Chapter 6

SIX

“ U m. Is that it?” I said.

Xavier’s sharp gaze darted up. “As it happens, I’m not used to having to tell this story.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“Because most people in London have already read about it in the bloody papers.”

His tone cut across the table like a knife. Clearly it was a sensitive subject, and I had the good sense to let him breathe a bit while I processed the fact that at some point since the last time I’d Googled him, Xavier had gained enough notoriety to make the British tabloids. His restaurants must have been more successful than I realized.

I cleared my throat. “All right. Why don’t you start with her name?”

“I—her name was Lucy.” His throat tightened. “Lucy Douglas. Our, ah, fathers were close. Neighbors, actually.”

“Fathers?” I repeated.

This I knew nothing about. Even back then, Xavier had been completely mum about his dad. Had said at the time he never knew him.

Apparently, that was a lie too.

Xavier swallowed. “Er, yeah. They were both involved in, ah, local politics.”

“Councillors, were they?” I wondered. “Which district?”

“Er—“ He polished off about half of his beer in one go, then set down his glass. “Forgot you knew a bit about British politics.”

“Enough to understand what I read.” I tapped the cover of my book. “So what happened?”

He exhaled heavily. “Lucy and I were mates, is all. Said we were engaged to get her parents off her back, but we never actually planned to marry. She died shortly after I returned home. She was sick. Cancer.”

Another silence lay heavily over the table, dulling the casual clinks and slurps of the café. First his mother, then his fiancée? How much grief had Xavier had to suffer as a young man? Even worse, had the girl known about his betrayal?

That feeling in my chest dropped like a stone, lodging itself in my stomach the way it always did when I thought of those days.

“Poor girl,” I said unsympathetically. “And I suppose she died thinking you loved her too? While you were off sleeping with me.”

His head snapped up. “Not that it’s really any of your business, but I’ll have you know I never cheated on her with our little fling.”

“Not my business? That’s right, I forgot, I was just some piece of ass you were hitting on your way back to England, right?” I shook my head, fighting the urge to get up and run away from him again. I didn’t want to have this conversation. It was just like I had thought. “You really haven’t changed. Still a heartless bastard.”

“We were never more than friends. We only said we were engaged to get her parents off her back. It’s just when I found out she was sick, I couldn’t leave her. Not for a piece of ass, as you put it. Not when she was dying.”

I gripped the rim of the teacup, wishing to God I could throw the thing against the wall. Suddenly, I wanted to be anywhere but here. The walls filled with books seemed to be closing in on me. Like every one of the volumes was about to topple off and bury me under their words. Not out of anger. Out of shame.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I’m being unfair.”

“Yeah, you bloody are,” Xavier agreed. “But I was unfair to you too back then. So there’s that.”

I looked up. “You were?”

He nodded. “I was. The email. It wasn’t the right way to end things, Ces. Not after—not after what we had together.”

So it wasn’t just me.

Somehow, it was a small comfort. But other questions emerged out of it.

What was it you thought we had?

Was it as special for you as it was for me?

Did you really mean it when you said you loved me?

I settled for more logistics. “How did you meet? You and Lucy, I mean. You’ve never mentioned anything about your dad.”

Xavier sighed. “You really want to know all this? She’s dead. It’s long gone. Can’t we just leave it there?”

I drummed my fingertips on my book for a few seconds. “I don’t think so. I think I need to know.”

Xavier sighed again, forked his lettuce some more, then finally just pushed the plate aside, seemingly resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to enjoy any of it. “Luce and I met after Mum died.”

I nodded. I just wanted him to keep talking.

“I never told you who my father was, did I?”

I shook my head. “I gather someone important. Would I know him?”

Xavier looked like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “In England you would. Rupert Parker. Proprietor of half the farmlands in the Cumbria. Though my uncle Henry is actually the steward.”

My jaw dropped. Proprietor? Steward? “I’m sorry, what? Are you some kind of gentry?”

