I Married a Billionaire: The Prodigal Son (Contemporary Romance) (12 page)

I took a deep breath and tried to gather my thoughts. I wasn’t helping things along by encouraging Daniel’s hostility towards his father.

“He does care about you, though,” I said. “Both of you. He worries about you. That’s why he’s always trying to give you advice. He’s afraid that things won’t work out.”

“And if things don’t work out, then that reflects badly on him as a father,” said Daniel, pulling a beer out of the fridge and popping the top. “God forbid.”

“Well, it’s that,” I said. “But he also doesn’t want to see you suffer. Just like any halfway-decent father.”

“Halfway is generous,” said Daniel.

“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

“Not particularly.” Daniel took a long swig. “If you just look at his behavior from a completely objective standpoint, I don’t think anyone would disagree with me.”

“Maybe not, but he’s back now. He wants a chance to redeem himself.”

“And he’s doing a bang-up job of it, sounds like.” Daniel set down his beer. “Honestly, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But my father and I have been fighting this fight ever since I was old enough to express my own opinions. If he decides to come around and actually listen to anything I have to say, and accept that he doesn’t always know best, then I won’t object to hearing him out. But with the way it sounds like things are going, I’m not interested. I have to put up with enough people I don’t like for business reasons. In my personal life, I’m not going to let myself get sucked into that.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

Nine

As I pushed open the front door to the Starra Gallery and inhaled the familiar smell of the hard wood floors and accents, I almost forgot for a moment why I was here.

It didn’t
look
like a place that was closing.

I’d decided to take Curtis up on his offer to bring some more work to sell in the upcoming liquidation. Typically - especially of late - it had taken months and months for my displayed work to sell, but now he couldn’t keep the walls filled.

With my portfolio tucked under my arm, I headed towards Curtis’s office in the back.

“…don’t be an idiot. You want my advice? Go take a walk, or paint a picture, or whatever you do for fun. Get out of this gallery and forget about it for a day or two. You’re way too absorbed in this place and it’s made you lose your perspective completely.”

Who the hell
was
this guy? The voice was brash and unfamiliar to me, and whoever it was, he wasn’t allowing Curtis much chance to respond.

“I don’t really think that’s fair,” I heard him respond, finally. Quietly. I’d never known Curtis to sound so cowed.

“Of course you don’t. It’s a criticism of you.” God, I wanted to punch this guy right in the face. That was probably the hormones talking. But maybe not.

By now, I was close enough to the doorway that they were going to notice me at any minute. I cleared my throat.

Both men turned to look at me.

Curtis seemed relieved. The other man was tall and rotund and florid, with a wireless earpiece that looked absurdly small compared to the size of his head.

“I apologize,” he said, his tone of voice instantly changing to forced politeness. “Why didn’t you tell me you had an appointment?”

His whole demeanor was different, as soon as he looked at my face. I’d seen it happen dozens of times before, and even though the change was always in my favor, it still made me vaguely sick to my stomach.

“I’m a drop-in,” I said. “I should be apologizing to you.”

“No, no, of course not. I’m sure you don’t need to make appointments.” The man was actually smiling and
walking backwards
. For fuck’s sake. “Curtis, we can finish this discussion later.”

“Holy hell,” I said, as soon as the door was closed.

“I know.” Curtis looked positively gray. He went to the little electric kettle that he kept in the back of the room, fiddling with it absently. “That’s my landlord, by the way.”

“Oh, my God. You’re kidding me.” I sat down, folding my arms across my chest. “I would have murdered him by now.”

“Well, I barely ever have to talk to him. He’s usually too busy snorting cocaine off of Eliot Spitzer’s prostitute, or whatever he does in his spare time. Of which he has plenty.”

I smiled at him as he handed me a mug of tea. “Don’t hold back, tell me how you really feel.”

“I don’t understand why he’s been up my ass lately. I already told him, I’m not renewing the lease and he’s the reason why. But he keeps hounding me. What for, I can’t figure out. It’s like he’s trying to rub my face in it.”

“It would be a shame if this place burned down accidentally after you cleared everything out,” I said, with a grin.

