Chapter Eight
“A lonesome dove soars alone.”
~Claudette Dubois
The ride to the city was smooth and luxurious in her brother’s new Mercedes Maybach, but the closer they drew to the metropolitan area the more Isadora’s nerves jangled. Her mind continued to deconstruct Sawyer’s subtle hints that she not hold back where her social life was concerned.
She needed a distraction. “How are you paying for this car?”
Lucian glanced at her then back to the road. “It’s a lease.”
“You couldn’t find something less conspicuous?”
He smirked. “Why would I want to? This car tells people I’m coming.”
People often thought women were the vainer sex, but those people clearly didn’t know any Patras men.
She wanted to ask him about the “connections” he was making outside of school and how that sort of networking might affect his classes. She wanted to know why he didn’t tell her Slade was transferring or about the apartment they were planning to rent.
But she couldn’t ask any of those questions, because all that information came from Sawyer. She pursed her lips, frustrated by the tedious drawbacks of living a secret life.
“Relax, Isa. It’s a bar, not an execution,” Lucian commented, glancing at her again.
She flicked a speck of lint off her pants. “I’m not used to going out.” Her explanation was solid, but not what was truly weighing on her mind.
“Toni said you’ve been going out every week—with some friend, Susan. Do I know her?”
“No, and you’re not going to. She’s not your type.”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t hit on your friends. There are certain rules about mixing pleasure with family acquaintances. It complicates things.”
Exactly the reason she shouldn’t be sleeping with her father’s associate and Lucian’s friend’s dad.
“I know.”
“Still,” he commented, his gaze on the road. “If you wanted Susan to meet us here, I’d be fine with that. I promise I won’t hit on her.”
“You sound thirty,” she teased, amused by his arrogance that didn’t match his actual age.
“Not a kid anymore.”
“I know.” Neither was she, but sometimes she still felt as clueless as one.
When they reached the bar she was pleased to find it was much like Lucian described. A small band occupied a stage, playing in accordance with the charming ambiance. A soft amber glow spilled over each table from antique gaslights and she found the atmosphere soothing.
“Are you meeting friends here?” she asked as he glanced around on their walk toward the bar.
“No, we’re making friends.”
She excelled at the opposite.
They settled on two stools situated far enough away from the live music to talk comfortably, yet close enough to the central area where future friends might gather.
Lucian ordered a drink and looked to her expectantly.
“Um, I’ll just have a soda.”
He rolled his eyes. “Bring her an amaretto sour please.”
“What’s that? And doesn’t anyone card you?”
He laughed. “No. I look them right in the eye as if daring them to question me. Hasn’t failed me yet. And you need a drink.”
“I don’t need a drink,” she muttered. But when the bartender delivered the cocktail she was pleasantly surprised by the tart flavor. “This is actually tasty.”
The crowd shuffled and several women approached Lucian, though he never really paid much attention to any one female in particular. She believed he’d told her the truth when he said he was selective.
But despite his specific taste, he had a way of making people feel like the center of the universe. There was something magnetic about him—a gift she hadn’t inherited.
When one woman he’d been chatting with excused herself, Isadora leaned close and whispered, “She’s too old for you.”
He grinned. “She doesn’t care.”
“You should.”
“Why?”
Leaning closer, she hissed, “You’re nineteen.”
“So?”
“Lucian—”
“Isadora,” he mimicked. “Age is just a number.”
True. And who was she to talk? Her thoughts were obsessed with someone twenty years her senior.
It was interesting watching Lucian. No one ever questioned him, and older gentlemen tended to defer to him. He certainly had an alluring presence.
“That guy’s checking you out.”
She turned and flushed, her gaze colliding with a man sitting on the other side of the bar, clearly staring at her. “No, he’s not.”
“Don’t be naïve, Isadora. He is. You should go talk to him.”
“No, I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t. I’ll embarrass myself.”
He laughed. “No, you won’t. Go say hello.” He nudged her and she nearly lost her seat.
Clutching the stool, she scowled at him. “Lucian, no .”
Her brother frowned. “I don’t get you. How come you won’t talk to anyone? Don’t you get lonely?” His voice was laced with concern.
“Of course I get lonely, but I highly doubt I’ll find the answer to my problems at a jazz club.”
“You have a better shot finding the solution here than locked up in that house.”
“I’m not locked up.”
