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That earnestness transformed into a scowl as he glanced at the number and answered it.
“Jag. I’m kind of in the middle of something. You mind if I call you back?”
I watched as the levity on his face slowly drained away.
“He what?” Xavier’s eyes shuttered, and when they opened, looked stone cold. “Right. Yeah. I’ll let you know.” He ended the call, then stood without looking at me and yanked on a few articles of clothing. “I’ve got to make another call outside. Back in a moment.”
With a quick kiss to my cheek, he was gone.
I sat at the top of the stairs for a few more minutes, pondering my fate. But when he didn’t immediately return, I got up and went back downstairs to finish our tea and make some toast. Xavier probably wouldn’t eat it, but at least it was something to do while I tried to navigate the seismic turns my life was taking.
A bit later, Xavier came back inside, still shirtless under his tuxedo jacket, apparently uncaring that he had just paraded half naked in front of the entire neighborhood for the last fifteen minutes. I was sitting at the kitchen counter having a second piece of toast with butter along with the proper pot of tea I’d made and the two cups I’d set out quite proudly.
“Tea?” I started but stopped when I caught a look at his pale face. “Oh my God, Xavi, what’s wrong?”
He rubbed his brow so hard I thought he might take off some skin. “My uncle.”
“Your—oh, you mean your dad’s brother? The one who runs the estate?”
He nodded shortly but didn’t say anything more.
Please, I begged internally. He’s had so much loss. He doesn’t need any more.
“It’s not that,” he said. “He’s disappeared.”
I reared. “What? How?”
In an apparent daze, he could only shrug. “Don’t know. He’s just…gone. The housekeeper at Corbray Hall hasn’t seen him for a week, and no one at the London house has been able to find him either. He went hunting in Scotland, and that was three weeks ago. Without him, there’s no one to manage the estate. The tenants, the portfolio, the manor. All of it.” He looked up, brow crinkled with tension. And fear. “Ces, I have to go back.”
And just like that, my heart broke, both for me and for my daughter. This was a disaster of the first order. He couldn’t ignore it—that was for sure. No matter how flippant he was about his father’s holdings, I knew Xavier cared about them and his history. He wouldn’t just abandon them. Not after all they’d cost him.
But, of course, that meant a loss for us. Managing something like this could take months, maybe longer. Sofia would have to say goodbye to the father she’d only just gained. And I would have to give away the man I loved for the second time in my life.
“Francesca.”
I looked up, sucking in sharp breaths if only to stifle the tears that threatened. He didn’t need me to fall apart on him now. He had enough to handle.
But oh,it was hard.
Xavier reached out a big hand and gently, so gently, wiped away the tear that tracked down my cheek.
“Damn,” I whispered. “Oh, damn.”
“No, Ces. Listen,” he said softly.
I looked up, waiting for the death blow. He was going to break my heart all over again. I just knew it. “I want you to go with me. Please. Will you and Sofia come with me to London?”
I gasped. “You—you want me to move to London?”
“That’s right. Will you?”
