The Evolution of Man

by Skye Warren

  I blink. “What?”

  “Only one billion is mine. The other half belongs to Sutton.”

  It’s like a bucket of cold water dumped over my head. “Why did you bring me here?”

  One dark eyebrow rises. “You’re the one who insisted we meet in person.”

  “And you’re the one who brought me here.”

  The long pause that follows isn’t filled with hearts and roses. He does not secretly love me, and I feel like a fool for even considering the possibility. Because he took me out to dinner? It’s really a good thing I don’t date much, because I’m terrible at it.

  “I invested in the restaurant,” he says finally. “It helps to have your take.”

  “Because I have such a refined palate?”

  “Because you were born rich,” he says, his voice flat. “You know what rich people like.”

  It takes my breath away, and I’m left staring at him with the most incredible taste on my tongue. That’s all I am to him? A rich girl with nothing better to do with my time than give him advice on his new restaurant? Meanwhile I was gullible enough to think he actually wanted to spend time with me. It isn’t right. It isn’t fair, but then Christopher Bardot has never played fair.

  The chef returns with an oyster for each of us, with a strawberry fish sauce, compressed strawberries, and coriander blossoms. It’s definitely the most beautiful oyster I’ve ever seen. Christopher is the one who takes a bite first, letting it slide into his mouth in a graceful movement. He closes his eyes, clearly enjoying the taste, and my cheeks turn warm as I realize I must have looked like this when I ate the amuse bouche—like someone having an orgasm.

  I have actually had sex with Christopher Bardot but sitting to the side in the busy kitchen of a hip restaurant, watching him make that face feels like watching something private.

  And regardless of whether he wants my rich-person opinion of the restaurant, I have no desire to sit here and be turned on by a man who doesn’t even like me.

  “The papers,” I manage to say, my voice a little hoarse. I have to clear my throat and try it again, before they come out clear enough to understand. “Where are the papers?”

  “Try the oyster,” he says, and because I’m weak, I’m so weak, I actually do.

  I have a feeling this evening is going to crash and burn and I really want to taste the oyster. It slides onto my tongue with a burst of flavor, the strawberries almost unrecognizable this way, tart and lush and cold. It’s like a crisp bite of the ocean. Oh God. My eyes close. I’m making the face. I know I’m making the face, but I can’t stop. It’s so good.

  When I actually open my eyes again, my muscles are lax. My defenses are down. It’s like I really did have an orgasm right here in this black wooden chair with mother-of-pearl inlays along the sides. Pleasure still lingers in my body, like warm honey on the inside.

  “I didn’t bring them,” Christopher says, and it’s like another ice-water bucket.

  “Are you serious? Why not?”

  “I forgot.”

  “I don’t think you’ve forgotten anything the entire time I’ve known you. You probably have a photographic memory, don’t you? There’s no way you forgot.”

  A shrug. “Maybe.”

  “Is this a game to you?” I left my mother in the Gone with the Wind house by herself, and I know she’ll be fine without me for a few hours. But something could happen. Inevitably something will happen, and this man is playing around with my time like it’s nothing.

  “A game.” He seems to consider it seriously. “No. It’s not fun enough for a game.”

  I stand up, throwing my napkin down on the empty oyster shell. “You know what? Go ahead and mail me the papers. I don’t know why I asked to meet with you. You are worse than self-centered, Christopher. Worse than arrogant. Now you’re just downright mean.”

  It never ceases to surprise me that I tumble headfirst into holes that I’ve dug myself.

  Or in this case, tripped over a piece of concrete that I painted in peaceful protest, which caused a halt to the construction of a shiny new strip mall where an abandoned library had stood. The marble floor catches my fall, sending shocks of pain up my arms and knees.

  “Are you okay?” Avery asks, peering from the heavy plastic tarp behind me.

  “Never better,” I say, dusting my hands off. “But watch your step.”

  She glances around the large space with those wide Bambi eyes. God, no wonder Gabriel Miller went after this woman. He would have wanted her even if she hadn’t auctioned off her virginity like fresh meat in the middle of the forest. “Are you sure it’s safe to be here?”

  It’s definitely not safe. “I’m sure no one’s going to stop us. They mostly put up the barricades because people kept stealing pieces of concrete, which is crazy considering there are shelves full of old and rare books inside.”

  “The concrete was selling for so much money online,” Avery says, her tone overly reasonable. “Then there was that one chunk with Cleopatra’s eye—”

  “Can we not talk about that?”

  “The bidding got to five figures, didn’t it?”

  I glare at her. “We’re here to talk about construction plans, right?”

  She bends to examine a small piece of concrete where an inch of white paint remains. “You have to own the building before you can start construction.”

  “Oh, I own it.”

  “Christopher sold it to you?” She sounds surprised.

  It surprised me, too. Christopher Bardot might be cold and arrogant, but he has a strict moral code. Strict enough that he would never steal from my trust fund. That’s what I thought, until he made a veritable fortune selling me a pile of concrete. It makes me feel betrayed, which in turn makes me feel foolish, because I know better than to trust a man.

  “All for the low bargain price of two billion dollars.”

  Her mouth drops open. “What?”

