13. Theo
THEO
I’m alone in the rear of the car, and I’m scrolling through social media.
The driver has the partition down, and the estate is forty minutes out.
My phone is in my hand, Bianca Donovan’s bakery account is open, and I’ve been doing this for two days.
I am thirty years old. I run a company. I have a public relations team that would consider this conduct embarrassing on my behalf.
I scroll anyway.
Her pictures are eclectic, like her bakery. The account isn’t managed professionally, and it’s obvious. But that’s also part of the appeal. It’s authentic.
The captions don’t sound like marketing. They sound like her.
Lemon curd tarts today, friends, get them while they’re fresh and pretend with me that the world is fine.
Eliza says the rosemary olive oil cake tastes better with honey. Eliza is always right.
If you’ve ever left here with a free cookie in the bag, you looked like you needed it. Don’t fight me on this.
I keep scrolling. She’s been posting for years. Chalkboard menus. Seasonal tarts. Cinnamon rolls. Cupcakes. A video of a flour fight in the kitchen after midnight. A boy with a piped buttercream mustache.
I stop on a post from two years ago.
The photo is the bakery window at dusk. Gold light. The caption runs three lines.
Mama left us a few days ago. The cinnamon rolls will be ready tomorrow. She would have wanted them to be.
The next post is six days later. A photo of her mother’s handwriting taped above a workstation. Proof until they double, Bianca, not until you get impatient.
The caption underneath: I read this every morning.
I read that twice, consider putting down the phone. Instead, I scroll to older posts.
Her mother in an apron, laughing at the camera, the same hazel eyes. Pictures of the two of them together.
She was really close to her mom, and this bakery ties them together.
And I tried to take that from her. Fuck.
I know how painful it is to lose a mother. You never fully recover.
The driver glances at me in the mirror. “Sir? Are you alright?”
“Drive.”
His eyes return to the road.
The car turns onto the estate road, and the guard opens the gates when we arrive.
The drive curves through old oaks for nearly a half-mile before the house appears. Three stories of pale stone with black shutters.
I do not want to be here. After my mother died, I have never wanted to be here.
The driver stops at the front steps. I get out. Cold finds the nape of my neck, and I pull my coat tighter.
I climb the steps and push the door open without knocking.
The foyer is dim and warm. A young woman in a black uniform passes me with a tray of folded napkins in preparation for tonight’s dinner party and dips her chin.
The dinner doesn’t start for two hours, so I head for the kitchen to find my father.
But I don’t find my father in the kitchen. I find her.
Bianca.
She is at the marble island with her back half-turned to me, arranging tiers. Small white tarts. Small white cakes. Tiny things I cannot identify from this distance, all of them perched on three-tiered silver trays. Her hair is up. Black trousers. Black chef’s coat.
Holy shit. My father hired her bakery to cater the dessert. What a fucking mess.
For half a breath, I consider walking back out, getting in the car, and refusing to attend tonight’s dinner. But that would mean leaving her alone with my father.
And there’s no fucking way I’m doing that.
I cross into the kitchen. She turns.
“Theo.” Her hands stop on the rim of a tart shell. “Imagine my surprise when I arrived this morning and learned this was a Sawyer event.” She’s smiling, but her tone doesn’t match her expression. She’s upset. “This is your house?”
I take one more step into the kitchen. “It’s my father’s house.”
She picks up the towel beside her and wipes her hands. She’s not smiling anymore. “A woman named Margaret booked this. She didn’t mention the name Sawyer.”
“Margaret is my father’s event planner.”
Bianca sets the towel down. “How convenient that she hid who her employer is.”
I take a half step closer. “Bianca, I didn’t know you were the caterer tonight.”
She returns to the tarts. “Sure.”
“I didn’t.”
She moves to the next tart shell without looking up. “I have a job to do. I’ll plate. I’ll leave. You don’t have to stand here.”
“I’m not here to babysit you.”
She fits another tart onto the silver tier. “Then why are you standing here?”
I have no answer I can say out loud.
I’m trying to figure out how to protect her from my father. This isn’t a coincidence. He did this on purpose.
But I’m too late.
Footsteps sound behind me, slow on the marble.
Then there’s my father’s voice. “Theodore.”
Charles Sawyer is in a three-piece suit, charcoal with the faintest pinstripe. Silver hair combed neatly. Green eyes assessing. He smiles at Bianca warmly.
Everything about this is fake. My father is not warm. My father is cold and calculating.
He extends his hand toward Bianca, and he doesn’t look at me.
