14. Guava-Red Wine Reduction #2
We ate in companionable silence for a few more minutes.
“So, what did you do today? Make it to that flea market Robbie found?”
The question was casual, but something in his tone made me shift in my chair. “Oh, no. I was too busy with meal prep. Plan out the rest the menus for our time here. Reorganize the pantry. You know.”
I had done these things; it was true. I’d also caught up on my favorite Netflix shows and had gotten far too sucked into the newest season of Love is Blind.
Lucas’s fork paused halfway to his mouth. “You stayed in all day again?”
“Like I said, I had plenty to keep me busy?—”
“Marie.” He set down the fork, though not without a longing glance at the duck speared on the tines. “It’s Saturday. You’ve been here five days, and the farthest you’ve gone is the market with Robbie.”
Heat crept up my neck. “I told you, I’m fine. I don’t need?—”
“You know what?” Lucas set down his napkin. “Let’s eat this delicious meal you made for us in the park.”
I blinked. He said “us.” Not “me.” “What?”
“A picnic. In the park.” He was already gathering his plate and cutlery. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Lucas, that’s—we can’t just—the food will get cold, and I don’t have anything to pack it in, and?—”
“Then we’ll eat first and go for a walk after.” There was something in his expression I hadn’t seen before. A different shade of determination, maybe. Or concern. “You deserve to get out. I’ll take you. Just like Louis did in Paris.”
The reference to my friend caught me off guard. That Lucas remembered, that he understood why I had needed Louis. His sincerity disintegrated my resolve.
“Okay,” I heard myself say. “A walk. After dinner.”
“With me,” Lucas agreed, then went back to devouring his food.
Twenty minutes later, dishes left in the sink to soak, we approached the entrance to Ibirapuera, S?o Paulo’s sprawling central park that, to my surprise, was only a few blocks from our building.
Even at this hour, there were people around—joggers winding around the grass and palms, couples on benches, families with small children just leaving a massive play structure.
The air was warm and humid, filled with the sounds of the city softened by distance and greenery.
Even so, I peered at the beginning of one trail cautiously. “I don’t know if we should go into a park like this at night. I wouldn’t walk around Central Park at eight p.m.”
Lucas chuckled, a sound so foreign that I turned on my heel to make sure it actually came from him.
“Look ahead,” he directed.
I squinted in the direction he indicated, where a large man in a dark suit was walking about twenty feet in front of us, his posture alert despite his casual pace.
“Now, behind.”
I turned and spotted another man, equally large, following at a discreet distance.
“Bodyguards,” Lucas explained.
My gaze bounced between the two enormous men. “Have you always had them around?”
Lucas nodded. “Joe’s been with me for…I think going on fifteen years now. Barney’s newer, only five. But yeah, they pretty much go where I go.”
“Why didn’t I know this?” Honestly, it was embarrassing. I knew most of the Lyonses’ staff like they were family.
“When I’m at Prideview, they’re usually in the gatehouse with the other security. Most of the other staff there don’t know them either.”
“So they follow you everywhere?”
“Everywhere.” His tone was matter-of-fact, but underneath, he sounded resigned or maybe weary. “It’s the price of being—well—me.”
He didn’t have to explain any further. The Lyonses were some of the wealthiest people in the world.
I didn’t know why I hadn’t considered it before, but of course, Lucas would be a target for scam artists, stalkers, or any of the other crazy people who wanted to take things that didn’t belong to them.
“Do your parents have security too?”
He nodded.
“Daniel?”
His eyes darkened a bit. He gave another nod before he shoved his hands deep into his pockets as we continued down the tree-lined path. “So, I suppose we both have our own reasons for being a little afraid of the world.”
As the observation hung between us, I felt something shift. Something that made me walk a little straighter beside him. Made me want to guide him the same way he had offered to guide me.
Though to where that might be, I hadn’t a clue.
As we walked, I was surprised to find myself genuinely enjoying his company as he chatted about his day. I learned a few more things about Lucas I hadn’t known before—and I thought I’d known all the Lyons family stories.
I learned that he wrestled in high school and still practiced Krav Maga most mornings with his trainer.
I learned that his favorite book was Brave New World , not Machiavelli’s The Prince , like most people joked.
I learned that he owned a property in Arizona that no one else in his family knew about, not even his brother.
“I stay there now when I visit my mother,” he said after describing the small ranch on the outskirts of Sedona, nestled among red rock monuments and alligator cypress trees. “I like to watch her paint.”
He didn’t talk much about the woman who gave birth to him—the woman who didn’t raise him, but with whom he had at least some contact.
“Why didn’t you live with her more when you were growing up?” I found myself asking. I didn’t want to pry, but I wondered if he wanted me to. Just a little.
“Why do you want to know?” Lucas glanced down at me.
“I…just curious, I suppose. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but it seems kind of important to how your life turned out. And you’ve mentioned her a few times.”
His brow furrowed a bit, but the tension seemed to melt when our eyes met.
“It was part of the custody agreement my father renegotiated a few years after he and Winnifred were married,” he said.
“She struggled to get pregnant. It took them more than a decade to conceive Daniel. My father was worried he wouldn’t have another heir, so I think he pressured my mother to give me up so he could raise me to take over the company. ”
And she did .
The words were unspoken but lingered anyway.
