Chapter 31
A few days after he’d taken Izzy to The Oasis, Tobias announced that Savannah was pregnant. It broke out in the media not long after.
And on Christmas Eve, when Tobias and Savannah hosted Christmas dinner at their apartment, Xavier could tell, now that he looked closely, that Savannah was slowly filling out. She was four months pregnant, with the baby expected around May.
He didn’t see Izzy again for the next few weeks, but she continued to complete the work he’d given her, and their communication during that time, mainly by email and text messages, lacked the deep connection he’d experienced that night at Luke’s bar.
He was in a quandary. Wanting to see her, and feeling guilty at the same time. Wanting to come clean, and afraid of sabotaging something that was so fragile and new. Maybe her feelings for him hadn’t changed, but he now saw her in a different light, and not being able to casually suggest another time for them to go out and talk, meant that he was forced to make do with only connecting to her via the work he gave her.
The main thing was, he had survived Christmas with his family. And during those days, he’d been wondering what Izzy had been doing. How she’d spent it, and with whom, and he hoped her father had been fine. A couple of times he’d almost called her, because he’d been tempted to give in and hear her voice, but somehow, he had stopped himself.
What would she think?
Because, as much as he tried not to admit to it, he cared what she thought.
With the contract with Hennessy signed and dispatched to him, he expected things to start rolling sometime at the end of January. Setting up in China, would have taken him longer, if he’d had to do it from scratch. With Hennessy and his resources, he’d be up and running much sooner, and, hopefully, with an eye to manufacturing other products out there. Not bad, given that the guy had been a recent new contact he’d acquired.
When his intercom buzzed, he answered and was surprised to hear his brother’s voice. “Are you alone?” Tobias asked, in a voice that sounded uptight.
Alone? As opposed to with someone? “Yeah, I’m alone. Why are you ask—”
Tobias buzzed up impatiently, and Xavier released the lock to let him through the communal door, then opened the door to his apartment, feeling wary. He knew that voice well. And something had pissed his brother off, something he had no clue about.
A few minutes later, Tobias strode through. “How’s business?” he asked, looking none too pleased.
“Going well,” Xavier replied slowly. “Why?” They’d only met a few days ago, on Christmas Eve. What had changed?
“Then tell me what the fuck you’re doing going into business with Matthias Rust?”
“What?” Shock hit him like a sledgehammer. “I’m not doing business with him.”
“You’re fucking lying.”
“Whoa,” Xavier held his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “Calm down, will you? I’m not doing business with Matthias.” He peered at his brother’s red face. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“You signed a deal with Chad Hennessy?”
“Yes.”
“And did you know that Matthias is a partner in that company?”
He didn’t have any goddamn idea. “I didn’t know.” And even if he had, even though he knew that his brother and Matthias had parted company, how the hell was he supposed to know that they had done so bitterly? “Chad never mentioned Matthias,” he replied, anger swirling in his gut like bile.
“If you’d done your fucking due diligence, you would have known.” Tobias’s voice was brittle and hard, like glass.
“Why does it matter?” His brother could be a real ass, and Xavier hated his bullying tactics, and this, what he was doing now, barging in here like a raging bull, with his uncontrollable anger, was one of those episodes.
Tobias Stone might be a golden child in their parent’s eyes, a loving father-figure to Jacob, and a knight in shining armor for Savannah, but to him, his brother had been someone to be admired, and be afraid of, at the same time.
There was a side to Tobias many didn’t see. It was a side only a younger brother would know about, and Xavier was fed up with this bullshit.
“Don’t come here,” he warned, his voice inching up slowly. “Don’t come here barking at me, when you never had the time or decency to tell me what your problem with Matthias is. I’ve asked you plenty of times.” The silence from Tobias gave him the guts to continue. “I didn’t know about Matthias, and he never came to the meetings. His name was never mentioned, but why is it such a problem for you?”
“Because the guy is a fucking moron, and the worst thing you could have done was to go into business with him.”
“I don’t understand why you’re getting so worked up over this. I would have thought that news of a baby on the way might have calmed you down, but you’re the same as ever. Who do you think you are?”
“An astute businessman, which is why I run a fucking hedge fund and you don’t.”
Un-fucking-believable.
“There you go again.” He clasped his hands and cradled the back of his head. What more was there to say? Except, “I am going into business with Hennessy.”
“And Hennessy’s company is part-owned by Rust. How the fuck do you think he’s got the manufacturing infrastructure in China?”
So, what? “That manufacturing infrastructure is vital for me.”
“What are you making now? Butt plugs?”
Asshole.
But he didn’t have the stomach to tell him about the snooker and pool tables because he would only laugh. He glared at his brother. What did Tobias expect him to do? Bail out of the deal just because he’d had a bust-up with his colleague?
“What did he do? What did Rust do to you that has you all riled up like you want to split his head open?”
“Forget it.”
Xavier threw his hands into the air. “There you go again!” This was typical of Tobias. “I’m not telepathic.” He’d given him a chance to explain, and once again his brother had bailed out.
“If you intend to run a successful company,” Tobias said, giving him a look that made him want to shrink inside, “You need to do more in-depth analysis into a company before you dive into bed with them. You need to spend more time doing better background checks on companies—more time than you’d normally spend on picking up girls at the bar.”
Tobias stormed towards the door, slamming it hard behind him.
~ ~ ~
“It’s not so bad, is it, Dad? Once you’re out of the house. It’s nice.” Her father walked alongside her. “It’s not so bad,” he agreed, after a while.
“Whenever you feel you’re not in the mood to do anything, you should at least force yourself to come out and go for a walk in the woods.”
“It’s better when you’re around, Izzy.”
