Chapter 18 #2
The spaghetti started to stick, and I stirred the pot again. The sauce was thick and lumpy and smelled so good that my stomach rumbled. I didn’t want to stop him talking, but the sun was hammering down, and Xavier didn’t have a hat. He’d be burned to a crisp in minutes.
I lifted the pot off the fire. “Food’s ready. Come on, let’s get out of the sun.”
“Sounds good.” He stood and dusted his hands on his butt.
“Grab two chairs and bring them out to the verandah, I can’t stand looking at that bullshit inside.”
He strode up the stairs, and I followed him with the pot.
As he brought out the chairs and the table, I felt an odd shift in my chest. The men I worked with either ignored my directions or pushed back on them. Xavier just got on with it.
It was deeply unsettling how much I liked that. And how much I liked him.
As I grabbed the spoon and tin cup from inside, he took the jug to the water tank to refill.
We were operating like a team, which was both useful and scaring the crap out of me.
We sat side by side in the verandah’s shade, overlooking the blackened land. The sun shifted slowly overhead, and the afternoon breeze moved through the gum leaves, carrying faint smells of smoke.
I held out the pot and spoon. "The expiry date burned off the can. Your turn to test it first."
He looked at the pot, then at me. "And if I keel over?"
"Then I'll know not to eat it."
He chuckled, then took a bite. Chewed. Considered it with an expression like he was at one of those fancy wine tastings. Then he nodded. "Not bad."
"Bet you've never eaten canned spaghetti before."
He frowned like he was genuinely checking his memory. "Can't say that I have."
"Really? You had to think about that?"
"Yes, actually, I did."
I frowned at him and let it go. There were bigger questions sitting between us than his history with canned food.
We passed the pot between us, sharing the spoon, sharing the one tin cup without discussion, watching a pair of pink-and-gray galahs peck through the ash at the edge of the burn line.
It was strange. I barely knew this man, but sitting here with him felt easy in a way I couldn't explain and didn't entirely trust.
No one made me feel like that. Not even my brothers. With them, I was always proving something, always pushing back, always one step away from having to justify myself. With Xavier, I could be me.
I wasn't sure whether that was genuine or just part of my weird fascination with him.
The view across the paddock was brutal in the stark sunshine.
What had been shades of green and gold was now a black and gray moonscape, dotted with the occasional skeletal trunk still standing, and a few shrubs that had miraculously survived the flames.
Further out, past the burn line, the long green grass swayed in the afternoon breeze.
I poured the last of the water into the tin cup and handed it to him. "So. You were talking about your mom."
In the distance, a wedge-tailed eagle cried as it circled wide over the paddock.
"Yeah." He rubbed his jaw. "I asked her how long she’d known Dominic wasn't my father."
"And?"
"She kept spinning the same line. Everything she did, she did for me." His jaw tightened. "Took a while to get past that."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes fixed beyond the verandah.
"She claimed she'd genuinely believed I was Dominic's son. Said it wasn't until I was five or six that she started wondering."
"What tipped her off?"
He looked sideways at me. "My eyes, apparently."
I studied them. Incredibly blue, like the sky just after dawn. I thought about Frank's eyes. Tried to make the connection between them. My stomach twisted. It wasn't Frank's eyes I saw, it was Declan's and Kayden's. Oh God, could he really be a Branson?
Forcing down that thought, I said, "I don't see the resemblance to Frank's eyes.” It wasn’t a lie.
He shrugged. "It may have been that my eyes didn’t look anything like Dominic's. His eyes are dark as hell." His mouth pressed flat. "Like his personality."
I raised my eyebrows, but kept my mouth shut.
"Mom did a DNA test." He paused. "When I was eight."
Eight years old? "Shit. So she’s known for decades."
"Yeah, but she never told anyone." He set the mug on his knee.
I stared out at the ash. At least his mother's lies had come from fear. Frank's had come from cruelty and a need for control. “What about Dominic?” I asked. “Didn’t he suspect?”
“No.”
“So your mother eventually admitted to having an affair with Frank.”
“She did.”
“And your mom is still with your father? I mean, Dominic?”
“Yes. She never told him about the affair, or that I wasn’t his.”
“That’s a long time to keep those secrets.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not a secret anymore.”
I looked away. That kind of pain was hard to witness.
He turned the mug in his hands and stared at a bunch of magpies in the paddock that were pecking at the singed grass, probably having a barbecued insect feast.
“But what was your mom even doing here?” I asked. “I mean, we don’t get a lot of visitors, and no offense, we certainly don’t get people like you.”
“Like me?” His brows thumped together.
“Yeah, you know. City folk. Manicured hands and fancy white shoes.”
“They’re not white anymore.” He nodded at his shoes, which were still sitting in the sun.
“Nope. Their formal days are over.”
He chuckled. “I never liked those shoes, anyway.”
I scrunched my nose. “So why the hell did you wear them?”
He shook his head, and scowling, looked down at his hands. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Cassidy.”
“Yeah. No shit. I only met you yesterday. Was that just yesterday?”
He huffed. “Yep. We’ve crammed a lot into twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll say.”
The wind picked up slightly, and the brittle grass rasped like sandpaper as it moved.
“So, come on …” I rolled my hand. “The suspense is killing me. Why was your mother here?”
“Mom and Dad came to Koolaroo to invest in the land.”
“Ahhh, sorry, but that’s bullshit.” I released a harsh laugh. “Dad never sold any land.”
He raised his eyebrows. “The deal never went through.”
“There was never a deal, Xavier. Dad would never sell Koolaroo, not even a portion.”
“Maybe Frank didn’t tell you everything.” He nodded toward the open doorway.
I groaned. “Okay, I’ll bite, so they came to Koolaroo to maybe buy something .” I waggled my head at him. “And according to your mom, she slept with Frank. That creeps me out, by the way. I mean, have you seen him? He looks like a dried-up boot.”
Xavier screwed up his face. “No, I haven’t seen him. And thanks for that visual. But this happened decades ago. He was younger then.”
“Yeah, and couldn’t keep his fucking dick in his pants.”
He squinted at me.
Jumping in before he asked me to elaborate, I said, “Why did your mom do that to Dominic anyway? They were married at the time, right?”
"Yep, but Dominic is a controlling asshole. Always has been. Mom said he was suffocating her, controlling her, and that she'd been planning to leave for years. When the trip to Australia came up, she decided it was her chance to get away.”
I knew that desire … to run away.
“But Mom didn’t have money of her own. She grew up poor and had nothing in her name. Everything was his. The house, the accounts, every card in her wallet. He controlled everything."
Yep. I knew that feeling, too.
"Mom needed money to disappear, so she stole it.”
I sat up straighter. “Shit. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Me neither.”
I frowned. “Why did she even tell you that? I mean, she’s confessing to being a criminal.”
“She said she’d planned to replace that cash before anyone noticed. Like that vindicated her.” His voice hardened. “For my entire life, Mom acted like she had the moral high ground.” He turned his gaze on me, and my breath hitched. “But she’s nothing but a cheat and a liar.”
Lies and cheating. My thoughts drifted to the suitcase. And the jewels. And the skeleton that was propped against the wall in the cave. That body had been placed there by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
Frank.
I knew that bastard had lied and cheated. He had many more rotten secrets.
I just hadn't known they’d come with a body count.