I decided not to ask exactly what would make a mother give up her child. A large sum, no doubt. Or maybe she had been blackmailed in some way. Whatever it was, the betrayal had made Lucas far less trusting of the world.
It seemed that was something else we had in common.
“You know, you’re different from what I thought you’d be,” I said as we rambled down a quieter trail. Lucas’s security continued to bookend our progress.
He arched a brow. “Oh? How?”
“I don’t know exactly. Easy to talk to, I suppose. In New York, you’re always so…” I searched for the right word.
“Formidable?” he suggested with a wry curve of his mouth.
“I was going to say grumpy, but sure, that works.”
Lucas let out a short bark. “Fair enough. It’s an occupational hazard, I suppose.”
“Is it?” I wondered. “Or is it just easier?”
Something like surprise painted his face. “Easier than what?”
“Well, I imagine it would be harder to boss everyone around if they knew who you really were.” I peeked up to find him staring at me like I’d just wounded him. “Bosses aren’t supposed to have fears, right?”
We had reached a pond where the city lights reflected like scattered stars across the water. Lucas stopped walking, his hands still in his pockets, and was quiet for so long I thought he wouldn’t answer.
“What else am I supposed to be?” he wondered, maybe more to himself than to me as he looked out over the water.
I sat on a bench and waited until he lowered himself next to me.
“We all grow up with labels, don’t we?” he asked.
I nodded. “That’s true.”
“Mine were pretty clear. Some supposedly good, like ‘genius’ or ‘heir.’ Some not. Like ‘tyrant’ or ‘bastard.’”
The last one made me flinch. “They didn’t really call you that, did they?”
His shoulders lifted, then fell. “Not to my face. But it was there just the same.”
I considered what that must have felt like. As alienated as I sometimes felt from my family, I had never doubted that they loved me.
“I never got to choose any of my labels,” he continued.
“When I was six, I had to become the heir. At twenty-one, I had to be the future CEO. My father said even then he knew Daniel wouldn’t be suited to run it.
Though how he could make that judgment about a nine-year-old kid, I’ll never understand.
But I was the smart one, the dependable one.
It was my job to keep the business together after he was gone.
” He looked up at the sky, still lingering in twilight.
“I think he knew then he was sick. He has Alzheimer’s, you know.
That’s why his diet is so different. But no one else besides the family and his doctors is aware. ”
When his eyes met mine again, they glowed like the stars above, the ones that wrestled with the light pollution, dying to come out.
“My family’s a mess, Marie. No one knows how bad it is. If I let everything go—if I let myself go—I wonder sometimes if any of us would survive.”
The vulnerability in his voice made my chest ache. “I know the feeling.”
“Do you?”
I nodded. “There are six of us, but for a long time, it was just me and Joni after the others left. And she…has her own issues. I carried her everywhere. Made sure she went to school, helped with homework, covered for her when she got into trouble.” I smiled sadly.
“Until I went to Paris, and she grew up, I guess. She became this amazing, confident woman who doesn’t need me anymore. ”
My voice cracked with emotion at the end. Joni and I had always had a contentious relationship, but I also knew my place in it. What my value was there.
Now, I wasn’t sure what that was anymore.
“Sometimes I think it was easier just living in her shadow than trying to compete.” The words came out before I realized I’d even thought them.
“Is that why you used to hide? The long skirts, the glasses, the way you’d try to disappear into the walls?”
I felt heat creep up my neck as I turned. “You noticed that?”
“I noticed everything about you.” There was a pregnant pause. “Even when maybe I shouldn’t.”
The flutter was back. The strong one in my stomach, beating like a bird’s wings, now rising to my chest.
I drew my knees up to my chin and laid my cheek on them while I looked at him. “Maybe it was easier just to disappear.”
Lucas watched me for a long time. Then, slowly, his hand reached out and tucked an errant curl behind my ear, trailing across my cheekbone.
Neither of us breathed.
“You couldn’t disappear if you tried, sweet Marie,” he said softly.
The wings in my chest gave another big flap. “Am I sweet? That’s not something anyone has ever called me.”
That rueful smile deepened. Just a little. “Sweet enough for me.”
I found myself looking at his mouth as he spoke, remembering the way it had felt against mine.
I liked it when he smiled this way, like a secret just for me.
I liked the way his stubble, barely touched with silver, gleamed under the rising moon.
And I liked the way those storm-cloud eyes sparked like passing constellations.
His eyes differed from his brother’s clear blue joy, but they had just as much life. Maybe even more swimming in those depths.
At the thought of Daniel, I pulled myself up. “We, um, should get back. I still have to clean the kitchen. And tomorrow is another early day.”
Lucas cleared his throat and stood, straightening his shirt and pulling on his open collar like it had grown too tight. “Yes. Right. It is.” As he turned toward the path we’d taken, he surprised me by offering his hand. “It’s a long walk through the dark. But you still have your guide, I promise.”
I looked at his offer, then back to his face, where there were no signs of guile or game. Just something earnest. Something kind.
I had no business taking my employer’s hand. No business allowing him to tuck mine into his elbow as we headed down another path unknown.
No business at all, wondering what it might be like to have Lucas Lyons hold my hand all the time, even in front of people we knew.
No business wondering what it might be like if I could call him mine.