “Henry, that’s unfair.”

“She’s your best friend, isn’t she? And you promised to marry her, if only to save her dignity. Well, her father informs me that she is very ill indeed. If you won’t come back for your own family, perhaps you’ll come back for her. Don’t you at least owe her that?”

“What I owe Lucy is between me and Lucy,” I snapped. “And if you’re smart, you’ll leave it at that.”

I ended the call and stomped back and forth, up and down the sidewalk outside the bar. Why did the arsehole always feel like he could order me around like that? My own dad didn’t seem to care where I was until I was right in front of him, and then all he knew how to do was yell. Henry, on the other hand, was like the world’s worst nanny. Managing my every move. Well, I was twenty-fucking-seven now. I didn’t need him doing that anymore. If I ever did.

The bistro in Kendal had been a success, hadn’t it? Ranked one of the top new restaurants in Cumbria, and within five years, had given me enough seed money to start two new places in London and Bath before I saved enough for this trip to scope out the scene across the Atlantic with Jagger.

Three weeks here, and I found I liked America. Specifically, I liked New York. It wasn’t like at home, where the second I got off a plane or popped into a club, I was hounded by paparazzi like I was the Duke of fucking Cambridge himself.

It had been like that since word got out that the Duke of Kendal had a half-Japanese love child who turned out to be his sole heir. For more than seven years now, the papers couldn’t get enough. It was good for business—the free publicity had made all my ventures a near-overnight success. But the rest of it could jump into the Channel for all I cared.

Here, I was a nobody. Not Masumi Sato’s troublemaker, nor the errant son of the Duke of Kendal. I was just Xavier, a really tall chef with an arm full of tats the girls seemed to like. A lot.

I turned on my heel to re-enter the bar where Jagger was holding court with a bunch of students from the nearby university. Columbia, I thought it was. We were on the Upper West Side. So, a bunch of smart birds, but still young enough that they thought Jagger was sophisticated.

Before I went in, though, guilt struck a chord in my chest as I recalled Henry’s parting shot.

Lucy.

Lucy sick. Really sick. Again.

“Fuck,” I muttered and pulled out my phone.

She answered on the fourth ring. “I was sleeping, you know.”

I checked my watch. “You were not.”

“Was too. It’s one in the morning.”

“And you never sleep before two. You and Henry, night owls, both of you.”

Lucy chuckled. “Well, you have me there. But I was nose deep in a very good book.”

“One of your dirty ones?”

“What others are there?”

I chuckled. Had to love that about Luce. On the outside, she was as prim as they came, but underneath, her mind was as foul as any bloke’s.

“Has Henry been guilting you into coming back to this bore of a town again? You won’t, will you?”

I toed my trainer into the sidewalk. “He tried. Says you’re sick again. What’s going on?”

There was a long sigh on the other end of the mobile. “It’s nothing, really. Mummy is up in arms because I fainted at Imogene’s graduation. I told her it was because it was so dreadfully boring, but she took me to the hospital anyway. I’m home now. Over exhaustion, per usual.”

“You sure?” I asked. “You’d tell me if it was more?”

“Probably not, but that’s how it goes. I shan’t have you ruining your life for me. You’re supposed to be living it for both of us now, remember?”

I smirked. I hated thinking of Lucy trapped up there, locked in a room while her parents pretended she didn’t exist. Lord and Lady Ortham were never the kindest people, but they put up for me mostly because they still thought one day I’d end up with their younger daughter and bring their family’s properties together with Kendal.

I wouldn’t have done it for Imogene. Absolutely not.

But Lucy? I’d do just about anything for my friend if it would make her well again.

“Don’t worry, Luce,” I told her. “Four weeks here, and I’ll have the new place scoped out. Then I’m coming back to London and moving to a new flat in Mayfair. Has an elevator and everything. I’ve got a room picked out for you, too.”

“And a bathroom too? You know how I feel about sharing with one of your ‘women.’” She said the last word like “cockroach” would be more fitting.

I just chuckled. “You’ll have a whole wing to yourself.”

“Well, it’s settled them. You stay in New York and take care of your business,” she said. “Go chase girls. I’m fine, really . Henry is just making excuses to get you to come home, like he always does.”

I swallowed. She sounded all right. But it was always hard to tell with her.

“I…”

I trailed off as two girls approached the bar behind me. Students most likely. Cute, in that street-wise way girls in New York tended to be. One was blonde and tall—not my type in the slightest. But the other was probably the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen. Short, small enough that I probably could have scooped her up and put her in my pocket, with a soft sinuous shape that would bring any man to his knees. Her hips swayed in a pair of painted-on jeans, and she wore a red top that slid over her curves like oil and cut off just above the navel. Her body was a map begging a man straight home.

She tossed her dark hair over her shoulder and smiled at me as she and her friend checked IDs with the doorman.

“Let’s see,” the doorman droned as he looked, clearly taking his time so he could flirt with the two of them. “Emily Bradford. You’re good. And Francesca Zola.” He looked up at the dark-haired bird and grinned. “You twenty-one, sweetheart?”

Her blush was visible even under the dim street lighting. Something in my gut pulled as she toyed with her hair, revealing an elegant stretch of neck calling for my lips.

“Fuck me,” I whispered.

“What was that?” Lucy asked.

“Have fun,” the doorman told the girls.

Just before entering, the dark-haired one winked at me, and it was like flipping a switch to an electrical current deep inside me. Not my cock, exactly, although that was wide awake too. But something else was flickering too. I didn’t understand it. But it felt fucking amazing.

“Ah, Luce?”

“It’s a girl, isn’t it? I stopped talking at least two minutes ago, and you’ve just been breathing heavily like one of Mummy’s greyhounds.”

I swallowed. “Er—sorry.”

“Go, Xavier,” Lucy said with a laugh. “Live. Please. But only if you promise to tell me everything later.”

I grinned, even though she wasn’t there to see it. Lucy always knew how to get me to smile, even if no one else could. “You got it, babe.”

“But Xavier?”

“Mmm?”

I was distracted again, watching through the bar’s window as the girl in the red shirt ordered a beer at the counter. I liked the way her big earrings dangled down near her chin when she laughed. Fuck, I liked just about everything I saw.

“Try not to break her heart, will you?”

I laughed at that, a great bark that echoed around the street. “I don’t know about that one, Luce. Who’s to say she won’t break mine?”