People were staring, and Olivia was gently attempting to nudge him away from the crowd, but Heath was hardly concerned about the scene he was making. Embarrassment was the least Christian deserved for what he’d done.
“If you think that excuses you from not warning me I would spend six hours flying somewhere, only to discover I had no reservation once I’d arrived, I have news for you.”
Christian’s deep brown eyes darted around the room as he leaned closer. “Heath, you’re making a scene.”
“Of course I am! You showed me no consideration, so why should I show you any? Treating me like a human should be more important than your portfolio.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come off it, Christian. The foundation bears your name.”
“Actually, it bears mine.”
Heath wheezed as Evan entered the chat.
He was here.
Was he really surprised? It wasn’t as though he hadn’t suspected Isabella and Olivia of plotting something. Yet, there he stood, mouth agape, staring at Evan as though he hadn’t already seen him naked. A lot.
Though dear God, had the months ever been kind to him. He looked healthy and focused, and sinfully delectable in a tux. He also—wait…
“What did you just say?”
Evan’s eyes didn’t so much as flit in his direction. They remained intensely focused on Christian with palpable animosity. Did they know each other? Oh, dear God. Of course they did. These damn tiny social circles.
He’d worried about this, but that worry had taken a backseat to all the other emotions he’d been wrestling with. How had it not occurred to him they might both be at this shindig? Probably because he’d gone from heartbroken to star-struck back to heartbroken in such rapid succession, his brain had caught fire and exploded.
Evan folded his arms across his chest, accentuating the breadth of his shoulders and bulk of his arms beneath the fine fabric swaddling them. “Flanagan was my last name before the adoption. Isn’t that right, Chris?”
Before the adoption? Heath looked to Christian, whose already pale skin had taken on a sickly, greenish hue.
Christian’s dark eyes bounced between Heath and Evan. “When we met at school, I didn’t want it to be a big deal that I was Charles Westin’s son. Everywhere I went, that’s how people knew me, and it gets so tiresome wondering whether someone is actually a friend or just keeping you around for favors. I wanted a break. I wanted one place where I could just be myself without the accoutrements. So I borrowed a name.”
“Mine, Chris. You borrowed mine. The one I couldn’t keep if I wanted to be part of your fucking family, becauseDadneeded something to control me with. God forbid anything remind him of the woman he screwed over. God-fucking-forbidIget to keep anythingthat reminded meof her.”
Isabella stepped between them, her focus gentle, but firm. “Okay, this is where we take the conversation somewhere else.”
Heath thought he might be sick. They were brothers? All this time, and Christian… This was too much. Too unbelievably much.
“There’s an empty conference room we can use.” Olivia had a knack for showing up right when an intermediary would be helpful—or a psychiatrist. Convenient that she was both.
“I’m sorry I never told you the truth,” Christian said as they filed into a smaller room by the lobby and closed the door. He was wearing his most contrite expression. Heath had seen it a lot over the years. “I’d planned to. If not before, then certainly after graduation, but by then it had been so long, and honestly, I liked the way things were between us.”
Heath opened and closed his mouth, feeling like the biggest fool.
“We’ve been friends since undergrad. I’ve dated people in your circle and attended functions with them. How?”
Christian had the decency to look sheepish. “I’d asked them not to bring it up when you were around. I told them business talk bored you.”
Heath felt his eyelids spasm through a flurry of blinks. “You did what?”
“When I had to network, I kept my distance. Otherwise, I told those in our sphere to avoid the topic.”
“Because it bored me.”
Christian nodded, and Heath could feel the pounding of his blood in his temples. No wonder they’d treated him like vapid arm candy. They’d beentoldto, by the very man who’d thenassured him he deserved so much better than these shallow, materialistic men.
Somehow worse was knowing that beneath the subterfuge, Christian was still the same person he’d always known. He’d lied about his name for more than a decade, and made other people lie for him, at Heath’s expense, but even if he’d come clean, he would still be the sort of person who made promises he didn’t intend to keep, and then tried to buy his way out of it with gifts and grand gestures.