Xavier shook his head vehemently. “Fuck, no . My father—if you could even call him that—could have qualified, I suppose. I’m just the bastard he got on an exchange student during his university days. His family paid off Mum to keep me a secret—that’s how she started the restaurant, you know. So for most of my life, I had no idea who he was beyond the money Mum got to put me through school.”

“So, what happened?”

“Mum died when I was in secondary. Car accident.”

I nodded. “I remember. I’m so sorry.”

My chest tightened like it did whenever I thought of anyone losing their parents. My own father had died when I was little, and my mother had been less than present. I understood parental absence well, particularly since I’d lost my father to a car wreck too.

Xavier was quiet for a long moment. “Right. Well. After that, my dad popped me into boarding school. Maybe it was guilt. I don’t really know. But it was certainly the easiest way to be done with the brat he’d never wanted to begin with, right? Shut up the restaurant, put the proceeds in an account for when I graduated. Done.”

“You couldn’t go back to Japan?” I wondered. “Where was your mother’s family?”

His broad mouth twisted. “They were estranged. Because of me, of course. Mum had shamed her family, right? Caused a lot of strife.” He drilled his long fingers onto the table. “I did go back, though. Took Mum’s ashes home to Aichi and scattered them in the Yahagi River like she wanted. I ended up staying two more years in Okazaki after I finished school. Lived with my granddad, working at the miso factory. But when I returned to England, expecting to get work as a cook or something else like my mum, another life was waiting for me.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

He sighed. “Rupert Parker had a heart attack, apparently grew a mediocre conscience, and decided to be a father, after all.” He chuckled, almost as if he thought it was absurd. “I’ll never forget the day the old man showed up at my shitty flat, saying he wanted to name me his heir and offering twenty percent of his estate up front if I’d leave culinary school and come live with him, learn the running of it, and attend proper university.”

“Let me guess. You took the money and started your restaurants?”

Xavier recoiled like I slapped him. “I did fucking not. Is that what you think of me?”

Unable to meet his sharp gaze, I rotated my teacup round and round on its saucer. “Right now, I’m not sure what I think of you.”

It wasn’t a compliment. But it wasn’t exactly an insult either.

Progress, I supposed.

Xavier grunted. “As it happens, Mum had been squirreling away his blood payments for years. When she died, the money from the restaurant, plus what she left, was more than enough to get started. So, initially, I said I’d go to uni, but then I went to Dartmouth just to get away from him. Dropped out after a semester and told him to fuck off.”

His broad form leaned back, getting into the story now. I waited somewhat impatiently for him to continue.

“I did exactly what he didn’t want. Finished culinary school. Opened my first restaurant, then another, and another. I wanted to blend what I’d learned in Japan with what I knew about European food. I was just starting to expand when I met you. Was thinking about coming to New York then, actually. That’s what I was doing when we met.”

I gulped. When we met, he had said nothing about his burgeoning restaurant empire. No, he was simply “looking for work,” like he was an errant traveler hopping between jobs as a kitchen grunt to pay for hostels.

Looking for work. Sure, it was the truth. Maybe. But scouring a city for your next restaurant wasn’t exactly washing dishes and chopping onions.

“Anyway, almost ten years later, and here I am, CEO of the Parker Group and the most successful restauranteur under forty in Western Europe.”

Xavier’s mouth quirked again into something resembling a hint of a smile. But it wasn’t the fake predatory grin he served. This was real satisfaction. Pride. And then back to annoyance.

“But I underestimated my father,” he continued. “The old ass was even more stubborn than I was. Started showing up at my restaurants. Hired someone to tail me, know where I was going to be on any given night.”

“He sounds very controlling,” I remarked.

“Obsessive was more like it. I must get it from him. And I knew what he wanted. It wasn’t a son—he’d never cared about me enough for that, you know? He wanted an heir to secure his legacy. But little by little, he wore me down.”

“What do you mean, he wore you down?”

Xavier glanced toward the exit, as if now he was the one who wanted to escape. “I suppose it was curiosity, really. When I was a kid, I used to wonder who my father was. Dream he’d come find me one day. Rescue me and Mum from our life over the restaurant, have some good reason for staying away. Finally, he did show up. Maybe I was a grown man, but there was a part of me that wanted to know what he was all about.”

