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He pursed his lips. “You’ve been watching too much daytime television, Claudette. Perhaps my father needs to give you more to do.”
The swat of her hand landed on his arm where she gripped him affectionately. “Ne vous l’osez!” she hissed. “Bite your tongue.”
He chuckled.
They stopped outside of the tall French doors that marked his father and Tibet’s private living quarters. She turned to him and drew his face down to her height. “Now you listen to me, garçon,” she whispered. “Your father is not a young man anymore. I do not want any fighting, comprenez? You bicker with ’im and you answer to me.” Her pudgy fingers slapped his check twice. “Now, you go ’ave a nice visit and then come see me, and I will see about getting you some fresh croissants. Lord knows what you ’ave been eating in zee States.”
She smiled and turned away. As the echo of her soft footsteps dissipated into the depths of the house, he could make out the slight rumble of voices coming from a television. He was here. There was no turning back now. He turned the brass knob and knocked as he pressed the door open.
“Oui?” his father called from the next room, his voice as gruff as always.
Rather than answer, Lucian walked toward his father’s voice and stood in the doorway. His dad’s graying hair had begun to thin. It wasn’t a bad way to go, Lucian though, figuring in a few decades his hair would likely look the same, being that he was about as carbon copy as a son could be.
When he cleared his throat, his father continued penning the line of whatever he was writing and, without being rushed, glanced at the door. When he saw who was there he stilled.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“It’s good to see you too, Christos.”
Lucian stepped into the room. It was furnished in a nouveau riche style that had Tibet’s mark all over it. The only thing in the room of any real value was the desk his father was writing at and now scowling from.
“Are the girls all right? Did something happen?”
“Isadora and Toni are fine. It wouldn’t hurt you to call them once in a while.”
“Has Antoinette finished her degree yet?”
Lucian settled into a dainty blue chair that was predictably uncomfortable. “No, she’s changed her major again.”
His father crossed his arms. “You and Isadora give her too much freedom. She needs direction, that one, too headstrong. Isadora was always more like your mother.”
“Yes, it’s quite unfortunate Toni takes after her father more than her mother.”
Christos’s eyes narrowed. “Well, come on then, why are you here? I know you didn’t just come to visit.”
“I had business here,” he lied.
“What business? I keep in touch with your manager at the hotel here. There are no matters pressing enough to require your presence.”
Lucian pursed his lips. “Do you think my employees would keep you informed if there were matters requiring my attention? You’re no longer the owner. You’re the man I bought out and they’re quite aware which Patras signs their checks.”
His father waved away his words. “Family squabbles do not interest the French the way they do the Americans. You’re my son. They see you as my subordinate. As your father I’m deserving of their respect and, in their eyes, I hold more authority than you, regardless of who signs their bloody checks.” He practically sneered the last part of his statement.
“Fucking Europeans,” Lucian mumbled under his breath.
“So why are you here? Is it money? Are you in trouble?”
“Wouldn’t that make you happy.”
His father surprised him by snapping, “No, it would not make me happy. Unlike you, I do not wish my family to fall upon harder times. You may have taken over my livelihood, but it takes a lot more to leave a Patras penniless. I asked, because if you needed money I would give it to you.”
Lucian rolled his eyes, not falling for the fatherly act. “I’m sure you would. At what? Fifty percent interest? Sixty-five?”
“Goddamn it, Lucian, must every word between us be in anger? Surely you didn’t come all this way just to frustrate me.”
Something in his father’s voice gave him pause. He studied him. This was the same man who walked away from every single one of his children directly after the death of their mother, leaving them with governesses and tutors to guide them into adulthood. He didn’t give a whit about their problems.
Toughen up! his father would yell, whenever they even mentioned something they found unjust. He wasn’t old enough to have a change of heart forced by mortality. Besides, one had to have a heart in order for it to change.
“I needed to get out of the city and I haven’t been here in five years. It doesn’t hurt to surprise employees every once in a while, check on how things are really going.”