“Is this … is this about Susan?”
“What?” Breaking into a nervous sweat, she fussed with her hair, which was fine. “What does Susan have to do with anything?”
He shrugged. “I’m just saying, if you and she are … more than friends, I wouldn’t have an issue with that.”
Her face heated and her mouth slackened. “I’m not gay, Lucian. I like men.”
“Then go meet one.”
Rolling her eyes, she growled, “You’re impossible.”
“Come on, Isa. I know between now and the next time I’m home you’ll do nothing more than maybe go out to dinner or whatever you do with the mysterious Susan. Having girlfriends isn’t the same as getting a man’s attention. I worry about you. I don’t want you to sacrifice too much by taking on all the things Dad left undone.”
“I’m perfectly fine doing what I’ve been doing. I don’t mind taking care of you and Toni.”
“Well, I can take care of myself now, so maybe you should reallocate your energy. You act like you’re forty.”
“Forty’s not that old,” she snapped, her voice far too defensive.
“Christ.” He took sip of his drink, his patience waning. “I’m going to talk to that redhead over there.”
She panicked and caught his arm. “You’re leaving me?”
He stilled, giving her a confused yet assessing glance. “I’m just going over there for a few minutes. I don’t want that guy to assume I’m with you. I’ll be ten feet away. I’ll never take my eyes off you. I promise.”
“Lucian.” Her grip tightened.
“Step out of your comfort zone, Isadora. You might like the way it feels.”
Seeing she was no match for her brother, she released his sleeve and fidgeted with her cocktail napkin. The bartender refreshed her drink, swapping it out with a new one she hadn’t ordered.
“This is from the gentleman at the end of the bar.”
Confused, she stared at the drink and then glanced at the man Lucian had pointed out. He lifted his beer in a sort of casual, silent solute.
Was this something people did? She’d only been inside a handful of bars in her life. Was involving the bartender some type of modern mating ritual? Unsure how to respond to such a gesture, she lifted the glass and nodded, hoping she wasn’t subliminally agreeing to anything.
He smiled and her gaze lowered back to the bar.
She sipped her cocktail and covertly chanced glances at him, hopefully without appearing interested—but she was curious and somewhat flattered. There were no outward flaws that she noticed.
His hair was light, lighter than Sawyer’s, and his complexion was nice. He wore a blazer over a T-shirt, somehow managing to master the art of casual sophistication.
Taking another look to better see his features, she peeked around the curtain of her dark hair and sucked in a breath. Where’d he go?
“I figured I’d come over and say hello. I’m Jack.”
She swallowed a gasp of surprise. “I—I’m Isadora.”
“I’ve never seen you here before, but I’ve seen the guy you came with. Is he a friend of yours?”
“My brother, actually.”
“Oh, so you’re a Patras.”
Here we go. “Yes.”
“Mind if I sit?”
“Help yourself.”
He slipped into the seat Lucian had vacated, his arm close enough to brush hers. “Do you like jazz?”
“I like most genres, but I’m no connoisseur.”
“I come here for the ambiance. I love the architecture of the building.” His gaze dropped to her hand. “Are you married?”
“No. You?”
“No, but I was engaged once. She wanted to put her career first.”
He said that like it was a bad thing. “You didn’t want to wait for her?”
“I did for a while, but then I realized she’d always put her job before me and that’s not the sort of marriage I want. Do you work?”
“I…”
She hated being asked that question. Anyone else her age would have a job or be in school. She did neither, for the simple fact that she had other obligations, obligations she certainly wasn’t going to disclose to a stranger at a bar.
When people found out she didn’t work, they usually concluded that, as Christos Patras’s daughter, she was living the heiress life. Nothing was further from the truth. She had a job—raising her siblings—but it wasn’t the sort of work others typically recognized as ambitious.
Either way, it was too personal and complicated to explain to a stranger at a bar. “No, I don’t work.”
He nodded, but asked for no further explanation. Apparently Patrases didn’t need to explain. But part of her wanted to. She was not some coddled princess who needed Daddy to survive. She was practical, damn it! And she’d manage to survive with or without her father.
“This band’s pretty good, don’t you think?”
The impersonal conversation was starting to irritate her. What was the point?
“Sure.” Where was her brother? She casually craned her neck.
“What do you like to do in your free time?”
It all seemed so artificial. “I like to read.” Make love on Mondays. “Garden. Sometimes I cook.”