“Oh my God, no,” said Curtis. “Please. Don’t put any ideas in my head.”

“Well I guess that answers my question of ‘how are you doing.’” I sipped my tea. It was on the tip of my tongue to start ranting about all the insanity I was dealing with, but then I remembered it was too early to talk about the pregnancy, and Daniel and I hadn’t even discussed the possibility of talking about his dad to anyone else. As far as the rest of the world knew, Walter was still dead.

“Hanging onto sanity, you know, one day at a time,” Curtis said, echoing my exact feelings. “You know, the usual. Doing yoga, deep breathing exercises, casually considering arson.”

“I’m not bailing you out.” I set my mug down on the desk. “I don’t care if you tell them it was my idea, they’ll never believe you.”

“Of course they wouldn’t. Look at that face.” He grinned at me for a moment, then looked away, abruptly. “But back to business, I’m assuming you’ve brought me something you want me to try and unload for you?”

He flipped open my portfolio and glanced at the pieces. “Very nice,” he said, smiling, but I could tell he wasn’t really seeing them.

I couldn’t blame him. Being in this place for the first time since I’d learned about its fate, the oddly poignant sense of loss came back with a vengeance. I knew that this place wasn’t just a business for Curtis; it was a piece of his personal history. He’d originally acquired it to impress a pretty classmate, who eventually became his wife. She’d since passed away, but the walls of his office were lined with her paintings.

“How’d you end up with a landlord, anyway? I thought you bought this place.”

He smiled wryly. “Joke’s on me. Back in the nineties, I went through a little bit of a rough patch and I was having trouble paying the mortgage. So were my neighbors - back when we were all involved in the art community. Big on inspiration, not so big on actual real dollars. That guy, if you can imagine, came in as an angel of mercy and bought the whole block. He bailed us all out. He made a lot of promises, and we were so grateful to him for ‘saving’ us that we didn’t read all the fine print.”

“Well, at least now you know for next time.”

He gave me a look. “Next time? Oh, hell no. I’m too old for this as it is. There’s no way I can…no, that’s…” he laughed, sounding a little bewildered.

“You mean you’re not going to open another gallery?” The thought honestly hadn’t occurred to me. I’d just been assuming he’d start over in a better location.

“With what money?”

I raised my eyebrows a little.

“No,” he said, holding up both hands in a gesture of protest. “No, no, no. Absolutely not.”

“I didn’t even say anything,” I protested. “Look, just think it over.”

“You’re sweet,” he said. “But no. Not in a thousand years.”

“Come on,” I said, suddenly infatuated with the idea. “Daniel won’t mind, he likes it when I think of new and exciting ways to spend his money.”

Curtis was shaking his head emphatically.

“So what are you going to do, then?” I challenged him. “Don’t tell me you’re retiring.”

“With what money,” he said, in a slightly more chagrined tone than last time. “No, I’ll be fine. I still have plenty of good connections, I’ll find something to do with my time.”

This whole thing just kept getting sadder and sadder. I had a feeling that if Curtis’s wife were still alive, she’d never allow him to just roll over and accept this fate. But without her around, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

I had to cut him a certain amount of slack. He was a widower, after all.

For some reason, thoughts of Daniel’s father crept into my head. I didn’t particularly want to be in the business of making excuses for Walter, but I had to admit - I’d never lived through a tragedy like that. I couldn’t really pass judgment. Going through a massive dissociative fugue of some kind and faking one’s own death probably wasn’t one of the acceptable stages of coping with grief, but I couldn’t really sit in judgment. I tried to imagine what it would be like, watching Daniel slowly waste away and be powerless to stop it. Even the fleeting thought left me feeling cold inside.

“It’s time to face facts,” Curtis was saying. “My time in this business is over. Everything’s changing and I never made even the slightest effort to keep up. That’s nobody’s fault but mine. Even if I wanted to stay in the industry, I wouldn’t know how.”

“Jesus, okay, you want to carve ‘BROOKS WAS HERE’ in the door jamb before you go, too?” I smiled at him. “Tone down the melodrama.”

