Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
T he conversation ended when Xavier quietly told me he needed time to think and went downstairs while I threw out his tea, finished my tutoring sessions for the day, and left to pick up Sofia. When we returned, we found him in the kitchen, chopping away at something while a couple of pots bubbled merrily on the stove.
“That smells good,” I said as Sofia scampered into the kitchen.
Xavier just grunted and focused more on his vegetables. His body, however, was far more relaxed than it had been just hours earlier. Cooking was more to Xavier than a job or even a passion. It had been his therapy before he ever even considered seeing an actual therapist, his means of working out whatever demons could not be held at bay.
Within an hour of chattering with Sofia, however, his fears only seemed to hang like rain clouds over me. I was still sulking on the couch while he and our daughter were having their usual grand time making dinner, which this time apparently included rice balls shaped into Sofia’s favorite animals.
“What shall it be this time, babe?” Xavier asked her. “A panda or maybe a fox? I’ve been told I look a bit like a fox with my long nose, you know.”
He wriggled said appendage in a way that made Sofia burst into giggles at the counter and made my heart skip at least two solid beats.
Shit.
I turned back to the journal I was trying to finish today, but that wasn’t helping my state of mind. Despite the fact that there had still been zero mention of Xavier’s mother or him, I couldn’t read the damn thing without seeing Kendal—and Xavier in it.
Why did I care so much? It wasn’t like I wanted Sofia or little no-name inside me to have the life of an illustrious duke’s offspring either. One summer of that had been quite enough for all of us, right?
“Ces,” Xavier called from the kitchen. “Come here and taste this. Tell me what you think.”
I shook my head. “I’m all right. I’ll just wait until it’s done.”
“No, Mama, come !” Sofia insisted. “We’re makin’ a bloody curry over here!”
I snorted at the sound of Sofia using the word “bloody,” especially to describe curry. It wasn’t particularly appetizing, but it sounded adorable with her slight lisp.
“Be nice to Mummy,” Xavier told her. “Mum’s cooking something of her own over there. She doesn’t have to do anything she don’t want.” He swept out of the kitchen holding a wood spoon, looking adorably rumpled in a slightly stained button-down and a splotched apron tied around his trim waist.
He looked like a very happy mess.
I’d never been so attracted to anyone in my life.
“We could use a neutral third party,” Xavier said as he squatted next to me and held out the spoon. “Taste it, yeah?”
Unable to take my eyes from his blues flaring with humor and pride, I obediently opened my mouth and allowed him to slip the edge of the spoon between my lips. His eyes flashed a bit darker as I sucked the golden-brown liquid off the edge.
“Good?” he asked in a voice quite a bit lower than before.
It was better than good. It was stupidly delicious, spicy sunshine in a spoon.
I couldn’t help but crack a smile. “It’s outstanding.”
Xavier’s own grin splashed across his face with the brilliance of a summer sky, and my heart gave a few extra thumps.
“Good,” he said again, this time clearly satisfied. He chewed on his lower lip, almost shyly. “I like to see you happy.” Without waiting for a reply, he swept back up, spoon and all, returning to the kitchen like a conquering champion. “Good news, peanut—curry’s a winner!”
My heart, however, was completely at a loss.
I’d been denying it for nearly a month now, telling myself that everything between us was done for. But there was no use. With such a simple little transaction, everything that had been swimming under the surface for the last several weeks broke through with the force of a breaching humpback whale.
I was still desperately in love with Xavier Parker.
And I’d just told him yesterday that it wasn’t going anywhere. I’d broken his damn heart, and now I was breaking my own.
Quickly, I ran through all the reminders of Why It Was For The Best.
There was his horrible family, who, sure, weren’t exactly in the picture. For now. The way he was married to his job. Except for the fact that since he’d been here, he was back almost every night by five, often earlier. But that probably wouldn’t last.
And sure, he was in therapy. Sure, he was trying. But his anger management issues couldn’t fix themselves overnight, and how would I really know he was making improvement until something presented itself? How would I know the next outburst wasn’t just around the corner?
