Joel did nothing other than throw a presumptuous smile in the direction of her rosy cheeks while he set a plate on either side of the table.
“I’m glad to hear it. Hope you’re hungry.”
“I’m Italian. Food is life. I’ll eat on demand.”
He pulled out a chair for her.
She took her place in it. “Aside from homemade Yorkshire puddings, I don’t remember you being a chef.”
He smiled. “I’m not. Sarah comes once a week, stocks the fridge with groceries and simple meals. This chicken curry is one of my favorites.” He poured them each a glass of wine, then sat down across from her.
“Sarah?”
“She’s my housekeeper.”
“Right.” The Morgans had housekeepers. The Barones had Maria.
When Lucy had been growing up, her family had a cleaning lady scheduled to come once. Her mother had spent the entire day before scrubbing the house from top to bottom because she didn’t want the cleaner to think the Barones were untidy. Then she’d been grossly dissatisfied with what the cleaner had done, claiming she could do better herself. That had been the single time her family had ever paid for any help.
“Oh wow, this is good,” Lucy moaned after a bite. “Give Sarah my compliments.”
Joel chuckled around his own bite. “You can tell her yourself. Now that you live here, you’re bound to run into her. I think you’d like her.” He took a sip of wine. “I sometimes wonder how much I’d have to pay her to come back to San Francisco with us, when it’s time.”
With us? When it’s time? There was too much to unpack in that sentence, so she changed the subject. “What’s this about you being on the Forbes billionaire list? Since when did building high rises in San Francisco push you to the top one hundred status?”
Joel blushed, and boy, did she ever love it. “Been googling me, Luciana?”
“You wish. Natalie was all over it this morning. She showed me the fancy black-and-white photo of you on the fancy website with the fancy numbers beside it.”
“Stop it.” He tossed his napkin at her. “I fucking hate it. You get on a list like that and you can’t live life anymore. I never know who is talking to me because they actually care or because they’re after my bank account. I hate it,” he repeated before taking a big gulp of wine.
The way his shoulders tightened and glare hardened told her he truly hated being labeled with the prestigious designation. Morgan Construction had always been lucrative. The Morgans were millionaires many times over, but what they’d built was not a billion-dollar company. Or so she thought.
“How did it happen?”
Across the table, he leveled her with a challenging look, as if she already knew. But she honestly didn’t, so she remained silent.
After a moment, he said, “I felt lost. There was nothing left but work. So I drowned myself in it until it consumed me. I expanded my father’s business, used the money I was making from Morgan Construction to do more investing. I bought land and companies across the country, and then more internationally. I created Morgan Property Development. When that took off, I started making other investments. That’s when Morgan Enterprises was born.” He shrugged as if it was nothing, then took another bite of food.
“So you just worked?” she asked, dumbfounded by the dedication it must have required. “Non-stop?”
“I was good at it and the ventures paid off. So I didn’t stop. But I alsocouldn’tstop. Because if I did, for even one second, I would think about what I didn’t have anymore.And that void was too dark. I was afraid of what would happen if I lost myself in it.”
Her chest tightened around her pounding heart. She knew what he’d been talking about. The difference was, she’d fallen into that void. The darkest dark that had stolen too much of her life until she’d found a way out. Then, she’d also fixated on work, getting to know Barone & Sons inside out, until she understood the business better than her own father. It had become her new reason.
She understood, but that didn’t mean she knew what to say. What was there to say? He was right. They’d lost so much. And nothing could change that.
Swallowing hard, she pushed the food around her plate. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Me too.” It was the most meaningful thing they’d said to each other in four years.
“I’m surprised it took this long for someone in my family to mention the billionaire thing,” she told him, needing to relieve the heaviness in the air between them. The time was coming where they’d have to dive deep into what had happened between them, but she wasn’t ready yet. Baby steps. She could do baby steps.
Joel sighed, seeming to understand, and she appreciated him so much in that moment. The man had the patience of a saint.
“Me too, actually. I assumed your sister would have told you at her earliest convenience.”
A shadow of worry for Vanessa notched itself in her heart. As far as topics of dinnertime conversations went, they were really clinching some doozies tonight.
