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His brows draw together. “The one you’re apparently desperate to divorce?”
“The one who died ten years ago,” I clarify.
“Oh.”
I give him the broad strokes of what Leah’s plans for the company had been and how I’d hoped to protect her legacy, and then about my conversations with Beth and Deacon that ultimately led to the sale.
“I’m surprised that PI of yours didn’t dig all this up,” I muse.
Sullivan shrugs. “She might have. I sort of forgot about everything else when I saw the pictures of you two.”
“I still can’t believe you sicked a PI on him,” Deacon growls.
“Well, I needed to do something,” Sullivan protests. “He was completely stonewalling us and I wanted to know why. At that point he wasn’t even taking meetings any more.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “What the fuck are you talking about? I had a meeting with you and Steele the day that photo of Deacon and me was taken. Half the reason I was even in that bar was because…” I trail off, shaking my head. “Never mind.”
“Wait.” Deacon holds up a hand. “Sully, when did you set this shit up?”
Sullivan shrugs. “I don’t know. It was before…no, wait—” His eyes light up with memory and he turns to Drew, flashing a cocky smile. “It was the day you came to my office to yell at me and we made out in my bathroom.”
Drew’s cheeks redden and he lifts a hand to fidget with one of his earrings, but he otherwise doesn’t respond.
“After the wedding?” Deacon asks. “So how the fuck did you get a picture of us from two weeks before that?”
Sullivan drags his gaze back to Deacon, looking puzzled. “I…don’t know. Dani had them. I didn’t think to question it.”
“So either she was hired by someone else as well, or she sourced them from someone else who’s been investigating you…” Deacon muses, eyes full of concern as they land on me.
I don’t need to think too hard to come up with the most likely culprit. “Natalia.” I murmur, giving a weary shake of my head. “It’s exactly the kind of thing she’d do.”
I try to put any further thoughts of Natalia and what she might do with photos of me picking up a guy at a gay bar as we all gather to eat.
Based on Deacon’s description earlier, I was expecting a very traditional Thanksgiving dinner, with an immaculately laid table with a twenty pound roasted turkey as the centerpiece. But that’s definitely not the kind of meal that’s served up, and I guess with the roughly forty people now packed into the penthouse, a huge sit-down feast would have been a little impractical.
Instead, the food is served in a mix of buffet and cocktail style. At the buffet, there’s an array of things like shellfish, salads, vegetables, sliced turkey meat and stuffing, along with a bunch of different sauces and dressings. You’d think that spread would be enough on its own, but evidently Emily Cox went to the same event-hosting school as my daughter, where the “more is more” principle applies. So there are also catering staff walking around presenting the guests with trays of Thanksgiving-themed finger food, like bite-sized turkey meatballs, pumpkin pies small enough to hold between a thumb and forefinger, and bacon-wrapped sprouts.
“Ah fuck!” I hear someone exclaim from right behind where Deacon and I are standing chatting with Will and Spencer.
I glance back to find a guy Deacon introduced me to earlier as Bryce staring daggers at the empty toothpick in his fingers. “There was a fucking Brussels sprout hidden in that bacon.”
Deacon lets out a soft chuckle. “Yeah, man. Pretty sure that’s why they call them bacon-wrapped sprouts.”
Bryce just continues to glower at his toothpick. “How am I ever supposed to trust bacon again?”
“If it helps, I hear sprouts are great for fertility.”
His eyes light up. “Seriously?”
I nod. “They call it a superfood for a reason, right?”
He grins and rushes off, calling out to his girlfriend as he strides across the room.
“Is that true?” Will asks me, and I turn back to find his brows climbing in curiosity.
I have to press my lips together to keep them from twitching. “Um, well, it is…but I’m pretty sure it’s only for female fertility,” I confess, recalling Natalia’s strict dietary and exercise regimen when we were trying to get pregnant with Izzy. I manage to shake the thought away, however; if there’s anything that fucks up my head more than trying to deal with the bitter, unfeeling woman my ex has become, it’s remembering the time before that when she was happy and caring, and desperately wanted to be a mother.
At my admission, Spencer tosses his head back and lets out a loud burst of laughter. “Oh god, please don’t anyone tell him. He’ll be choking down sprouts for months until he finally knocks her up.”