“It’s not melodrama, it’s true,” he insisted. “The art world’s moved on without me. This gallery was one last cozy little outpost for me. No more.” He finally noticed me staring at all the paintings that lined the walls. “If you’re wondering what Jill would think of this, believe me, the thought’s occurred to me. More than once. Pretty much constantly.”

“Well?” I prompted him.

He sat down, slowly, like somebody was letting all the air out of him. “I don’t know,” he said. “If I knew that, this would probably be a lot easier.” He sighed heavily, leaning his head back onto the chair. “The fact of the matter is, you know - you never really get used to making decisions without your spouse. Or doing anything. But the other stuff is easier. At first it was almost impossible to get out of bed in the morning, and turn on the coffeemaker, and start the car, knowing she was gone. There was, you know, like - this palpable absence. But eventually you just re-learn. It’s like physical therapy. Or quitting cigarettes. I mean, it hurts a thousand times worse than both of those things combined, but I think you know what I mean.

“The big decisions, though. They don’t come up often enough that you ever get used to it. I still get that urge, somewhere in the back of my mind that was never fully convinced that she’s gone.
Better check with Jill. Let’s see what Jill thinks.
And no matter how well you know somebody, or how many years you live together, you can never really be sure. What would she think? I don’t have a clue, honestly. And that’s hard to admit, you know, but there it is.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, finally, because I didn’t know what else to say.

“It’s all right, trust me,” he said, his smile coming back without much emotion behind it. “You’re lucky, you know.”

As it happens, I did.

***

“Take me to Plum, please,” I said to John as I climbed into the car.

His face registered surprise, but barely. “Of course.”

I huddled in the backseat, my mind racing and my heart aching. I’d only been to the main offices of Plum Tech a few times since I’d quit, and it always felt eerie. Like walking into a time machine.

When I stepped out of the elevator into the main office level, I stepped aside for a moment took in my surroundings. The building and the decor were the same, but I didn’t recognize a single face.

“Hello, Mrs. Thorne,” said the receptionist with a smile. I nodded, trying not to feel unnerved. Of course she recognized me. Plenty of people recognized me, these days.

I walked down the hall towards Daniel’s office. Nothing had changed; the hallway still smelled the same, the carpet still felt the same under my shoes.

And yes, his sharp-faced assistant, Alice, was still there.

She gave me a curt nod as I went to the door and pushed it open, not bothering to stop and let myself be announced.

Daniel was kneeling by the window, watering one of his plants. He’d taken his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves, and as I slowly shut the door behind me, I saw him reach out and touch the bottom of one of the leaves, laying it out over his hand and leaning down to look at it more closely.

The click of the door made him look up.

“Is something wrong?” was, of course, the first thing that came out of his mouth. In retrospect, I probably did nothing to assuage this fear when I rushed to him silently and threw my arms around him, holding him tightly, resting my head on his chest. He was frozen for a moment, but then he wrapped his arms around me. By now, I was used to the idea that returning an embrace would never be a reflex for him.

“No,” I said, finally. “I just love you, that’s all.”

“I love you too,” he said, with a mild surprise still registering in his voice.

I pulled back, looking at his face. The sort of taken-aback expression, and his overall rumpled and thrown-off appearance, was almost painfully adorable.

“I just wanted to see you,” I said. “I’m sorry if this is a bad time.”

“Yes,” he said, his face finally relaxing into a smile. “I’m very busy with my plants, as you can see.”

“Well, I’m sorry. They’re just going to have to wait.” It was a strange feeling, being in this room again - he hadn’t even rearranged the furniture since the first day I’d walked in here and he’d handed me a contract proposing a fake marriage, with his disgraced lawyer sitting uncomfortably in the corner.

“It’s nice to know some things never change,” I said.

“Are you referring to me, or the room?”

“Both. Maybe. I’m not sure.” My head was buzzing, and I could feel my throat beginning to grow dry. But this time, it wasn’t a sign of an impending panic attack. That, I was sure of. “Did you used to be different, or did I just get to know you better?”

“Both,” he said, with his arms still around my waist, holding me close. The heat of his body was making my knees feel weak. “I’m an acquired taste.”

“I don’t know,” I said, softly. “Personally, I always liked it.”