“Miss Donovan. Charles Sawyer. I have heard a great deal about you.”
She takes his hand. To her credit, she doesn’t flinch. “Mr. Sawyer.”
“Charles, please.”
She withdraws her hand quickly, then catches herself and slows the motion. “Charles. Thank you for the opportunity to cater your event.”
Damn, she’s good. She’s angry, but she manages to maintain her professionalism.
He moves a half step closer to the island. “I hope the kitchen is suiting you.”
“It’s beautiful.”
My father places a fingertip on the marble. “I hear you’re a second-generation baker. Your mother was also a baker, correct?”
She picks up the tart shell. “Yes. She ran the bakery, and she taught me everything. She died about two years ago.”
“I’m so sorry,” my father says.
“Thank you.”
“And how lovely that you have kept her work alive.” He moves to the island, near enough to admire what she is doing without crowding her. The signet ring catches the kitchen light. “Tell me about these.”
She tells him. The rosemary olive oil cake. The honey lavender cupcake. The tarts. She walks him through the dessert display.
The smile is my father’s strategy. He’s been working on that smile since before I was born. He disarms the room. He gets people to like him, to trust him, to want to keep talking, and then he asks the question they shouldn’t answer. They answer anyway, because he seems so kind.
It is not working on her. Her voice hasn’t warmed. She is being respectful, but she remains guarded.
“It seems we already have a connection before today,” he says mildly. “At the gala for the foundation my late wife started.”
“Yes, we have that connection.” She looks up from the tart shell. “Your wife created a beautiful foundation. Helping impoverished children is a wonderful cause.”
“My eldest is, of course, mortified about that evening.” His green eyes flick to me. “Aren’t you, Theodore?”
I don’t respond. He smiles like I have.
“And how kind of you,” he continues, returning to her, “to set that unfortunate misunderstanding aside for tonight. It speaks well of you. Doesn’t it speak well of her, Theodore?”
“It does,” I make myself say.
“Yes. We are fortunate to have you here.” He turns the signet ring half a degree on his finger, then he turns to me. “Theodore, we have two lovely young women joining us at the table tonight. The kind of evening one looks forward to, with sons of a certain age.”
He is telling me, in front of her, that she is not an option. But his words aren’t only for me. They’re for her, too. Someone must have seen us together last week at the charity auction.
The kind of women, he means, who belong in this house. The kind he chose. The kind he expects his sons to choose in return. My father always does it this way in public. Hiding cruelty behind pleasantness.
He looks back at Bianca.
Bianca gives him a tight smile, knowing that he is looking for her response. “How nice for your sons to have lovely young women to attend to tonight. You have quite the wonderful evening planned.”
He’s still smiling, still hiding contempt behind the charm. “That I do.”
She gathers herself and gives him her brightest smile. “Well, I won’t keep you. I’m sure you have plenty to do before your guests arrive.”
My father holds her gaze a beat longer than is comfortable, then turns to me. “Theodore. I want a word in the study.”
He leaves.
I look at her. She is plating again, faster than before.
“Bianca,” I start, and she doesn’t let me finish.
“Don’t, Theo. Please.” She doesn’t look up. “I have a lot of work to do tonight, and I’m going to do it. Go deal with your father. Let me work.”
“I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“I’m not doing this with you.” Her hands move on. “Please go, Theo.”
I leave her to her plating, since she asked me to.
In my father’s study, I say nothing useful.
He briefs me on the senator. He briefs me on the senator’s daughter. He briefs me on the second young woman, whose family owns a shipping company we’ve been trying to acquire for fourteen years.
He doesn’t mention Bianca.
Then he shows me the seating chart for dinner. He has seated me to the right of the shipping heiress at the table. He placed Gideon at the senator’s daughter’s right.
I know what is expected of me. But for the first time, I have no intention of doing what my father wants.
The guests arrive in waves. The senator, and his wife, and daughter to start. The shipping family next. Board members, some important clients, and foundation donors are also in attendance.
My father greets each of them at the door in the warm baritone that only ever sounds warm to people who are not his children.
I shake hands. I make conversation about the markets. I smile at the daughter of the shipping company, who is twenty-six and pretty and well-bred. Also, unremarkable. Her mother smiles at me with the satisfaction of a woman whose daughter is being seated next to a Sawyer.
Twenty-three people in total are at my father’s dinner party, including my father, me, and Gideon.
Gideon arrives at my elbow without making a sound. I keep my eyes on the room and ask him, low, “Where’s Ander?”