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“Is this lunch—brunch—about anything in particular?” It seems the least dangerous route to take to fish for information.
He frowns, his eyes narrowed into slits. “I received an email from the hotel my mother is staying at. In a suite that I pay for,” he adds. “It seems that the other night there was some kind of… disturbance. The email contained a bill for damage that had been done to the hotel’s property.” His right hand drifts to the cufflink on the wrist of the left, fiddling with the round bit of silver. “One badly damaged wall. A cracked window. Broken furniture. An estimate for the amount required to clean the carpets of wine stains. Not to mention a noise complaint allegedly coming from every room within a floor of Gloria’s sometime after midnight.”
I can only blink. His mother may have had her vices, but I wouldn’t have expected “wild partier” to be one of them. “Wow… that’s—”
“After her nightly wine and brandy, my mother is always dead to the world by nine,” Bellamy says, his tone icy. “Unless she truly is possessed, as those rumors like to claim, then someone who just so happens to be dwelling in the suite with her is responsible for this mess.”
“Ah…” I nod, catching on. “Your brother. Alexander.”
He doesn’t react to the term. I might as well have suggested “your pet rat.” Instead, he turns to glare out of the window, and it’s only when we reach the block right before the one where the café his mother prefers sits that he finally says anything. “He’ll be there.”
The words sound like an omen. I don’t know what to say in response, so I say nothing and, instead, dutifully follow him out onto the curb. For the first time, I notice that the once beautifully blue sky is now covered by a layer of gray overcast. Darker clouds loom over the horizon, readying to descend on cue. Even before we enter the café and are shown to the dining room, I can sense that Gloria is already here, seated at a table near the back corner. Beside her is a man I've never seen before, at least in theory.
I have to tell myself that more than once as my head swivels in Bellamy’s direction—the one standing beside me, at least. The man seated at the table isn’t wearing a designer suit, but a gray shirt and a pair of dark-wash jeans, which sets him apart. His black hair is longer and slightly more tousled than the Bellamy I know. His eyes are green. I have to make a mental note of every little difference, because other than that… everything from his height to his flawless bone structure is nearly identical to Graeme Bellamy’s.
“Graemy bear,” he says, his voice an octave deeper than his brother’s, his accent a tad crisper. “The prodigal son makes his appearance.”
“Mother.” Bellamy—or, in this case,Graeme—stares dead ahead, forcing Gloria to meet his gaze. She looks about ten shades paler than usual and is fiddling with her pearls, a bad sign. The last time I saw her so frazzled, it was the year she’d booked a “family” trip to Ibiza for the holidays, and Bellamy…Graemeacted as though she’d asked him if we would like to willingly hop into a guillotine for a week. Though, now I suppose I know why.
“Wow, Graemy,” the Bellamy-clone declares sardonically. “This is a much better reunion than I could have ever hoped for.”
“Alexander,” Gloria scolds, still clutching her pearls. She glances at the man beside me imploringly and musters up what I think is meant to be a hopeful smile. “Graeme. Please… can youpleasejust sit down, at least?”
I’m impressed when he approaches the table without giving in to any impulse to flip it over as his posture suggests. He yanks out an elegant wooden chair instead and jerks his chin curtly. “Evelyn.”
So he’s reverted to ordering me around like a dog. I try to ignore the slight in favor of being supportive. Why I would want to support a man who seemed to entertain himself lately by firing, rehiring, and sexually harassing me? I’ll figure that out later.
“Evelyn…” Alexander shoots me a surprisingly friendly smile. Seeing a face so similar to Graeme’s contort into such a… genuine expression is strange. Frankly, it’s unnatural. “You must be the assistant I’ve heard so much about. According to mother, Graemy wouldn’t even know which knickers to wear for the day without you.”
Gloria coughs delicately into her palm. “I didn’t put it quite that way, darling…”
“Let us drop the pretense, shall we?”
My heart stops. Up until five seconds ago, I would have thought that I had seen Graeme Bellamy at his very worst. I knew how deep and guttural his voice could go. I knew the look in his eye he got whenever he was in the mood to send something hurtling across the room. I knew every facet of the man’s worst shades of rage.
Or so I thought. His voice straddles a gruff baritone I’ve never heard before. If a wolf could talk and somehow managed to shove itself into a designer suite and forced itself to attend a makeshift family luncheon, it would probably make that sound. Every word is gritted. Oddly crisp. And then the bomb drops. “Let’s talk about the fact that it took a very generous donation to keep the Palace Suites from terminating your stay prematurely.”
Gloria shrinks beneath the intensity of his gaze. Alexander just smiles.
“These Americans sure know how to party,” he says.
Graeme smiles as well, and every cell in my body goes on red alert. “Mother,” he grunts without glancing in Gloria’s direction. “Pleasepass me the kettle.”
“I’ve got it!” I intercept, snatching for the handle before Gloria can so much as detangle her fingers from her pearls. I reach for the nearest teacup and pour the least dangerous amount of liquid into it before placing it before the man beside me. I pour myself a slightly larger amount before offering a cup to Gloria.
“Now, Graeme,” Gloria starts cautiously, even though her notoriously strong-armed son now has scalding ammunition to throw. “I’m sure this is all one big misunderstanding—”
“Ten thousand dollars,” Graeme says over her. “That’s just the base fee the hotel required to overlook this incident. Let’s not even mention the surmounting cost of theactualdamage, including the hush money paid to the two women found strolling the hallway at two in the morning who both were, as the manager put it, ‘completely sauced.’”
A funny thing happens when he talks like this—everyone within a mile radius seems to stop and stare. He’s captivating in his anger. Like a supernova, growing brighter and brighter before the inevitable boom.
“Now darling, that was just a misunderstanding,” Gloria rushes to say. It’s the wrong thing.
“A misunderstanding?” Graeme’s eyes shoot that cold, endless shade of dark blue as he runs his palm along the strip of white tablecloth in front of him. “Is that so?”
I’m not naive enough to take his whole trumped-up position as his “wooing” expert seriously. Obviously, he has another motive in mind for keeping me close. Out of my own desire for self-preservation, I’ll humor it. But some part of me still can’t help but remember his initial “assignment” given to me before this brunch—a lesson in how not to cause a goddamn scene in a bloody café during “brunch” with his mother. So far, I’m failing, big time.
“I’m sure it is,” I blurt out, glancing warily at Gloria. “Just… a big misunderstanding.”