“Don’t you have servants that do that?”
Jesus. Her skin grew uncomfortably warm. This was exactly why she hated introducing herself as a Patras.
“My father does. I prefer to run my own home.” That was partly true. They had Lucy and sometimes they— Why are you justifying yourself?
“What’s your dad like?”
She glanced over her shoulder and Lucian caught her panicked stare. “I think my brother’s looking for me. Could you give me a second?”
“Sure.”
“Excuse me.” She slid off the stool, leaving her glass half-empty, and went to Lucian’s side.
Lucian grinned with the ease of a man totally comfortable in his own skin. “This is my sister. Isadora, this is Genevieve.”
“Hello,” Isa smiled tightly. “Lucian, can I speak to you for a second?”
“I’ll only be a moment,” he informed his pretty companion. “What’s wrong?”
“Can we leave? It was a mistake for me to come here.”
He scowled, not at her, but at the man waiting by the bar. “Why?”
“I just don’t fit in. This is awkward.”
“Sure, you do. Let me introduce you to some people over here.”
She gripped his sleeve, this time leaving no room for escape. “No, Lucian. I came to spend time with you, not to be fixed up. Please… Can you just take me home?”
His dark eyes studied her, his expression wounded. “How about if we go somewhere else? I didn’t mean to cast you off. We can still hang out.”
“No, you’ve met someone. I don’t want to take you away from her.”
“I don’t care, Isa. I wasn’t looking for anything serious anyway. Come on. Let’s get out of here and go somewhere else.”
She weighed his words, trying to figure out if it was really so easy for him to meet women that he’d walk away from the opportunity of spending a night with a beautiful woman like Genevieve. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. Let’s go.”
They left the jazz club and wound up at a little restaurant with a bar that was more her pace. No one sent her drinks or curious glances. It turned out her brother was the perfect barricade between her and all other males, as no one seemed brave enough to question his protective presence at her side once she became the center of his attention.
He’d stopped drinking early in the night since he was driving, but he encouraged her to enjoy herself. Once the pressure was off she did just that.
As she loosened up they revisited the topic of Jack. “You shouldn’t be afraid to let people know who you are,” Lucian told her.
“It’s different for women. Our name might open doors for you, but for me and Toni it looks like a passageway for climbers trying to find an easy way to the top.”
“Only if you date pricks. You’re smarter than that, Isa.”
Was she? Maybe that was why she enjoyed Sawyer. He didn’t need her name or her money. He just needed her. But how long he’d need her was anyone’s guess.
“Do you think I’ll ever get married?”
“Yes.”
“That was fast. Don’t you want to think about it?”
He laughed. “What’s to think about? I know you. I guess I always pictured you with a bunch of kids and…”
“And what?” She was intrigued to hear how he pictured her future.
“I don’t know. I see you with someone different. Down to earth. The sort of guy who would build a tree house with a hammer and nails and isn’t afraid to play in the grass with your kids. But he doesn’t do that stuff out of obligation. He does it because he loves his family. And you’re happy because you love him and you’re both totally devoted to each other.”
Something expanded in her chest as she pictured everything he described. “That sounds lovely.”
Lucian knew her better than she realized, because that short portrayal fit the perfect picture of happiness in her mind.
“I have no idea where you find someone like that, though.” He sipped his water.
“Me neither.” And Sawyer was not that man.
When he drove her home she felt warm and closer to her brother than she had in years. “Lucian, can I tell you a secret?”
“Anything.”
She believed Lucian was a man of his word and someone she could trust, but her loyalty to Sawyer held her confession back. She wanted to be a woman of her word, someone people could trust. But so long as she kept her secrets inside, she worried she wasn’t being a woman at all. She was lying like a paranoid child who lacked the integrity to answer for her own actions.
What if she confided in Lucian and her confession bothered him? Knowing the sort of man he pictured her with made her almost certain he wouldn’t understand her choice in Sawyer.
Chickening out, she said, “I can’t wait for Daddy to go back to Paris.”
He laughed. “That’s not a secret. And you’re not alone. Don’t worry. He’s leaving Wednesday.”
“He is?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know that?”
“I checked with his staff.”
“Oh. I didn’t think to do that.” She also didn’t think they, as Christos’s children, had the right, but apparently Lucian didn’t care.