I was almost convinced until I looked up and caught him grinning at Sofia all over again. He glanced at me and winked. Actually winked. Surly, never-smiling, always broody Xavier winked at me and grinned like a black-haired ray of sunshine before turning back around to stir his pot.
As if he couldn’t help himself.
As if being here with us made him happy too.
And damned if I didn’t love his smile just as much as he seemed to adore mine.
I was almost ready to give up and join them when the doorbell rang.
Xavier glanced toward the door, brow adorably wrinkled. “You get more visitors these days than the queen, Ces.”
I snorted as I got up from the couch. “That’s rich coming from a duke who was buried in courtiers last August.”
“Courtiers are for court, not a bastard heir.”
“What’s a bastard, Dad?” Sofia asked.
“Er—” Xavier looked to me, obviously in need of help.
I sighed. “It’s a mean name for someone whose parents aren’t married, lovey. Daddy shouldn’t use it.”
Sofia turned to Xavier. “But you two aren’t married.”
Xavier shrugged, darted a quick look at me, then looked back at her. “No, babe. We’re not.”
Sofia’s face scrunched as she looked between us. “Well, I’m pretty great. And I’m a bastard too.”
My jaw dropped, and I slapped my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
Xavier’s scowl quivered. “No,” he told her. “You are absolutely not a bastard. Don’t ever let anyone call you that.”
Sofia just mirrored his scowl back at him. “My teacher says you can turn mean words pretty with your actions. Like when Sissy Chapman called me a potato forehead, but I just grinned and made a song about it, and then everyone in my class wanted to be potato foreheads too.” Sofia grinned at me. “Remember that, Mama?”
I grinned at her. “I do, baby. You made potato foreheads super cute.”
“I did.” Sofia reached across the counter to grab her daddy’s hand. “We can make being a bastard awesome , Dad. We can be bastards together!”
The doorbell rang again, leaving no room for Xavier to argue.
His expression darkened, but he wasn’t able to keep a completely straight face while Sofia started singing a song about “Bastard Babes” to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
“Better see who your next admirer is, then,” he grumbled.
Because I didn’t want his good mood to vanish, I gave him a cheeky grin that, to my delight, made his own emerge all over again. Then I dashed for the door and opened it.
My stomach dropped when I saw who was standing there.
“Adam?”
Adam Klein, in a pair of nicely cut navy pants, a checked shirt, and a brown corduroy jacket that cast him somewhere between Brooklyn hipster and son of a British noblewoman, stood on my doorstep awkwardly holding a bouquet of flowers. He shifted uneasily back and forth on his toes as he looked over my shoulder, obviously expecting a tall, anger-prone duke behind me.
Which meant he had come here thinking he might see Xavier.
Which made me wonder why he had come at all, given the explicit threats he’d been given to stay out of my life.
“Hi,” I said uneasily. “Um…don’t take this the wrong way, but what in God’s name are you doing here?” After I explicitly told you to stay away from me and mine.
I looked behind him. I don’t know what I expected to see, but maybe a cavalcade? Some sort of support? Police or bobbies or something ?
“I tried to call,” he said. “But you’ve, um, blocked my number. I think. Or else you changed it.”
I didn’t respond. Yes, I’d blocked his number. He didn’t need the confirmation.
“I’m…” he sighed, then pulled off his ever-present driver’s cap to rub a hand through his brown hair. “Look, I came to tell you that someone contacted me recently, trying to find out where you lived. They wanted me to deliver something to you. A letter. Offered me a lot of money to do it, too.”
The hairs on the back of my neck flew up. “A…letter?”
“Yeah.” Adam frowned. “I don’t know who they were. It was a blocked number too. This was a few weeks ago, but I don’t know. Something about it seemed really off, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.” He glanced around me again. “You haven’t gotten anything weird in the mail, have you?”