  My smile feels grim. “That’s what it’s worth now. I had independent appraisers confirm it. It’s definitely the most expensive pile of rubble I’ve ever seen.”

  We cross the room together in silence—hers thoughtful, mine full of useless frustration. Losing the money doesn’t bother me. The fact that Christopher demanded it does.

  The heavy plastic sheeting blocks out most of the light from the front, leaving only the broken stained-glass atrium shining down on us. There are still sheets of paper in stacks on the circular desk. Still a few books stacked haphazardly. Still the wall—carved with industrious people mingling with the four elements.

  “It’s beautiful,” Avery breathes.

  Her taste runs more to Hellenic art, but I knew she’d appreciate the wall. Beautiful, even though it has a huge crack in the middle. It looks like a wound in flesh, a gash made from some giant from one of her Greek myths wielding an ancient weapon.

  Twenty feet of butternut wood carvings climb the back of the library. It feels like a single, impossibly large slab of wood even though it’s constructed like puzzle pieces—stylized waves jutting against wheat-filled plains, an angled man wielding an ax set against a bursting sunrise. It fits together as if drawn in smooth strokes, made from imagination and sheer will instead of months of painstaking labor.

  I touch the tip of a wood-made ocean wave, almost a caress. “This piece belongs to the community. The way they work and break and hope. You can feel its heart here.”

  “I can feel it beating,” she says, awed.

  “It was about two minutes and twenty feet from being a pile of splinters.”

  She traces a constellation with her forefinger. “God. Lucky you were here, then. I don’t think anyone could have saved it except you. You are the only one crazy enough to do it.”

  Her voice has reverence, taking the sting out of the observation. And I understand where she’s coming from. I’m the one who buys a multi-million dollar antebellum mansion because my mother likes the columns in the front. I’m the one who stages a protest on the steps o
f an old library. That’s Harper, someone you can count on to be over the top.

  I glance toward the front of the library, where most of the wall and glass doors have crumbled. The wrecking ball didn’t reach all the way to the back wall, but it still managed to harm it. It was sold as a teardown property, only useful for the land to rebuild something new.

  My over-the-top ideas aren’t always practical.

  “So far I haven’t found a construction company willing to take on the project. They’re insisting the only thing to do is bulldoze it.”

  The building itself seems to shudder, on the verge of collapse. It wasn’t like this when I left it six months ago, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The purchase price is based on razing the library to the ground, on turning the carvings into sawdust. This is my chance to save it.

  The men in these carvings build and lift and break. They don’t bow to the land, but they’re yoked to it all the same, strong and somehow surrendered. These men in their newsboy caps and heavy boots shouldn’t be familiar, but they are. The potent drive inside them that makes them human, the limitless thirst for something more.

  “I can’t stop looking at it,” she says, her gaze lifted.

  God, they shouldn’t remind me of modern-day men with their suits and their cunning. Their limitless ambition for things they weren’t born with. They shouldn’t soften me toward Christopher Bardot, because that would make me vulnerable. Again.

  I touch the wide gouge, a sympathetic throb of pain in my finger. “It’s a survivor.”

  She nods as if I’ve said something profound. “You’re right, but it’s more than that. Survival is about staying the same. This piece is about yearning.”

  My stomach clenches, because it’s useless to yearn. Didn’t I learn that after watching Daddy marry over and over while my mother struggled to pay the rent?

  Didn’t I learn that after wanting two men and ending up alone?

  She’s right though. The way the men rise above their struggles, the way they reach even higher. It’s a monument to longing, which is terrifying, because that can only lead to disappointment.

  I snatch my hand back, determined to hide the strange tightening in my chest.

  Walking through a high archway, I step deeper into the library. All the construction people I talked to seemed to agree: the part of the building with the books is the most stable. Unfortunately they also agree that the main hall, the part with the gorgeous stained-glass dome at the top, the priceless carved wall, the rare blue-gold marble mosaic floor, is not.

  Avery gasps when she follows me. It’s an impressive sight, all this history. All these stories. How many hands turned the pages? How many questions were answered?

  She runs her fingers across the spines. “Fairy tales,” she moans, sounding almost orgasmic. “There’s a whole section for fairy tales. I could die right here.”

  “Please don’t. Gabriel would definitely kill me.”

  Dust rises in the air as she pulls a faded clothbound book from the shelf. “Once upon a time, there was a miller who had a beautiful daughter,” she reads, her forefinger on the yellowed page. “He told the king his daughter could spin straw into gold.”

  “What I never understood about this story is, why would he lie? It seems like something that would be easy enough to verify. Didn’t he know that would come next?”

  She shrugs. “It’s not really about the miller. The story is about his daughter.”

  “The one who can’t spin straw into gold.”

  A sudden grin. “That’s kind of what you did, isn’t it? Turned those pieces of concrete and splashes of paint into gold. That’s pretty magical of you, miller’s daughter.”

  I groan. “You aren’t going to let that go, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “The only reason my protest was such big news is because Christopher tried to tear down the library. He’s the one who gave me the cause to protest.”

  “Like Rumpelstiltskin,” she says, her tone musing. “She could only do it with his help.”

