Holt’s Little Rock penthouse is understated. The living space is huge, but the walls are smooth and eggshell white without any art deco detailing or even a hint of crown molding. The dark wood floors are tastefully covered by silver-toned rugs only a few shades lighter than the modern slate gray furniture distributed throughout the front room. Also, this apartment doesn’t smell like a beer distillery and a weed dispensary decided to hook up. In fact, if someone were to ask me what fall smells like, I might point to the crisp air gently blowing through a partially open window in the living room.
“Your place is very nice,” I tell Holt for reasons that go way beyond being polite.
“Thank you,” he replies, coming to stand next to me by the room’s huge floor-to-ceiling picture window. “These days, I travel to Arkansas more than I used to, so I am glad I chose this place back when I was a junior executive. Once my CEO position becomes official, I’ll most likely buy a place downriver where I can stay with my family. Or, I might end up at Johnson Ranch. That’s where my father lives. We’ll see.”
And by “we’ll,” he clearly means he and whoever he chooses to grow his family with. Someone who isn’t me, I remind myself.
And maybe that’s why I ask, “Are you still afraid of turning into your father?”
Holt stiffens, and I wonder if he doesn’t remember our conversation from all those years ago. But he says, “Being my father isn’t so bad. It means I won’t get hurt. Won’t get too emotional. Like my mom. Or Wes.”
“Is Wes like your mom?” I ask.
Another pause. This time it is so long, I wonder if he is going to answer. But he does eventually. “Yeah, yeah he is. He doesn’t look that much like her, but his ‘happy one moment, raging the next’ thing? That’s Mom, for sure.”
“Is that why—?” I stop halfway through the question realizing I am dangerously close to breaking the cardinal rule of childcare workers everywhere. Never comment on how a parent is doing his or her job.
But Holt insists. “Is that why what?” he asks.
I clamp my lips tightly, not wanting to answer. Then again, this is one of the few areas where I can be completely honest with him. “Well, I notice you don’t spend much time with Wes. I know you were raised in much the same fashion. With nannies, a distant father, and an unreliable mother. But Wes…he’s in a difficult place right now, and I think he needs more time with you than you have been giving him.”
Holt blinks as if I reached over and slapped him. “You expect me to drop everything at work? Put a multibillion-dollar corporation on hold so I can dispense hugs and tell my son I know he’s doing the best he can or some shit like that?”
“No, Holt,” I answer with more patience than I feel. “It does not have to be an either/or situation. You can be there for your son without losing your business.”
“How?” he asks, biting out the word.
My hackles rise…only to lower right back down when I see his hunched shoulders and pressed lips. It is a familiar expression. One I have seen on Wes and Barron—when they are feeling frustrated or embarrassed and on the verge of shutting down because they don’t know how to navigate their feelings…
“Oh, you are serious!” I say out loud.
“If by serious you mean not trying to be a dick to my son like my father was to me, then yeah,” he answers, tight-jawed. “I’m dead serious.”
My heart melts because, “Wanting to be better is the first—really, the most important--step, Holt. You do not have to become the perfect parent overnight. In fact, I do not believe such a parent exists. But it is possible for you to become the parent your son needs you to be. Just start by talking to him about his mother’s death.”
Holt grimaces. “Actually... her death wasn’t nearly as hard on me as it was on him. Tish and I—we weren’t exactly happy. In fact, we were never happy, but it was worse after Wes was born. I think motherhood wasn’t what Tish expected…or marriage. I was remote…I worked too much. She started drinking more. Too much. Once, she told me she was trying to wait out the ten-year clause on our pre-nup, but she couldn’t take it anymore. She was drunk at the time, but still…”
Holt’s eyes shift back to the river as he trails off. I think about how I started to feel about the things he said to me when he was drunk or high or both over the course of our relationship. That there was some level of truth to everything he said. That he truly did love me. That he truly could not live without me. That I really was the best thing that had ever happened to him. That he really did want to marry me and be with me forever.
