12. Interlude #2
“So, find another senator to do your bidding!” Daniel ripped his hand away, then grabbed the bottle to refill his drink. “You have, what, fifty to choose from?”
“A hundred. Two per state.”
“Even better. So, why do I have to be the sacrificial lamb?”
“Because you’re the one who laid the altar to begin with!” Lucas hated to shout, but he was getting there now.
Winnifred moaned into her drink yet again as if she were in physical pain.
Lucas took a deep breath and sighed. “Emma Hubbard is nineteen years old and certainly deserves more than to be abandoned by the man who?—”
“Stop.” Daniel’s voice was raw. “Just stop.”
Lucas watched his brother’s shoulders shake, whether from rage or something else entirely. Maybe he was remorseful about what he’d done, or maybe he was thinking about someone else.
Someone who wasn’t as young as the senator’s daughter but was certainly more na?ve.
The idea of Marie being used and discarded in the same way his brother clearly wanted to do to Emma Hubbard made Lucas’s knuckles turn white as he gripped the bar’s surface.
“This isn’t going away,” he managed through clenched teeth. “The sooner you accept that?—”
“The sooner I what? Marry a girl I don’t love?
Spend the rest of my life pretending to be happy while you count your precious profits?
” Daniel tossed the entire glass of scotch down his throat, then swayed a moment before looking up at Lucas.
His words ran together as he spoke. “You know what the pathetic part is? I thought you might understand about Marie. Thought maybe you’d seen something in her too, seen why she’s special. ”
God. If he only knew. “I told you. It’s business.”
“Right. Business.” Daniel’s bitterness flavored the air like rancid smoke. “God knows my brother, the ice man, would never feel anything as human as an actual emotion.”
He abandoned his scotch and stumbled for the door.
Lucas called after him. “Go to bed, Daniel.”
Daniel didn’t even turn as he replied. “Go to hell, Lucas.”
The oak doors slammed shut behind him, leaving Lucas and his stepmother alone with the sounds of her occasional sips of brandy to fill the silence.
“That went…well.” She sighed.
Lucas returned to the divan and retrieved his abandoned seltzer, suddenly wishing it were something harder. And in the same instant, wondering why.
You wouldn’t either if it killed your dad and put your mom in jail .
. Marie’s voice, so heartbreakingly matter-of-fact, stopped him, just like it had been for the last week.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever look at a glass of wine again, much less a fine brandy or a scotch, without seeing that look on her face.
“He’ll come around.” Lucas took a sip of his water. “He always does.”
“Will he?” Winnifred swirled her glass, looking out the window toward the circular driveway, as if the Hubbards might reappear like ghosts.
“The senator was very angry when Daniel ran off after dinner. And now it looks like you’ve made an already impossible situation worse.
” She turned to face him. “Taking the cook away might solve one problem, but it creates another. Daniel will drink himself into another stint at rehab, Emma Hubbard will be left to face her family alone, and the senator will have every reason to torpedo our legislation.” She shook her head.
“I’m supposed to chair the next Sinai benefit, you know.
How’s that going to look if our stock is down forty percent? ”
It was always about the look, wasn’t it? Not about her son’s health or the family’s actual holdings or even the girl above the garage whose life suddenly hung in the balance.
“It won’t come to that.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because I’m going to fix it.” He took another sip of water, then placed his bottle on the coffee table with a clink. “All of it.”
“And how exactly do you plan to do that? By taking the girl on a pretend vacation?”
“Daniel will forget about Marie once she’s out of sight,” Lucas explained. “And a month away will give me time to help her see that her future lies elsewhere. Maybe with another family, maybe another city entirely.”
Maybe another man . Or brother .
No. He wouldn’t even let himself consider it.
“You think it will be that easy? Simply charm her into forgetting about Daniel?”
Lucas bared his teeth in a wolf-like smile. “It will be if I have any skill at all.”
Winnifred’s laugh was soft but sharp. “And if you don’t? If she proves more attached than you anticipate?”
“She won’t.”
“You seem very certain of that.”
“I am.” He leaned back on the divan to peer up at the box beams of the ceiling.
The house, a neo-Tudor monstrosity built in the early twenties, was just like every other mansion in Westchester.
Built to replicate the grandeur of the past, but never quite held up to the original.
“Marie is practical. Once she realizes that her feelings for Daniel are fantasy rather than reality, she’ll move on.
If need be, with a broken heart that we can facilitate into another job. ”
Even if the idea of her working in any other kitchen besides his felt wrong. Even if the notion of breaking her heart made him feel physically ill.
It took several deep breaths for the nausea to ebb.
It hadn’t come to that yet.
Hopefully, it never would.
“You know, there’s a much simpler solution to all of this,” Winnifred said, like she was suggesting a different appetizer for a party.
“Which is?”
“Let her go.” She settled back into her chair, regarding him over the rim of her glass. “Tell her we don’t have the budget for a private chef anymore.”
They both snorted. As if anyone would believe that.
“Regardless,” she continued, “we could do it. Just let the little urchin disappear back to whatever godforsaken corner of the world she came from.”
“Belmont,” Lucas said quietly. “It’s the old Little Italy in the Bronx. Near Fordham and the zoo.”
“Wherever. Daniel will find a different distraction, and in the meantime, he’ll learn to face his responsibilities.”
Lucas shook his head before she’d finished speaking. “Not an option. We’ve invested too much in her.”
“Lucas, please. Her year in Paris cost us, what, four hundred? Five hundred thousand?”
Lucas sighed. His stepmother was the kind of rich person who thought a gallon of milk was fifty dollars instead of six. “More like one fifty. But I see your point.”
“Is that all?” She batted the idea away like an insignificant fly. “It’s pocket change, Lucas, not an investment. Daniel spends more on cars every year. I spend nearly a million every season on couture.”
“I’m aware,” Lucas said dryly, having seen the expense reports from his chief accountant. “But it’s not about the money.”
Winnifred’s eyes sharpened below her impossibly smooth brow. “Then what is it about? Don’t tell me this girl has woven a spell on both Lyons boys? Is she a veritable siren from the deep?”
“Hardly.” His voice was hoarse with the bald-faced lie.
After all, there was a moment in the greenhouse when he might have followed her anywhere.
Tonight, too, if he was being honest. “Marie has potential. Real potential. Ondine says she’s never seen natural talent like hers, which is why we went through the trouble of managing her education ourselves instead of poaching another restaurant chef.
And we’re getting that for a bargain. She knows what we like.
She’s been molded by our tastes, raised to make us happy. ”
Unbidden, a sudden vision of Marie, on the floor, wicked red mouth open in supplication, flashed through his mind. Arms bound behind her trim waist, bosom out as she batted those big green eyes at him and asked in that impossibly sweet way of hers: What can I do for you today, Lucas?
A groan escaped him before he could stop it, which he masked by grabbing his water and taking another long gulp. He was a sick man. A very sick man.
Winnifred, thankfully, was too absorbed in her own drink to notice his torture.
“And Daniel?” she pressed.
“Will marry Emma Hubbard and do his duty to this family.” Lucas’s voice was flat. “Just like the rest of us.”