  A horrible thought occurs to me. A horrible, terrible, painful thought. One that makes my limbs turn cold. “Oh my God, did he do it on purpose? Was that his plan all along?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He knew I would stage the protest and then the land would be worth more, which would give him way more profit and a lot faster than actually developing it.” Christopher made more money this way than his stupid mall—and he made it a lot faster, too.

  She looks dubious. “That would be really… diabolical.”

  “Exactly. He’s so diabolical. If we look up the word ‘diabolical’ in one of the old dictionaries here, there will be Christopher’s face with his dark eyes and cheekbones.”

  “His cheekbones.” She snorts. “I don’t know if he did it on purpose, but if he did… well, it’s interesting that he knows you that well. Well enough to predict what you’d do.”

  Interesting? No, it’s terrible. Because I don’t know that man at all. I never thought he’d use me. I believed him when he said he wanted to build that shiny new mall. Believed him when he said he planned to tear down the library.

  And I believed him when he said he wouldn’t hurt me.

  “Do you really think he did it on purpose?” Avery asks softly, her soft gaze on the old ink. “It would have been easier to just siphon money out of your trust fund.”

  I wrap my arms around myself. Is it possible? Avery’s gaze is warm and concerned. The certainty settles deep inside me, a knot in my stomach. Yes, it’s very possible. Likely, even.

  He used me. He predicted what I would do.

  “Christopher isn’t the kind of man who wants things easy. He would have considered that cheating. But manipulating people? He considers that fair game. He knows I’ve protested before. Only this time I had connections and a social media platform. And voila!”

  “He isn’t your father,” Avery says softly.

  “Isn’t he?” Another man who values money over kindness, who places his ambition ahead of the women in his life. “He could have sold me the library for what they paid for it. He could have doubled the sale price and still made a nice profit.”

  The realization puts a stop to whatever fantasy I’d been spinning in my head about Christopher Bardot suddenly realizing he were in love with me. I kind of wish we were at Koi again, just so I could throw another oyster shell in his face.

  After I’ve swallowed what’s inside of course. It was too delicious to waste.

  Her nose scrunches. “It is kind of mean.”

  A shiver runs through me, because that’s what I called him last night. Mean. Has he crossed the same Rubicon that my father did? Or was Christopher always this way, with me too wide-eyed infatuated to know it? “How are you and Gabriel?” I ask because I need to hear something positive. There’s a rich and ambitious man who doesn’t think loving someone makes him weak. Those two are crazy in love, despite their wicked beginning—or maybe because of it.

  “We’re good.” She closes the book of fairy tales and walks back into the main hall.

  Surprise freezes me where I stand. It takes me a full minute to follow her and demand an explanation. “Good. Good? What happened to I love Gabriel, he’s the best, and he gives me so many orgasms?”

  A blush darkens her cheeks. “Well, there are still orgasms.”

  “Does he snore?” I ask sympathetically.

  “What? No.”

  “Don’t tell me he forgot your anniversary.”

  “It’s not that.” A notch forms between her eyebrows. “At least I don’t think so. I’m pretty bad with dates actually. It’s just that he’s been working so much lately. And traveling a lot.”

  Unease moves through my stomach. “I thought he came with you to Tanglewood.”

  She’s a graduate student at Smith College, working toward her doctorate, only here at the tail end of summer break. He’s a businessman with international investments. There are natural s
truggles to them being together, but they always seemed ridiculously happy. Always kissing and snuggling—and Gabriel is not the natural snuggling type.

  He can’t seem to help himself with Avery. Or at least he couldn’t before.

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” she says in a too-bright voice. “Besides, if he were here, he never would have let me come to the library. This place looks like it’s about to fall down on our heads.”

  A bird flies in through the atrium above us, disturbing a few shards of the stained-glass window that used to protect us. They fall down with a long dive to the ground, landing in a pile of other rubble. Dust follows it down in a light flurry of exclamation. No, the building hasn’t gone unscathed from the wrecking ball. There are cracks in the very heart of it.

  In fifth grade my friend had a birthday party at her family’s country house, where the stables were climate-controlled and the horses had elaborate braids in their manes. That place bears no resemblance to the massive stable behind the house, its doors wide open to welcome the sun, the packed ground somehow more comfortable than a glossy synthetic flooring. Horses stand in clean bays, watching me with lazy curiosity from their sideways eyes.

  Another set of wide-open doors leads me back outside.

  Paddocks link across the land as far as the eye can see, connected by high rustic wood gates and bristling with a kind of raw potential. This is a place where nature still holds her power, where man tests himself against her and sometimes loses.

  A glint of light off metal. My gaze snaps to a large paddock at the base of a hill. I’m drawn toward it as if pulled by an invisible string, the thread made of reluctant excitement and a base female instinct to seek strength.

  There’s a horse in the middle of the paddock, its body held taut, the stomp of its foreleg nervous. A pale blonde and white dappled coat makes her look otherworldly. I don’t have experience with horses beyond birthday parties and Renaissance fair pony rides, but there’s no doubt in my mind that this is still a wild animal—which means the man who wants to tame her is in danger. A free spirit doesn’t want to be broken.