But this isn’t about Holt and me. It’s about Holt and his son.
“Maybe you didn’t have a love relationship with her like Wes did. But her death was tragic and sudden, similar to what happened with your mother. You have more in common with Wes than you think.”
His lip twists downward, but I can tell he is really giving some thought to what I’ve said. “How did you handle this?” he eventually asks me. “How did you talk to Barron about your sister? About the death of his birth-mother?”
A sharp knock sounds at the front door before I can say anything.
Holt calls, “Come in,” over his shoulder.
Yahto, who arrived in Little Rock a few days before us to prepare the apartment and meet us at the airport, enters rolling our suitcases behind him.
“Put those in the master,” Holt says.
If Yahto has any questions about why Holt is sharing a room with the woman he all but forced on a plane to Connecticut back in the August, it doesn’t show on his large, square face. When he returns, he nods and says he will be in the penthouse lobby if we need anything.
“Give me a minute,” Holt says after Yahto leaves. “I’m going to change out of my suit.”
He disappears down a hallway that must lead to the bedroom. I almost follow, curious about the rest of the apartment. But then I think about what he said to me in his office. The way his eyes burned. “You’ll be sharing a room and a bed with me.”
On second thought, I decide to stay right where I am. Next to the beautiful view. Where it’s safe. For now.
Still, my heart jumps its tracks when Holt reappears a few minutes later. He has changed out of his usual dress suit into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Much like what he wore when we lived together the first time.
But he is so different now. His messy blond hair and unkempt beard are gone. And his formerly slender arms are roped with bulky muscle, hinting at a work-out schedule that must go well beyond the “wake, bake, drop down and do a few push-ups” one Holt did back in the day. He’s fit and healthy, with focused eyes that, according to him, will forevermore remain clear of the fog I remember so well.
Tell him, the guilt pleads with me. You have to tell him! All the secrets. Right now.
“You hungry yet?” he asks.
I swallow, my heart swinging back and forth like a pendulum before I finally answer with a simple, “Yes.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
My yes sounds choked and wheezy, even to my ears. I clear my throat and try again. “Yes. The risotto on the flight was delicious. But I could definitely eat again.”
“Good. I had Yahto get us a few things. They’re in the fridge.”
“Great,” I say, “Give me a few minutes and I’ll see what I can pull together.”
I head in the direction of the gray-on-silver open plan kitchen at the front of the apartment, grateful to have something to distract me from the guilty mongoose running circles in my head.
But Holt moves in front of me before I can take another step. “No, not this time.”
“Wait. What do you mean ‘not this time?’” I ask, scrunching my face.
“I’m making dinner,” he answers. He guides me over to one of the tall stools on the other side of the kitchen island. “You sit here.”
“You are going to cook,” I repeat as I watch him take out all sorts of pots and pans and even a skillet from the cabinets.
“Yes. Yes, I a
m,” he answers, stepping over to the refrigerator.
“Do you even know how to cook?” I ask.
“Yeah, I took a basics course.”
My mouth falls open because the Holt I used to know would not have even known how to boil water. “When did you do that?” I ask with genuine curiosity.
He sets a package wrapped in brown butcher paper on the counter beside the electric stove. “Yesterday,” he admits with a sheepish grin.
“Okaaaay,” I say slowly after several shocked moments. Then I sit down, deciding I need to see this to believe it.
My mind abruptly changes when he unwraps the brown butcher paper. “Is that…?” I shake my head, barely able to believe what I am looking at. It is something I would have to go all the way to New York or Hartford to get—and only for special occasions, like Thanksgiving or Easter Sunday. “Holt, is that goat?”
“Yep,” he answers, pulling his phone out of his back pocket and setting it down on the counter beside the stove. “According to all the cooking websites, curried goat is a dish everyone will like.”
“Hold on. You are making curry goat?!” The question explodes out of my mouth in the same tone I might use if he said he had turned his cell phone into a homemade bomb.
