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Once we’re both up the broad stone steps, a smartly dressed older man opens a pair of huge wooden doors, recognizing Xander with a slight bow.
That’s not his boss. Too servile.
“Hiya, Branson. Long time no see,” Xander says casually, making me smile because it sounds so out of place.
Xander’s a bit of a maverick, I’m assuming. And judging by the response from our doorman, I’m correct.
“Very good, Sir. Right this way,” Branson says in a plodding baritone voice.
“I think I know the way to the restaurant,” Xander says swiftly, almost impatiently.
“Mr. Condor is in the library,” Branson drones, stopping mid-step and turning to look me up and down as if I’m the reason for the day he must be having.
“Xander, I don’t –” I start to try and say, wanting to tell him I can’t do this, that I need a moment.
A minute, anything.
“I just can’t…,” I plead with him, digging my brand new heels into the thick pile of the Indian runner that stretches a hundred yards of polished wooden floorboards ahead of us.
“You’ll be fine, Chloe,” Xander reassures me, taking my hand and squeezing it, keeping it in his until I start moving again.
Neither of us says a word, even when the giant wooden door to what I can see at once is an ancient library swings open.
I can see just as quickly that my day’s about to get more than difficult too.
Payback from the universe for having the night of my life?
But no, not with Xander here to back me up.
Seeing both my parents from behind as they sit listening to a soft-spoken, ancient-looking man in a wheelchair, I suddenly feel like we’ve got this.
Xander and I are more than a stuffy country club.
And more than my equally stuffy and overprotective parents.
“Here we go,” Xander whispers to me, both of us noticing a fourth person joining the group via another doorway, and I can hear her being introduced by another version of Branson.
It’s as if they have a set of aging butlers to help run the place.
“Ms. Daphne De Laurent,” the butler says in an even deeper, more sonorous voice than Branson’s.
And our eyes lock.
The woman I’m supposed to be now meets the real-life version.
And yeah, at a glance, I can just tell she’s a total witch.
The kind of woman who’d travel across the country using alligators for luggage.
But why are my parents here?
How?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Xander
“I can see her for myself, Jameson. No need to introduce my own god damned…,” Kenneth Condor shouts.
Stopping himself once he senses my unmistakable presence in the enormous library, I somehow manage to look and feel just that little bit smaller by being in it.
He’s referring to the woman who’s arrived about the same time we have through another door.
She’s probably mid-thirties, maybe more if she’s been looking after herself.
Tall. Leggy and with a stare that could cut a man at fifty paces.
But I don’t cut so easily.
I’m used to dishing out those kinds of stares myself, but what bothers me is that she’s giving that look to Chloe.
My Chloe.
There’s another couple sitting with Condor, and they both turn to face Chloe and me, ignoring the other woman.
The real Ms. De Laurent, as it turns out.
So, she made it after all.
But why is she with Condor?
And why are Chloe’s parents here?
I’ve got little time to think about it as Chloe’s mom shrieks at her sight, and leaping up, she totters over, wrestling Chloe from my grip as if I don’t exist.
Squeezing Chloe so hard, I almost feel I could learn something from her.
I know Chloe said she’s adopted, but I can tell maternal instincts when I see ‘em.
And here’s a mom whose only care, whose only concern is seeing her daughter again, safe and well.
“Mom…,” Chloe whines, embarrassed as she tries to free herself from the woman’s grip.
Both Chloe’s mom and dad are tall, and lanky, with features that anyone could see at a glance they’re not her biological parents.
But they still love her. They still worry about her.
My own imposing figure is ignored completely until Chloe’s mom, Janet, is convinced her baby girl is safe and well.
Her dad, Peter, gets up and joins his wife, looking me up and down as if what I’ve already done to his daughter is tattooed on the side of my neck.
Like some sort of Japanese animated comic strip that only he can see.
“Xander Alexander,” I announce, taking his hand in mine and giving it a firm, I’m the fucking boss pump.
“Peter Faulkner… And this is Chloe’s mom, Janet,” he says with a gentle tone.
Janet’s way past being just a little suspicious of me and moved straight to the ‘what have you done to our daughter?’ face.
Her father doesn’t say it. He doesn’t have to.
Anyone who knows Chloe could see the difference in her.
The way she looks, her hair. The way she carries herself now.
