25. Chicken Pastina
CHICKEN PASTINA
*zest a bit of lemon rind into the broth for a more complex flavor.
“ T owels are in here, I think.” I opened a closet in the hall of to reveal a wall full of impossibly fluffy linens. “And the last two rooms at the end are the guest rooms. Take your pick.”
Lucas shrugged as he wandered past the family rooms to where the two guest rooms lay. Or so I thought.
“There’s only one.”
Not again.
I glanced around him to a room with lavender-painted walls, unicorn posters everywhere, and a four-poster twin bed with fairy lights strung around the top.
“Crap. They must have put Lucy in Sofia’s old room to be closer to them.”
Our eyes met. Lucas’s brow arched knowingly. “You could always…”
I shook my head emphatically. “I don’t think we can play the ‘only one bed’ game here. I’ll change the sheets and sleep in Sofia’s bed.”
“You really don’t have to?—”
“No, I really do,” I interrupted.
Just the thought of spending another night with Lucas Lyons made my skin prickle with excitement. It also made me feel very confused and conflicted.
I’m not your baby , I’d told him just hours ago, outside, even while he had been holding me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered to him. I’m not your anything.
Aren’t you? His response had been so simple.
The same question seemed to be in his eyes now.
I nodded toward another door. “There’s the bathroom. I’m going to change and go up to the roof deck to relax before bed.”
Before he could answer, I rolled my suitcase into Sofia’s room, as much to ignore his unspoken questions as to avoid my own reaction when I saw them on his face.
Twenty minutes later, I slid into the hot waters of the onsen Xavier had created on the rooftop deck that was exclusive to the penthouse.
Half-Japanese himself, Xavier had shared about how he had spent some time in Japan with his mother’s family before starting his first restaurant in England.
Among the many things he brought back with him, including a more refined knowledge of the cuisine he’d grown up with and professional connections to every artisan culinary goods manufacturer in Japan, he’d also made the bathing tradition there a part of his everyday life once he’d earned his fortune.
“It’s where he relaxes,” Frankie had told me the first time I’d visited, and she had shown me the little oasis here in the middle of the city.
The London skyline spread out around the building, which, as one of the tallest in Mayfair, looked out toward Hyde Park and Kensington Palace in one direction, Buckingham Palace in another, and beyond that, the familiar landmarks of Big Ben and the London Eye stared at each other across the Thames.
I stepped onto the deck in my robe and the coral bikini I’d brought with me from Brazil.
The rooftop was also a secret garden. My sandals whispered over a raked gravel path winding through potted fruit trees, flowering hedges, and row upon row of planter boxes bearing herbs and vegetables.
It was the perfect blend of a kitchen garden and a Japanese sanctum, made even more ideal by a fully functioning “spring” at the far corner.
Far smaller than the natural onsen we’d enjoyed in Japan and made of city water instead of the mineral-clouded spring, the little pool was still a marvel, framed with smooth river stones, ferns, moss, and a bamboo trellis with climbing jasmine. Tendrils of steam curled toward the sky.
I hung my towel on a rack next to the pool and slipped in, eager to rest after the long day.
“May I join you?”
I startled with a splash, then turned to find Lucas standing next to the onsen in a pair of red swim trunks, holding a towel of his own.
“Jesus,” I said, covering my heart with one hand. “How did you even get up here?”
“Xavier mentioned it to me before they left.” He hung his towel next to mine. “When you said you were coming up here, I assumed it was to enjoy the pool.” He looked around the garden. “He didn’t mention the rest, though. This is incredible.”
I, however, was no longer interested in admiring the flowers. Not with everything still raw between us.
I was tired. I was tense. I was furious.
And my body didn’t care.
Part of the problem was that the man clearly had no idea how attractive he was.
Men approaching middle age seemed to go in two directions.
Some—okay, most—seemed to melt as their hair disappeared along with their muscles, and their bodies expanded like overproofed bread dough.
Others seemed to age like fine wine until they reached a critical point in their forties, when they were devastatingly handsome to any woman between the ages of sixteen and ninety-six.
It really wasn’t fair.
