Chapter 20
“It must have been a wild upbringing, being the son of such a famous film star.” I’m curious but we’re going slow, being careful about the things that are most painful to talk about.
“‘Wild’ is putting it mildly,” Dallas says. “My mother was the kind of person who filled up every room she was in. She was magical when she was at her best. But she was a wrecking ball at her worst.”
The waiter appears. He’s holding a silver bucket full of ice and a bottle of champagne, along with two glasses.
“My apologies for the interruption, Mr. Wilder. This bottle of vintage Moet is compliments of the restaurant owner.” He sets the bucket on a stand and the glasses on the table.
Then he makes a production of popping the cork and pouring champagne into the two flutes. “Are you ready to order?”
“Please bring us a small dish of everything on the menu.”
“Of course, sir. Very good, sir.”
Everything? This menu doesn’t even have the prices listed. I don’t want to think the thought but I can’t stop it: I guess billionaires can do things like that.
I wish he wasn’t a billionaire. I wish the divide between us wasn’t so vast. So I try instead to focus on the things we have in common. Our scars and our chemistry—which I can admit is combustible. My body feels like it’s made of live wires and warm honey.
The waiter disappears and Dallas hands me a flute. “This stuff is angel’s poison, not the devil’s. Try a sip. If you don’t like it you can have something else.”
“Angel’s poison. Ha.” He remembers what I told him.
But I like the sound of that. And what the hell.
It’s my weekend off from the damn hotel and all the memories that insist on continuing to bubble up from her sunken ship.
It suddenly feels wrong that I’ve clung to the wreckage this long, like a lost wretch anchored to my ghosts.
So I do it. He clinks his glass against mine and I take a sip.
I’ve never had champagne before. When you deal with as much brown liquor as I do on a daily basis and all the bad decisions it leads to, you tend to avoid the stuff like the plague. Needless to say, we’ve never stocked Moet.
It tastes bubbly and magical. Airy and light and so delicious I sip a little more. “You really never thought of becoming an actor or a movie director? With my own family, hotels were just in our blood. You never felt like the cinema was in yours?”
“I was never interested in being on either side of the camera. There was so much drama going on in our lives, the last thing I wanted to do was create more of it, fictional or otherwise. I was happiest holed up in a quiet room by myself poring over spreadsheets. Boring, probably.” He smiles ruefully.
“And very predictable. Which I guess was exactly what I was looking for.”
I picture him as a ten-year-old. “Poor Dally. But it paid off for you.”
“I guess it did. I managed to make the numbers work in my favor.”
That’s putting it mildly.
“I bought and now co-own with my brothers and a couple other investors the movie studio my father co-founded, which was floundering when he died, but we’ve managed to turn it around. That’s about as close as I get to Hollywood.”
Wow. “Did you have a good relationship with your father?”
My hand is resting on the table and his fingers weave through mine.
“My father was a legend, but he was a distant father. And he had a weakness. He was a genius, like my mother was, but in a different way. In a more introverted way. Then again, everyone was an introvert compared to my mother. She lived out loud. It was a case of opposites attract with them. He loved her madly and unconditionally. No matter how bad things got or what it cost him, he loved her with everything he had. And when he lost her, it destroyed him.”
“I’m sorry. I can sort of understand what that would have been like.
I never knew my mother, or what my father was like before she died.
But I do know my father was never the same after he lost her.
It was a painfully slow process of falling apart.
He just couldn’t handle living without her.
” I almost don’t say it but it slips out anyway. “I wasn’t enough for him.”
Dallas’s head tilts and he gives me a look. “Don’t you dare.”
“Dare what?” But I know what he means.
“Your father’s grief and inability to do right by you because of it isn’t your fault.
We’ve discussed this. I could blame myself for my parents’ downfalls but that would be a complete waste of time.
Because I’m not what drove them. It was their own crazy lives and their obsession for each other that drove them.
It had nothing to do with me. My brothers and I were just off-shoots of it.
Starting now, you’re going to stop blaming yourself for your father’s behavior.
It’s time for you to start focusing on what’s going on inside your heart, not his. Okay?”
Wow. Is that what I’ve been doing? Now that he spells it out that way, I can see that maybe it is. “Okay.”
“Good.”
“Are you close to your brothers?” I can’t imagine having brothers.
“Yes. We’re all a year or less apart. Once our parents decided to have kids they were all in, apparently.
It was the only time in her life my mother took time off from acting.
From the age of ten, she made a movie a year, except for those four years, she made a baby a year.
Then she left us with nannies and went back to her true passion. ”
“Wow. What are your brothers like?”
“Apollo got my mother’s talent, her movie star looks and her complete inability to experience any form of self-doubt.”
“That must be a nice way to go through life.”
“It has its pitfalls. He has no filters. His ego operates at full throttle.” His quiet smile at the thought is so sexy it raises all the tiny hairs on my body. “But he’s a good person to go to for advice. He’s always straight-up and a hundred percent honest.”
“What about the one in Montana?”
“Rhett. He’s out there now dealing with the new ranch manager, who happens to be twenty-three, a woman and, according to Rhett, is in the process of ‘rearranging all his systems.’”
“You mean … he’s in love with her?”
“He’s definitely in lust. I’m waiting for updates.”
I laugh. “I hope it goes well for him. And her.”
Dallas grins at me. “Yeah, let’s hope so.”
“And the other one?”
“Boone. He’s the youngest. Still in the process of sowing his wild oats.”
“Oh. So he’s a player.”
“He’s twenty-six, very charming and … popular, with everyone he meets. His heart is pure gold.”
“And what about you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. What are you actually like, underneath all … this.” I wave my hand over him, at the obviousness of the drop-dead gorgeous package he inhabits. “What makes Dallas Wilder tick?”
He’s quiet for a moment. A real moment, as he considers my question.
“Honestly?” He tops up my glass then his own.
“I’m a workaholic who’s built an empire.
But when I look up the empire exists inside a total vacuum.
An absolutely wasteland. I have no life outside work.
None. No—” he gestures at me, at the candles, the wider world, at me again.
“Nothing. I’m alone most of the time and I’ve never taken a day off in my life. ”
“Ever?”
“Nope.”
“But you did today.”
He looks at me steadily. “Yes. And I haven’t thought about work once since the second I saw you. And I don’t plan to think about work again until I’ve figured out how to keep you. Because I feel …” He stops.
Keep me? “You feel what?”
“Like myself,” he says simply. “Weirdly, specifically like myself.”
An errant golden ray of sun lightens his eyes into the green of sea glass. Outside on Royal Street, the city is doing what it always does. Living, breathing, unbothered.
But in here, Dallas Wilder and I are doing that thing we can’t seem to help but do, where it feels like our souls are mingling. Touching. Entwining themselves around each other.
Here he goes again with the outrageous pronouncements I don’t have a single clue how to navigate. I can tell they’re starting to melt through my forcefield. And I wish they didn’t feel so damn good doing it.