“I know, Dad, I know. But I have to go back soon.”
“Can’t you stay another week?”
“I’ll try and come back sooner next time.”
He fell silent again.
Two hours. She had managed to convince her father to come out for two hours, today. It had been the longest of their daily walks. But at least she had managed to persuade him to get out.
The tricky part was convincing him to do this when she was back at college, and she was returning a few days before the New Year. Two weeks at home had been enough, but it had also sapped her. It had eaten into her reserve of energy, talking to her father, trying to bolster his spirits. Doing what her mother should have been doing. Sometimes she wondered who the parent was.
She needed the internship, and she needed good grades at the end of the summer term. Another week here would leave her too jaded to return to college, and she needed every ounce of energy to deal with the exams that would hit a few weeks after the new term started.
At least once the next few months were done with, spring would be on the way. Things always looked better in the spring.
They came out of the forest, walking silently back towards their home, when her cell phone rang. Something fluttered deep within her belly when she saw Xavier’s name on the caller ID.
“It’s a friend, Dad,” she said, “You go ahead, and I’ll catch up.” She fell back, and answered the call. “Hey,” she said, still walking, but at a slower pace.
“I’m not disturbing you, am I?”
“I’m out for a walk with my dad.”
“How is he?”
“Sad that I’m leaving soon.”
“When?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“How sad is sad?”
She sighed. “Sad enough that I feel like I should stay a few more days.”
He made an empathetic noise at the back of his throat.
“But I can’t stay on another week,” she explained. “I have to get back into study mode. It’s an important semester.”
“You’re back on Thursday then?”
“On Thursday.” She wondered why he’d called her, and knew it wasn’t to ask her about the general state of her time back home. “Did I mess up something?”
“Mess up?”
“On a report or something?” That was why he’d called, wasn’t it?
“No. No. That’s not why I’m calling.”
“Oh.” It pleased her, to hear his voice again. And it was strange because there had been times during these past few weeks when she had often thought about him, and wondered what he was up to. There had been times when she had been tempted to call him, on the pretense of asking a work-related question, but she had stopped herself. That night at the bar, she had opened up to him in a way that was unlike her. Maybe it was that he seemed, nice, for a change, and had surprised her. He seemed to be listening, and she was just plain fed up of her mother dumping on her all the time. Maybe he’d just caught her at an unguarded time.
But she had thought about that evening more times than not.
So, this was nice, him calling her.
He coughed lightly. “I—uh—wondered how things were going for you,” he cleared his throat again, “being at home, and all. Just out of curiosity.”
“Just out of curiosity,” she repeated.
“And I—uh wanted to ask you something about how you did those charts. You know, the 3D bar charts.”
“The ones I did for Hennessy’s report?”
“Yeah, those.”
“They’re simple enough,” she said, “You just need to select the rows and—”
“It can wait,” he said. “It’s selecting those rows and columns that’s fiddly. But there’s no rush.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I’ll show you when I get back.”
“Looking forward to it.”
Me, too. “How was your Christmas?” she asked.
“Not as bad as I expected.”
“You were expecting it to be bad?”
“You’ve met my mother, haven’t you?”
“Briefly.”
“Then you’ll understand.”
She giggled.
“But it wasn’t so bad. We spent it at Tobias and Savannah’s.”
“Awww. Nice. I heard the news about Savannah being pregnant.” Cara had been the one who’d told her when it broke in the press. She had called Savannah and congratulated her.
“It’s exciting.”
“Jacob must have been happy.”
“It doesn’t take much to make that kid happy.”
She smiled. Jacob would make an awesome older brother.
“How was your Christmas?
“Relaxing. Nice to be back home for a change. Nice to have lots of home-cooked food.”
“I was thinking of maybe taking Jacob to the funfair, sometime next week. It’s been a while since we’ve—I’ve—spent a whole day with him. And I was thinking maybe we could go out again.”
“He’d like it, I’m sure.”
“I meant that you could come along too. It’s not a date or anything, but it’s been a while since we both took him out, and it would be nice.”
“Did you miss his birthday or something?”
“No. His birthday was last month. The kid’s 7 going on 17.”
Izzy laughed. “He’s a sensible little boy.”
“Tobias was over earlier.”
“At yours?”
“Yeah. He—” he paused. “He was angry.”
“Angry?” She wondered why Xavier was telling her.
“Some business deal he wasn’t too happy about.”
“Was he angry with you?” She couldn’t imagine Tobias being angry, not now that she had seen the way he’d been on the island around the time of his wedding.
“Yes, he was pretty pissed.”
It sounded as if he wasn’t sure about telling her, as if he’d wanted to, but now couldn’t. “Was it something you did?”
“Why would you think it’s something I did?”
She held her breath, surprised by his anger. “I’m just assuming, based on what you told me.”
“My brother isn’t an angel, and he isn’t always right, and I wish people wouldn’t always assume I’m the one in the wrong.”
She didn’t want to get into a bickering argument with him. “I’m sorry, I’m just trying to help.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
But he had, and he’d told her, and that amounted to something.
“Sibling disagreements blow over, given enough time,” she said, trying to say something helpful.
“It got me thinking,” he said, dismissing her advice completely, “that a trip to the fairground might be nice, get Jacob out of the house and all that. Treat him to something. I’m almost an uncle, maybe I ought to do uncle-like things.”
“Uncle-like things. That’s an interesting way of putting it.” He didn’t want to talk about it. She understood.
“Would you like to join us? I need to check with Savannah first—because that kid has a busier social life than I do—but what about next weekend?”
Next weekend would be the weekend before her exams. She could manage a couple of hours. It might do her good. “I’d like that.”