The latter group always seemed to know they were hot, which is why they used their forties, sometimes following the demise of a first marriage, to hook up with women far younger than themselves. I’d seen plenty of them at the Lyonses’ dinner table and parties.
But Lucas, looking around the garden, seemed to have no awareness of his appeal.
No understanding of how the moonlight glinted off the bits of silver at his temples.
No clue about the way the hair on his chest and the trail down his stomach emphasized the column of muscle I was suddenly desperate to climb.
No thought for how much better he could do than the tiny wallflower staring at him from the pool’s edge.
When his eyes landed back on me, though, I didn’t feel like a wallflower at all.
I felt like the jewel of the whole garden.
A fair amount of my anger evaporated with the steam.
“Get in here,” I said with a resigned sigh. “There’s plenty of room for us both.”
He slipped into the pool a few feet from me, then extended his long arms along the stone rim and tilted his head back to look at the night sky.
The stars were gone again, obscured by light pollution, just like in New York and S?o Paulo.
I missed them, I realized. In Japan, we’d spent every evening looking up at constellations.
It hadn’t been something I’d noticed in Paris, since I’d never grown up with stars.
But now that I knew what it was like to gaze at them every evening, I wanted more.
I wanted the peace that came with the true dead of night.
“Thank you,” Lucas said, as if to the sky more than to me. “I didn’t want to miss our ritual now.” One side of his mouth curved up, like he was privy to an inside joke. “Do you think I should build one of these at home so we can keep it up?”
I laughed. I had to, or else I might cry. “I don’t think I’ll get away with private soaks with the boss once we’re back at Prideview.”
Lord, just imagining the look on Ondine’s face was enough to make me want to get out now. Or, come to think of it, the face of Lawrence, the driver.
Carlos, the gardener.
The housekeeper, the butler, or any of the other staff who would love nothing more than to gossip about me and Lucas.
Odd how the prospect of their chatter hadn’t even crossed my mind when it came to Daniel. But the idea of Lucas receiving that kind of derision bothered me. A lot.
I was a towel. Lucas was a napkin. Back home, we didn’t mix.
Here, though, it didn’t seem to matter.
“You’re different with your family, you know.”
I tore myself from musings. “I suppose most people are. More relaxed.”
“You are in some ways.” He paused, and I could see him choosing his words carefully. “Obviously, you love them a lot. It’s clear you and your sister are close.”
“Our whole family is close. Too close, maybe.”
He nodded with some understanding. “You’re quicker with your words. Tighter, on guard. Maybe even a little defensive. Not shy, but ready to fight.”
I digested that thought while I toyed with some of the bubbles in the water. “I…I didn’t always like who I was around them. They always wanted me to do things I wasn’t ready for.”
“Like what?”
I shrugged. “Stupid things like making me walk to the bodega by myself or play with some auntie’s kids I didn’t know.
It was worse when I was in high school. Joni was always nagging me to dress differently or find a boyfriend or do more than sit at home.
And when she got critical, I guess I got a little mean. ”
“But you did get different clothes, and?—”
“And I got a boyfriend?” I suggested sardonically. “I think we both know I will never be your girlfriend, Lucas.”
For that, I received a long stare that eventually forced me to turn away. He took several deep breaths, the kind when he was trying to manage his temper.
Apparently, even the suggestion that we were together made him mad.
I really should have known better.
“It’s difficult to thrive under the pressures of what other people want you to be,” he said after a minute or two. “No matter what those pressures are.”
“Yeah, it must be really hard being a billionaire.” I couldn’t quite keep the bitterness away.
Maybe he was right, and my family did bring that out in me.
Or maybe there was something about Lucas that made me feel brave enough to speak my mind.
“All that money, people wanting to be around you all the time. Sounds horrible.”
“It’s not real, Marie. None of it is. And I didn’t choose this life for myself.”
“No, but you kept it,” I returned. “And who would walk away from that kind of money, even if the cost of maintaining it made them unhappy? Or was immoral, for that matter. Some people think billionaires shouldn’t even exist, do you know that?”
His mouth folded into a tight line. “I’m aware of that theory. Are you one of them?”
“What if I were? It wouldn’t matter, right? Not just because I’m a nobody, but because you’d be crazy to give up everything you have. People would think you were legitimately insane.”