“I have the recipe right here. Dinner will be ready in an hour…or 90 minutes tops… Hey, what are you doing? Give that back!” he demands when I snatch his phone off the counter.
“Oh, wow. Now what kind of foolery is this?” I ask, scanning the recipe. “The cook time here is much too short. You want it falling off the bone, mon. And just a tablespoon of olive oil, they’re saying? No, mon. You want vegetable oil and a lot more than that.”
Holt rolls his eyes but says, “Fine, you tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
I rush around to his side of the stove before he changes his mind. “Curry goat isn’t a thing that can be properly conveyed with a recipe,” I explain, my voice sounding as stern as my mother’s. “You have to see it. I’ll show you.”
“You’ll show me,” he repeats with a chuckle.
A chuckle that makes me go completely still.
“What’s wrong?” he asks when I freeze. “You don’t think I can do it?”
“No, I know you can because I’m going to show you how to do it step-by-step,” I reply with an arrogant shake of my head. “It’s just…I haven’t heard you laugh. In a long time.”
Now it’s his turn to pause, his smile slipping off his face like water. “I guess it’s been a while since I felt like laughing,” he answers.
And there it is again. The past. Radiating between us like the 50s-era furnace at my parents’ house. Rattling and loud and too dangerous to touch once it has been turned on.
Chapter Thirty-Five
HOLT
We prepare the goat together. Sylvie gives me the instructions without consulting my phone recipe once. But we hit a snag after we put the goat on to simmer and I tell Sylvie I’m serving a salad as the side.
“Oh, Holt! I try to be open minded to other cultures after working so long in hotels,” she tells me, pressing her knuckles into her bottom lip. “I can accept the gays, and the Jewish who don’t know Jesus, and the Midwesterners who ask me if Hedonism is open on Sundays. But what I cannot accept is eating curry goat without a proper side.”
“Wait, salad isn’t a proper side?” I ask.
Sylvie looks at me like I have punched a puppy in the face right in front of her. “No, it is most definitely not,” she answers with the gravity of an oncologist giving a patient the bad news.
I tilt my head.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Because I am not drunk. And I am not high. But here it is again. The same joyous feeling that hit me when I first met her. The conviction that she is an angel. A goddess. Someone I can’t lose. Yet she still thinks this weekend is about saying goodbye, and I can’t show my hand to her. Not yet, anyway.
Soon, I promise myself, even as I shake my head and tell her to draft a list of everything we need to make a proper side—“Rice and peas,” she says, grabbing my phone to text Yahto herself.
We spend the next two hours tending to the curried goat, making my salad, and what turns out to be a dirty rice and red beans combo, similar to what they serve in New Orleans.
It’s funny. We spent hours together that one summer. Nearly every minute on the weekends. Talking and fucking then fucking some more with eating being that thing we did in-between. I couldn’t stop touching her, couldn’t get enough of her. But as it turns out, cooking together feels far more intimate than any of the other stuff we ever did.
And for the first time since Sylvie re-entered my life, I feel like a grown-up with her. A man. A father. Not just the bitter boy she left behind.
Chapter Thirty-Six
SYLVIE
“This is not too bad, mon!” I tell Holt with a grin after taking my first bite of our jointly prepared goat. “You must have had a pretty good teacher, yeah?”
“Yeah, I did,” he agrees with another rare chuckle.
“You should try beef patties next,” I tell him. “Those are easier for people who need recipes. More like baking.”
“Those are the things you used to make with the dough. Like Jamaican empanadas, right?”
“Right,” I say, not surprised he remembers. I used to make a batch in the evenings before bed and find them gone by the time I got home from work. Beef patties are perfect for a guy with a semi-permanent case of the munchies. “Though my Aunt Judith calls empanadas ‘Mexican beef patties,’ so…”
The conversation continues like that. Easy breezy until it is time to clear the dishes. When I rise to gather our plates and take them back into the kitchen, he jumps up and says, “No, let me.”
