Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
L ucy hadn’t needed a shower but took one anyway just to give her a little breathing room from Joel and all his…Joel-ness. Purposefully, she left the removable shower head in place. The last thing she needed was for him to overhear her from down the hall.
When she emerged from the bathroom, relaxed and refreshed, a spicy scent hit her nostrils and her stomach rumbled in a reminder that it must have been dinnertime.
Sure enough, when she rounded the corner from the hallway, Joel was carrying two steaming plates to the dining room table.
An annoyingly shrewd smirk broke out on his face. “Nice shower?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” It could have been fan-fucking-tastic, but her PG version wasn’t bad either.
Joel did nothing other than throw a presumptuous smile in the direction of her rosy cheeks while he set a plate on either side of the table.
“I’m glad to hear it. Hope you’re hungry.”
“I’m Italian. Food is life. I’ll eat on demand. ”
He pulled out a chair for her.
She took her place in it. “Aside from homemade Yorkshire puddings, I don’t remember you being a chef.”
He smiled. “I’m not. Sarah comes once a week, stocks the fridge with groceries and simple meals. This chicken curry is one of my favorites.” He poured them each a glass of wine, then sat down across from her.
“Sarah?”
“She’s my housekeeper.”
“Right.” The Morgans had housekeepers. The Barones had Maria.
When Lucy had been growing up, her family had a cleaning lady scheduled to come once. Her mother had spent the entire day before scrubbing the house from top to bottom because she didn’t want the cleaner to think the Barones were untidy. Then she’d been grossly dissatisfied with what the cleaner had done, claiming she could do better herself. That had been the single time her family had ever paid for any help.
“Oh wow, this is good,” Lucy moaned after a bite. “Give Sarah my compliments.”
Joel chuckled around his own bite. “You can tell her yourself. Now that you live here, you’re bound to run into her. I think you’d like her.” He took a sip of wine. “I sometimes wonder how much I’d have to pay her to come back to San Francisco with us, when it’s time.”
With us? When it’s time? There was too much to unpack in that sentence, so she changed the subject. “What’s this about you being on the Forbes billionaire list? Since when did building high rises in San Francisco push you to the top one hundred status?”
Joel blushed, and boy, did she ever love it. “Been googling me, Luciana? ”
“You wish. Natalie was all over it this morning. She showed me the fancy black-and-white photo of you on the fancy website with the fancy numbers beside it.”
“Stop it.” He tossed his napkin at her. “I fucking hate it. You get on a list like that and you can’t live life anymore. I never know who is talking to me because they actually care or because they’re after my bank account. I hate it,” he repeated before taking a big gulp of wine.
The way his shoulders tightened and glare hardened told her he truly hated being labeled with the prestigious designation. Morgan Construction had always been lucrative. The Morgans were millionaires many times over, but what they’d built was not a billion-dollar company. Or so she thought.
“How did it happen?”
Across the table, he leveled her with a challenging look, as if she already knew. But she honestly didn’t, so she remained silent.
After a moment, he said, “I felt lost. There was nothing left but work. So I drowned myself in it until it consumed me. I expanded my father’s business, used the money I was making from Morgan Construction to do more investing. I bought land and companies across the country, and then more internationally. I created Morgan Property Development. When that took off, I started making other investments. That’s when Morgan Enterprises was born.” He shrugged as if it was nothing, then took another bite of food.
“So you just worked?” she asked, dumbfounded by the dedication it must have required. “Non-stop?”
“I was good at it and the ventures paid off. So I didn’t stop. But I also couldn’t stop. Because if I did, for even one second, I would think about what I didn’t have anymore. And that void was too dark. I was afraid of what would happen if I lost myself in it.”
Her chest tightened around her pounding heart. She knew what he’d been talking about. The difference was, she’d fallen into that void. The darkest dark that had stolen too much of her life until she’d found a way out. Then, she’d also fixated on work, getting to know Barone & Sons inside out, until she understood the business better than her own father. It had become her new reason.
She understood, but that didn’t mean she knew what to say. What was there to say? He was right. They’d lost so much. And nothing could change that.
Swallowing hard, she pushed the food around her plate. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Me too.” It was the most meaningful thing they’d said to each other in four years.