I didn’t like the way this conversation made me feel. Guilt swept through me, partly hearing the echoes not only of my own childhood wishes from my mother, but from the questions I was fielding from Sofia more and more often. Wishing to God it was something much stronger, I tossed back the rest of my tea like a shot, then swallowed the rest of my pride.

“Can you imagine what it’s like?” Xavier asked. “To have a parent who ignores you, treats you like you’re nothing, and yet there’s still a part of you that loves them, wants them to love you back?”

I stared into my teacup. For a few long moments, it was my mother’s face I saw in muddy brown liquid. Her muddied expression when she came home from work after sneaking shots behind the counter of the Dollar Store. I could see the way she’d bat me and Marie and Joni away when we cried for attention, only to fall down on the sofa and pass out, leaving Matthew, Lea, and Kate to do the work of parenting for her. I could hear Joni’s unanswered whimpers when we slept together on the bed.

“Yes,” I finally managed. “I can imagine that exactly.”

Xavier looked like he wanted to ask why. Just like he hadn’t divulged much about his upbringing back then, I had never told him much more than the fact that I was raised by my grandparents instead of the mother who was still living. Neither of us had wanted to discuss the past. The present had been much more alluring.

But instead of pressing me in the exact way I’d been pressing him, Xavier had the good sense to finish his story.

“Anyway,” he said. “After my second restaurant opened, I finally accepted his invitation to dinner. And then to spend the Season with him and his family.”

“The London Season? Like in the books? The Royal Ascot, the Jubilee, all of that?”

Xavier looked uneasy. “Er, yeah. A bit. Most of the events are sponsored by large companies, so all sorts get invited. But yeah, the Ascot is part of it.” He snorted, clearly with some strange memory. “Dad acted like I was a fucking debutante. I wasn’t received at court—they don’t do that anymore—but I did meet the queen at one of her garden parties. Can you believe that? Me, his half-breed bastard, in front of Her Majesty. He was lucky I even showed up.”

It was hard to imagine. He was dropping words like “Royal Ascot” and the “Season” in his South London drawl, and all I could imagine was the Prince of Wales and the cast of Downton Abbey. It was a world I could only understand through books and television, maybe the occasional tabloid story. Nothing about it seemed real.

“You can imagine what that lot thought of me,” Xavier said. “Slant-eyed bastard of the—of Rupert Parker. Treated me like I was no better than the dirt on their shoes. Except for Lucy.”

“Your…fiancée?”

“My friend,” Xavier corrected me. “She was nice, Ces. Not much of a looker, to the point where the others made fun of her. She was sick a lot of the time, you see. Something called mast cell activation disorder. It was why her cancer spread so fast.”

I nodded. I had a student last year with the same issue. He had a tendency toward sudden anaphylaxis and a whole host of seemingly random medical issues that made it very hard for him to thrive.

Xavier continued. “I didn’t care. She talked to me like a normal person, which was more than I could say for anyone else. Explained the rules of games I didn’t know, helped me learn the people worth talking to, and those who weren’t. Lucy kept me from making a total arse of myself. Turned out to be my best friend.”

The vise around my chest squeezed even tighter, and I had to put my hands in my lap to hide the fists they were making. Pity mixed with complete and utter jealousy. It was pathetic. This woman—this dead woman—he was describing sounded perfectly delightful. Kind and generous. All the things I wasn’t. Not right now.

Right now, I hated her. So. Much.

“So you fell in love with her.”

It wasn’t a question. There was dread in the statement as I grabbed my fork and knife and started sawing at my cold toast with bitter regret.

Xavier looked up from his pint glass, his gaze straight and true. “No.”

I still wasn’t sure I believed him. But before I could say so, he reached across the table and grabbed my hand. The sudden contact sizzled like I’d touched a live wire. But he wasn’t letting go.

