Relaxing a little, I hoped she wouldn’t smell champagne and cigarettes and sex on me. What would Mom think if she knew about those red silken ties? The ones that had made my wrists tingle deliciously.
“You look tired,” she said soothingly.
“Do you know why Damien might have been called back?” I asked.
My father appeared down the hallway. “Everything okay?”
“She has a ring,” Mom told him.
He approached us, peering over his spectacles at us as he passed by. Heading down the stairs, he said, “I’m going to get a nightcap.”
That’s strange. I hadn’t expected him to gush over the emerald, but actually taking the time to look at my ring would have been nice.
When he’d disappeared from sight, I asked, “Is he even happy for me?”
With a gesture, my mother offered to walk me to my room.
My throat tightened. “What happened?”
“Not here,” she whispered, as though hinting a wayward member of staff might overhear.
Just as we had on all those days since Jefferson had left home, we swapped a knowing glance when we reached my brother’s room. It was only used when he was in town because he lived in Texas.
My rambunctious older brother had hurtled loudly into manhood. I missed him, but his place was in Dallas running the business as the CEO of Bardot Petroleum. The role filled his days and gave him nightmares.
There were suffocating expectations for everyone living beneath this roof. This was the umbrella of doom we all huddled under.
Mom sat on the edge of the bed and patted the duvet so I would join her. It was a sweet gesture she’d begun using when I’d reached my late teens when she wanted to have a talk.
The gray hairs I saw now had softened her appearance, and so had the lines on her fiercely beautiful face. She had become gentler since entering her fifties, and not so insistent on everything going her way.
Sitting beside her with my head resting on her shoulder, it was easy to pretend we had always been this close.
“How did he seem?” she asked softly.
“Damien?” I swallowed hard at her potential disappointment. “Fine.”
She looked wistful. “I hear the views from his beach house are spectacular. Maybe we’ll come visit.”
“I’d like that.”
Thank goodness that bedroom in Damien’s house was tucked away—no chance of a wayward visitor wandering up there.
She rested her hand on mine. “Go talk to your father. Reassure him that you’ll do what you can, that you’ll talk to Damien. Maybe you’ll be able to persuade him to make this go away.”
“Make what go away?”
She looked worried. “During the party, your father was approached by Salvatore Galante.”
“The head of Real Nation?”
Flinching, I realized what she was saying. “Did they clash?”
“Galante has a reputation for being…disreputable.”
Searching her face, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to know what had happened between them. Had Galante insulted the Senator? Thanks to the news stories dished out on his channel, it was well known that he disagreed with the Senator’s politics. He released a constant barrage of hate-fueled criticism on how Godman’s term in office would ruin the economy.
Had Dad tried to defend Gregor?
“What happened?”
Mom sighed. “Galante told your father he’s going to release a story on something that happened in your father’s past.”
“A story?” A spike of adrenaline had me pushing to my feet.
“We’re not sure what he has yet, but there’s still a chance we can suppress it. It’s all in Gregor Godman’s hands now. It’s his decision.”
Her words echoed in my mind, forming garish images. What had Dad done? Or had this town finally seen the threat my father posed and turned against him, spewing lies and twisting truths?
“Dad might lose his place in the Cabinet?” I asked.
“Perhaps.”
“I’m sure Damien will speak with the Senator.”
“Go tell your father that. Put his mind at ease.”
The thought of asking Damien for such a favor filled me with dread—but there seemed no choice in the matter.
I threw Mom a reassuring smile, feeling a sudden sense of pride that it could be me who influenced my father’s position in that historic house on the hill.
I headed back downstairs.
Dad sat in the dark nursing a tumbler of his favorite scotch, seemingly lost in thought, his expression grave. The years he’d spent striving for this very opportunity now hung in the balance. He’d given up running the company to take this chance. He’d sacrificed so much.
Sitting at his feet, I looked up at him. “You don’t have to tell me.”
He finished off his drink and rested the empty glass on his thigh. “We make the best decisions we can with the information we’ve got. You can’t predict the future.”
His confession of wrongdoing made me look away; I didn’t want to believe my daddy was capable of anything scandalous.
“Maybe the Senator can make the story go away?” I whispered.
He stared down at me, a melancholy look in his eyes. “Jefferson was always so easy…his future set to follow mine. But you…you were always destined for greatness of another sort.”
This was a bad time to bring up the fact I might have wanted to be part of the company myself. Damien had already told me I was selfish, and the fact I was thinking of my own future was proof of that.
I wanted to be a better person. “Another drink, Daddy?”
“Early on, your mother and I thought having a governess to focus on you would tame you.”
“I think they call those the terrible twos,” I joked, even though there was nothing funny about it.
I’d been placed into the hands of a strict governess when I was a toddler. And there had been several others after her. In my memory, their faces were sewn into a tapestry of discipline, all of those impossible expectations leading up to my tenth birthday.
No further care was needed at home because I was sent to school in Switzerland. Back then, I had no idea there’d be no coming home to live with my parents until I’d turned nineteen. Since I’d returned to live in this house, I had been trying to get to know these strangers again—while my father launched his new career.
Back in Texas, remnants of my childhood lingered in our family home. My old bedroom had helped me recover memories of the years I’d thought gone—dolls and games and toys waiting for me upon my return as though I’d been frozen in time in my mother’s mind. All of these frivolities had now been thrown away.
My bedroom décor here was a reflection of what kind of woman my mother had hoped I’d become. It was a space filled with perfect furniture and pristine patterns—fancy wallpaper and plush carpeting. No TV allowed.
At nineteen, I’d begged for my own apartment in the city, wanting to escape this swanky suburb and have some freedom.
My parents had other plans in mind for me.
The independence I craved would never be part of the deal. Not long before my twentieth birthday, I’d been formally introduced to Damien. And then told to wait for him.
Merely a few months after that, he was ready.