“I’m surprised it took this long for someone in my family to mention the billionaire thing,” she told him, needing to relieve the heaviness in the air between them. The time was coming where they’d have to dive deep into what had happened between them, but she wasn’t ready yet. Baby steps. She could do baby steps.
Joel sighed, seeming to understand, and she appreciated him so much in that moment. The man had the patience of a saint.
“Me too, actually. I assumed your sister would have told you at her earliest convenience.”
A shadow of worry for Vanessa notched itself in her heart. As far as topics of dinnertime conversations went, they were really clinching some doozies tonight.
Joel, being Joel, picked up on her tension, because he set down his fork and asked, “How is Vanessa these days?”
Great question, didn’t she wish she knew. But maybe this was something else he could help her with. “I honestly don’t know. But I’m worried about her. You know Vanessa, she’s usually so—” Lucy stared at her wineglass and considered how best to describe her younger sister.
“Larger than life?” Joel supplied.
“Yes.” That was the perfect description for her jet-setting model/actress sibling. “She’s usually so present all the time, even when she’s in another country. We text daily. FaceTime at least once a week. But that’s tapered off over the last little while. I assumed she was just busy filming, but the last five days she’s gone even more silent. Even after the news of our engagement, which she’d normally flip over, all I got was a text line of heart emojis. Not that I need more than that, but it’s just weird for her, you know?”
Joel leaned forward, resting his forearms against the table. “It would be. I remember you two were close.”
She sighed and pushed her plate aside, her appetite gone. “She’s in Vancouver right now. I was planning on going there while I was on my vacation, try to convince her to come back with me for a while. A mini vacation, to reset and talk or whatever she might need. But then this happened.” She waggled her finger between them. “And I’m not sure if I’ll be able to go now. I can’t explain it, I just have this sisterly gut instinct telling me she’s not okay, and I won’t believe otherwise until I see her for myself.”
Joel sat in silence, nodding between bites of food and sips of wine as she told him more details about how her sister’s communication had tapered off, how difficult she was to get a hold of now even though Vanessa basically was attached to her phone.
“I’m sorry.” She huffed out a half-hearted laugh. “Long answer to a very simple question.”
Joel leaned back in his seat. “Obviously not that simple. She’s your sister, and you’ve always been close. You’re worried about her, and you’re allowed to be.”
Tears came out of nowhere and flooded her eyes. She lowered her gaze to her lap, not wanting him to see.
“Vancouver, you said. Canada, I’m assuming? Not the one across the bridge twenty minutes away.”
She knew he was trying to lighten the mood, but—now that she’d voiced her concerns about Vanessa, and her heart had sunk like a stone—she wasn’t up for faking it. “Yes, she has a side role in a paranormal drama series. She’s been there for just over a year. The last time we really talked, she’d been excited that her character made it to season two.”
When Joel’s hand touched hers across the table, she glanced back at him.
He brushed his thumb over her knuckles as he watched her. “I’m sure she’s alright. But if you want, we can go there together after the engagement party.”
A heavy sigh escaped Lucy’s lungs. She would have much preferred to have Vanessa at the engagement party, but she didn’t want to appear ungrateful. “That would be nice.”
Joel continued to regard her quietly, his fingers stroking her knuckles in a steady rhythm. Then abruptly he rose and collected her plate.
“Let me clean the dishes and then I have somewhere I want to take you.”
“No, no, no. Don’t you know the rules? Whoever cooks gets out of kitchen cleaning duty.”
“I didn’t cook. Housekeeper, remember?”
Fair enough. “Well, you warmed it up and served it.”
He laughed. “How about a compromise? I wash the dishes and you dry.”
“No dishwasher?” This surprised her, what with the housekeeping and the Forbes list and all. What kind of billionaire was this guy?
“Companies don’t build them like they used to remember?” he said with a smirk.
“Really? What about an in suite washer and dryer for laundry?”
“Gabe had that installed out of sheer necessity when he lived here alone with a small child constantly in need of a clean change of clothes. But for some reason, a dishwasher never ranked his list, and I wasn’t planning on being here long enough so I didn’t bother getting one. Besides, dishes for one aren’t hard.”
“Alright then, I’ll dry.” She followed him to the kitchen carrying their glasses. “Where are you taking me after?”
He glanced over his shoulder, eyes enigmatic. “You’ll see.”