I paused, unsure of what I should say. I didn’t trust Adam so far as I could throw him, but I couldn’t think of any way this conversation could be a set up. And if he did know something about the odd letters, I wanted him to talk to Derek, not me.
“Actually, yes,” I said. “There have been a few odd things. Hold on a second.”
I dashed back inside to grab a paper and pen, waving at Xavier and Sofia before jogging back to the door.
“This is the number of a detective friend looking into them for us,” I said as I scribbled Derek’s name and number onto the paper, then handed it to Adam. “He’s working with a PI Xavier hired to look into this stuff. Would you mind giving him a call? Since I, um, don’t have your number anymore.”
If Adam was surprised by that revelation, he didn’t show it. “Sure. Yeah, no problem. Are you…okay?”
If his concern was fake, he was a really good actor.
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
He looked me over. “How far along are you? Still not showing much.”
I put a protective hand on my belly. “Not quite four months. I’ll probably pop in another month or two.”
Adam nodded, looking slightly uncomfortable. “And Xavier is…”
“Inside,” I confirmed. “Making dinner with Sofia.”
He didn’t need more updates than that. I wasn’t interested in whatever he might carry back to his mother and, therefore, Georgina.
“Are you done spying?” I asked more bitterly than I expected. Just the idea made me angry.
Adam blinked. “I wasn’t…” He sighed. “I’ll go. Sorry to bother you. I’ll give this Derek guy a call. See you, Frankie.”
He turned to leave, shoulders slumped with dejection.
“Adam, wait,” I called before I could stop myself.
At the bottom of the stoop, he turned. “What’s up?”
“There’s one thing that’s been bothering me,” I said. “In England. Before I left. You said something about how you stayed in America to ‘watch and wait’ to see how things turned out.” I cocked my head. “Did you mean me? Since you knew…about Xavier, I mean?”
He blinked through his horn-rimmed glasses, then muttered something like “shit” to himself. “I…sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
He took a step toward me but was smart enough not to come all the way back up. “I knew who you were,” he said. “When we started working together at Carroll Elementary.”
“Yeah, I gathered,” I said. “Because you’d been stalking Xavier, or whatever.”
“No, it wasn’t that,” he said, tugging at his beard nervously. “I know it looks that way, but I honestly didn’t follow Xavier beyond keeping up with Kendal and basic curiosity. But I…yeah. I recognized you from something else.”
I reared. “From where?”
He sighed again. “I did my master’s in teaching at Columbia. I, um, was at the bar. The night you met Xavier. Total coincidence, I swear it…but, yeah. I was there.” He tipped his head, almost looking charming. “Can you blame me for not telling you? You’ve already accused me of stalking Xavier. Next, you’d think I was watching you like that.”
I frowned. Was he lying? There was no way that could be true.
And yet, I never recalled telling him I met Xavier at a bar. Or that it was near Columbia. How would he know if he hadn’t been there, for any kind of reason?
“You had on a red shirt,” Adam said. “I remember thinking you were really cute, and I was about to talk to you when this other guy stepped in. The same guy who had stolen literally everything else from me my whole life.” He shook his head. “I can’t even tell you how pissed I was. I cross a fucking ocean to get away from the guy, and Xavier Parker still managed to slide in and steal the girl.”
“He didn’t steal me,” I said. “He couldn’t have stolen me if I wasn’t yours to begin with.” Lord, I was getting tired of men talking about me like a book on one of their shelves.
Adam just shrugged. “Anyway, I swear I didn’t follow you or anyone else after that. I had no idea who you really were until you started working at Carroll Elementary. And then I remember thinking maybe my luck was changing. Maybe it was fate. You were different, of course. You’d had a kid, and you obviously weren’t looking for a relationship. But I still recognized you. I figured if I waited long enough, you’d eventually be ready.” He shrugged. “I was right. But again, just a little too late.”
I opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong. That I wouldn’t have been ready for anyone at that point. That I wasn’t sure I ever would be, and he shouldn’t have wasted his time.