“ No ,” he repeated when my eyes, prickling with irritating tears, met his. “Ces, I was not in love with her. Nor was she with me. We were friends. Best friends. And so when her parents kept trying to marry her off to any idiot who’d take her hand—and her inheritance—I offered to fill the role. At least until she met someone she actually wanted.”

“Better than you?” I scoffed.

I tried to tug my hand away, but the gesture was half-hearted. I allowed him to keep it firmly in his, enjoying the feel of his long fingers threaded between mine.

“I’m glad you still think something good of me, Ces,” Xavier said bitterly. “It’s probably the only nice thing I ever did anyway, agreeing to marry her. Got my father off my back, too. Turns out the only thing Rupert Parker liked more than forcing his errant heir to heel was that heir marrying a rich heiress. Suddenly, everything was about the wedding. And I could do what I damn well pleased.”

“Like screwing me?”

The tears pricked harder. This wasn’t making me feel better. It was making me feel like the other woman. The slut who ruined everything.

“Like falling in love.” Xavier’s soft, deep words floated across the table. “Or so I thought.”

My tongue just choked in the back of my throat while I tried to blink back my tears. I would not cry here. I absolutely would not .

By the time I was able to look up at him, he allowed me to pull my hand away so I could pick up my tea. You couldn’t cry while drinking, Nonna had told me once. I polished off the entire cup in one go.

“Look,” Xavier said, once I’d finally set down my cup.

His large blue eyes glimmered with hunger. Pain. The desire for me to know the truth.

“I should’ve told you about Lucy from the beginning,” he said. “She knew all about you. She did. It’s why she wouldn’t let me marry her. We were going to call off the engagement when I got back. But the day I was supposed to see you last, Luce called me with the news. She’d been tired, thought it was because of the wedding preparations. But turns out it was a brain tumor. Cancer. Stage four. Terminal, of course, but made worse by her syndrome.”

I swallowed thickly. It was hard to hate a dead woman, especially one who clearly had been such a saint. It was even harder when, with every revelation, I could imagine her in my head. I could see her last days, shriveled up like a prune, unable to get out of bed. Ruined by chemo, medicine, surgeries, whatever the doctors told her.

“How—how long?” I wondered.

“The doctors gave her nine months,” Xavier replied. “She lasted six.”

“Jesus,” I whispered.

“I had to go back, Ces. I couldn’t leave her to go through all that on her own. I told her I’d marry her too. I’d stick with her, through thick and thin, just like she did with me. But she wouldn’t let me. And then when she died…a part of me died too. For a while, anyway.”

We sat there in silence, both of us digesting the end. It was hard to hear a story like this without feeling my own pangs of grief. My father’s funeral was one of my first memories, a cold, rainy day at the St. Raymond Cemetery. And then later, echoed again when my grandfather died maybe six years later. But despite longing for a mother who was absent after her part in her husband’s accident, I’d still spent most of my life around people who loved me in their own way. Between Nonna’s old-fashioned child-rearing, Matthew’s overprotectiveness, and my sisters’ chaos, I had never wanted for love. Not like Xavier.

Now was the time to tell him. Explain that he wasn’t alone in the world. Not now. That in Brooklyn, there was a little girl who looked just like him. Who was dying to know who her daddy was. Who would give him all the love in the world if he would just let her.

But the problem was, I wasn’t sure he would.

“Fucking hell,” Xavier snapped bitterly. “What’s a man gotta do to get a real drink around here?” He turned, looking around for the chittering bar girl. “Oi, girl! Got any vodka back there?”

My chair leg screeched across the worn wood floors as I stood up. Xavier turned back, looking up at me warily.

“Leaving?” he asked. “Did I scare you off, then?”

But to my surprise, I shook my head as I pulled my coat back on.

“Let’s walk,” I said. “We can go to that restaurant if you want. Or there’s a good ramen place down the street, if you’d rather. They make cocktails, and I could use a drink too. And you need more to eat.”

Xavier tipped his head, examining me for some other revelation. “I could do with some noodles.”

I nodded, then pulled my purse over my shoulder. “Then let’s go. I have more questions. But I’m…willing to talk too. If you want.”