“Whoa! Did you take a basic course in loading dishwashers, too?” I ask, craning my head to watch him scrape the dishes and place them in neat rows in the dishwasher.
“No, I’m sort of winging it,” he answers, glancing over his shoulder at me. “How am I doing?”
“Fine. But why all this now?”
Holt stiffens and doesn’t meet my eyes when he says, “I’m embarrassed I didn’t know how to do any of these things before. I let you take care of me ten years ago, and I never once tried to take care of you.”
I felt relaxed and happy during dinner, but this recent admission of his makes my heart pound with the memory of that night…
Holt decided to ask his friends over. Supposedly to watch some soccer game, but in reality he plans to tell them about our marriage and invite them to walk to the courthouse with us. It’s down Church, less than a two-minute walk from Holt’s place.
But I don’t want to spring this on his friends in the middle of the day when they probably haven’t eaten. So though Holt told Javon to make reservations at some fancy restaurant after our courthouse visit, I make jerk chicken drummettes, plantains, beef patties, and set out chips, dip, and cut vegetables on the dining room table. I also clean the apartment and let Holt give me money to buy myself a white dress. Not a fancy wedding one, but a pretty cotton number with eyelet embroidery, a flared, tiered skirt, and sleeveless tie-top shoulders that my mother never would have abided when I lived under her roof.
I want to impress his friends, but things start to go wrong from the beginning. Holt is four beers in before Javon buzzes up to say Luca and Zahir, who room together in New York, are on the elevator and headed our way.
I know both of his best friends… sort of.
Zahir was Asir’s tall, chisel-jawed brother. I clearly remember how he was the target of Prin’s angry rant the night we drove back to Hartford from New Haven.
As for Luca? Well, he might not have a naked girl bouncing on his lap, but it would difficult to forget a face as gorgeous as his. For his part, he has no recollection of me at all, and greets me with a distracted chin lift and a, “Hey, what’s what?” after Holt introduces me.
I am surprised to discover these are Holt’s be
st friends. But I am determined to “be cool” as Prin would say.
“Hey…” I begin by way of a greeting. Only to trail off in disbelief.
See, though my parents tried to keep me as cloistered as possible from the corner activity in our neighborhood, I had witnessed enough drug deals go down to recognize what is going on when Luca clasps hands with Holt before bro-hugging him at the door.
My suspicions are confirmed when Holt vanishes into the back of the apartment without another word, leaving me to awkwardly escort his guests to the table where I’ve set up the food and offer them drinks.
Things might not have been so bad if Luca showed more interest in the spread I prepared for them and less in me.
“So, you’re the girl who’s been keeping Holt too busy to throw parties,” he says following me to the kitchen when I fetch him a beer and a Perrier for Zahir.
I am not sure how to respond so I say nothing. Instead, I reach into the fridge and bring out a cold bottle of Red Stripe and a can of Perrier.
But Luca doesn’t move, even after I hand him the beer. “Tell me, how much is Holt paying you?”
I blink, not understanding his question. Luca looks at me quizzically. “Wait. You telling me he’s not paying you?”
“I am not telling you anything,” I answer honestly. “I’m not a hooker.”
And that is when it happens. A dark cloud passes over Luca’s affable expression, as if by not charging his friend a fee, I have vexed him more.
I decide not to wait for a follow-up question. “Excuse me,” I say, pushing past him and into the dining room to hand Zahir his drink.
Zahir takes the Perrier with a terse, “Thank you.” He doesn’t ask any nosy questions, but his eyes are as suspicious as Luca’s as he looks my inexpensive white dress up and down.
Normally, I would take the time to pour their drinks into a glass. But I have a very bad feeling about this. About them. And though I spent all afternoon preparing the appetizers, I decide to stay with Holt in the back until it’s time to announce why he really invited his friends here.
Ruthless Tycoons: The Complete Series (Ruthless Billionaires Book 3) Page 20