But what good would that do now?
“One more question,” I said as a last thought occurred to me. “How did you know about Sofia, then? That she was his, I mean? If you weren’t, um, following Xavier’s life?”
Again, Adam looked considerably uneasy as he worried his hat between his hands. “I’m not going to lie. I didn’t know it for sure…I only suspected.” He shrugged. “But when you brought her around school, I was pretty sure. She looks just like him.”
I cocked my head. “So, did everyone in England know?”
He snorted. “If you’re asking if I told my mother, the answer is no. But it did make me wonder if one day he would be back. I might think Xavier’s an asshole, but he’s also loyal. He wouldn’t have abandoned his own kid. So yeah…I did sort of…watch and wait.”
I thought about that for a moment. It was still kind of creepy. “Why—why didn’t you ever say anything to me?”
He sighed. “Honestly? Because I really liked you. I figured I should keep tabs on you just in case it became important to the whole entail and inheritance issue. But then I got to know you. And he never came back. So I thought…maybe it could be me instead.”
I honestly wasn’t sure what to say about all of that. There was nothing I really could say to make it okay.
“Oh,” I said. “I, um, I see.”
I almost said I was sorry but found I really wasn’t. I felt bad for him. A little. But something told me giving him a round of sympathy would lead him on. And I didn’t want to do that either. Not now.
“I know it can’t go anywhere. But I also want you to know I’m not a psycho. I wasn’t stalking you, Frankie. And I’m really sorry for any discomfort I ever caused you.” Adam shrugged, and it was almost endearing. “In the end, I was just a guy sort of in love with a pretty girl he worked with.”
“In what ?”
We both turned to find Xavier towering over me. He still held the wooden spoon in his hand and had the same charmingly disheveled appearance.
I sighed. Not again. The last thing I needed was a fistfight on my doorstep. “Xavi…”
He glanced at me with more softness than I would have expected. “Dinner’s ready, Ces.” Then back at Adam with a darkened expression. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Let me guess,” Adam said, lip curling with derision. “If I don’t stop talking to her, you’ll knock my front teeth in. Or would you rather smash my nose a second time?” He touched the bridge of his nose, which did look crooked, now that I was looking.
Xavier’s jaw tightened enough that I could actually see the muscle ticking on one side. The hand without a spoon clenched into a granite fist. He obviously wanted to take Adam up on the suggestion.
But to my surprise, he just turned back to me. “Everything all right?”
Slowly, I nodded. I was expecting an explosion, but his attention was wholly on me. With less anger, more kindness. And compassion.
It was sort of like watching a horse try to waterski. Or something equally non sequitur.
“We’re good,” I said.
I quickly ran through Adam’s revelation about the letter, leaving out the rest, which I could tell him later if he really needed it. Xavier glanced at the paper in Adam’s hand, then back at me, and nodded.
“All right, then,” he said. “Adam, you need any more help with that, just call me through the restaurant. Otherwise…” He took a deep breath, exhaled, then turned to me with a half-smile. “I’ll see you inside.”
He landed a quick kiss to my stunned cheek, then left me to turn back to Adam, who watched Xavier’s receding form with something like shock on his own face.
I cleared my throat. “I’d better get in there.”
“I take it you’re back together?” Adam asked. He didn’t sound spiteful. Just sort of sad.
“I…” I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to reveal. “I don’t know what we are, to be honest. Other than expectant parents at the moment.”
“But it’s possible,” Adam pressed.
I found myself shrugging as I answered honestly. “I suppose it’s always possible with him.”
“I see.”
He backed off the steps, and I was distinctly reminded of the many descriptions in books of a nobleman surrendering a duel. I almost expected him to bow, but he didn’t.
“Thank you for the heads-up about the letter. And, um, good luck, Adam,” I told him. “With everything. Really.”
He nodded, then awkwardly handed me the flowers and raised a hand in farewell. “You too, Frankie. Have a good night.”