His gaze remained focused on the road. “Eventually they’ll all work for me, Isa.”
“I know.” She wasn’t interested in inheriting her father’s businesses. Those decisions were a long way off anyway. “As much as I dread him in the same house as us, I still don’t like to think about his demise. He’s still our father.”
Lucian made a grunt that almost sounded like disagreement. “I’m not talking about his death. I’m talking about the not so distant future. I always keep my word.”
Her shoulders knotted with tension. It had been a long time since her brother mentioned his vendetta.
When their father openly began dating his mistress, breaking their mother’s heart, Lucian vowed to teach him a lesson. He swore, one day he’d show their father how it felt to lose the things he loved most.
It was an improbable promise made out of anger in innocence—one Isadora hoped he’d forget over time. But Lucian never forgot. And it was foolish of her to assume that just because he hadn’t brought it up in a while that anything had changed.
Their father would make a nasty adversary—even against his own children. “You shouldn’t worry about his dealings, Lucian. I’m sure you’ll make your own fortune.”
“I will,” he agreed without a trace of doubt. “But I made a promise and, unlike him, I intend to keep my word.” His hands tightened on the wheel and he shifted them, flexing almost imperceptibly. “He humiliated her.”
There was no need to clarify that her was their mother.
A chill cut through her clothes. Their mother had devoted so much of her energy to a man who never loved her back. Isa believed a broken heart killed their mother as much as cancer.
Was she following her mother’s footsteps?
No, she immediately rejected the thought. Sawyer wasn’t cruel like her father and Isa knew better than to expect him to love her. She knew what she had gotten into.
They pulled up to the estate, but she was reluctant to leave the heated car. “Will you come back before you leave for school?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll call Toni, maybe take her to lunch tomorrow, but I can’t be under the same roof as Christos.”
“I hate how dysfunctional our family is.”
“Every family’s dysfunctional on some level. You balance us out.”
His praise filled her with deep satisfaction, overshadowing her sadness. “You really believe that?”
He faced her with an incredulous look. “Yeah. You’ve done everything Mom used to do and then some. You don’t give yourself enough credit.”
She squeezed his arm through his coat sleeve. “Thank you.”
“I should be the one thanking you.”
She was so proud of him, so impressed with the man he’d become, she allowed her maternal grip to loosen and, for the first time in years, she didn’t panic as she let go. “College is changing you, Lucian.”
He didn’t comment.
They stared at the front of the house and Isadora sighed. “I guess I have to go in there. It’s strange how it feels like my house until he returns. Then it’s like I have nothing, like I’m a guest in my own home.”
“You know you could move, get a smaller place for you and Toni. The change might do you good.”
“As crazy as it sounds, I love this house. I know it’s too big for us and not mine, but … I feel like this is where Mommy is, where her spirit lives.”
“I get it. I’ve actually been thinking about the country house, but I’m waiting until I have the money to buy it outright.”
The country house was where their mother was buried, where they used to spend their springs. “Daddy will never sell it.”
“He will if the price is right. Despite all his posturing, everything has a price.”
It hurt to know their father would give up the home where their mother rested, to know Lucian already realized that fact. “You’re too young to be so cynical, Lucian.”
“So are you.”
She laughed. Maybe they all were. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” He surprised her with his easy response. “I’ll call you tomorrow about taking Toni out before I leave.”
She hugged him goodbye and took her time making it into the house. When she reached the second floor her sister’s door creaked open. “Isa?”
She went to her. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
“Please don’t leave me here alone with them again.”
“What happened?”
“They’re horrible. Tibet only speaks French—but I know she’s fluent in English—and Daddy insists I speak her language, because she’s our guest . Then she has the nerve to correct my pronunciation. And Daddy keeps making comments about my weight.”
Isadora’s teeth locked. That was the sort of thoughtless parenting he excelled at. His cruel comments were just words to him, but to his children they became badges of shame permanently tattooed on their character.
“I’m sorry, baby. Don’t listen to them. There’s nothing wrong with your body. They’re leaving soon anyway and tomorrow Lucian’s taking you out.”
Her mood immediately brightened. “He is?”
“Yes. Before you know it, everything will be back to normal.”
“When are they leaving?”
“Wednesday.”
“Thank God.” Toni’s body sagged against the door with relief.
“Thank God,” Isadora echoed.
Wednesday couldn’t come fast enough.