“Are you sure you want to deal with me?” His smile twisted. “I talk of magical sunsets and girls trapped in basements over breakfast. I used to not be this bad, I think,” he continued conversationally, “though after Samantha left, maybe I used it as an excuse to further retreat.”
Now my knife was scraping across the plate.
“Samantha?”
“I built this penthouse for her,” he confessed.
“Nothing as magical as a first love.” I forced myself to smile.
“Oh no, I wasn’t in love with her. She was just … a part of my life plan,” he explained. “I only took her out on a few dates. A few months after I met her, we attended her friend’s wedding together. I never even referred to Sam as my girlfriend.”
He dragged his fork through the eggs on his plate.
“This makes me sound like a horrible person,” he added, “which I am, but at the time … I … Well, I was trying to do everything and anything to become the kind of man my mother would want as a son. I thought if I had power, money, a nice penthouse, a college degree from an Ivy League university, and a wonderful wife, that my mom would be proud of me, and want me back.”
“That’s—”
“Messed up? I know. For what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s anything I could do to make her care about me.” He looked down at his plate. “Samantha was exactly the type of girl my mom would approve of. She was understated, always had her hair just so, came from a good New York family, and had a good job at a high-end art auction house. Not to mention, she owned a flat in London and a brownstone in Brooklyn, both impeccablydecorated.” He cut off a piece of bacon. “Not that it worked out. Obviously.”
He gazed out the window. The sunlight sparkling on the pool reflected through the glass windows.
“I wasn’t the type of man Samantha ultimately wanted. The billions and corporate veneer weren’t enough to mask the fact that I had a terrible pedigree and no friends. She was smart enough to see that I was just going to make her miserable.” He looked around. “She hated this penthouse.”
“She’s been here?” I croaked.
“She saw the renderings and said even with furniture, it looked like a villain’s lair. You and her probably would have gotten along.”
“Sounds like it,” I said, voice faint and squeaky. I sawed off Mickey’s ear and stuffed it in my mouth, chewing while I desperately thought of something to say.
But what could I say?
If there was one thing I knew about Grayson, it was that his mom was the most important person in the world to him. He had built his whole empire to impress her.
I had seen her in the restaurant. With her smooth skin, perfect makeup, and understated but expensive jewelry. She didn’t laugh loudly, she ate her trout with a fish knife, and she wore clothes that didn’t look like they had been rehomed from a dumpster. She probably lived in one of those movie set houses decorated in shabby chic, without a stitch of Disney paraphernalia anywhere.
Once Grayson realized that my lack of polish was holding him back from reconnecting with his mom, I was going to be out on my keister.
46
GRAYSON
Lexi seemed a little scattered the rest of the morning.
“You all right?” I asked, wrapping her in my arms and kissing her.
“Of course,” she said. But the smile was too bright, the tone of her voice a little too enthusiastic.
I knew what had happened.
It was the same thing with Sam. I had confessed to her one night why I couldn’t sleep. She, like Lexi, had pretended to be sympathetic. But afterward, everything changed. She seemed to find fault in everything I did. Nothing was enough. Then I had accidentally overheard her talking to her fellow bridesmaids at that wedding at a manor house outside of London.
No, she wasn’t cheating. That would have been easier to bear.
She was telling her friends how she didn’t want me to touch her, how I was dangerous, cold, and that there was something wrong with me.
“He’s just like his father,” one of them had said.
Sam hadn’t disagreed.
