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I just sighed again.
“This is a lot for your father to saddle you with,” he remarked, a low rumble of annoyance in his deep voice.
“Honey, I’ve been saddled, though I don’t like that word, with Portia since she was born. Her mother took off with a huge settlement and we’ve never seen her again. At least, not anywhere near Portia. On yachts with her most recent sugar daddy. Drinking in Corfu. Frolicking in Capri. Walking out of the Ritz. I can’t imagine. My mom hates my dad and isn’t afraid to say it, but she loves me. She also took in Portia and gave her love. But my mom isn’t her mom. I think if they’re pains in our asses, we can convince ourselves we’re happy they’re in Capri and not in our lives. But I doubt that’s the real way of it.”
“Unquestionably.”
I threw back the last of my Amaretto.
Then, feeling slightly woozy, which probably had to do with bad sleep and lots of wine at dinner, I said, “I want to go check on Lou and get some rest. I need to tackle Portia tomorrow, and to do that, I need to have all my pistons firing.”
He set his Cognac on the table and stood, coming around to offer a hand to help me up.
This time, I didn’t hesitate in taking it.
“First stop, my room for your sleeping pill,” he stated.
“Ian, your thoughtfulness is lovely, but those weren’t prescribed for me.”
“I have a pill cutter. We’ll halve it. Take half. If you need more, take the other half.”
“All right,” I agreed.
We held hands all the way up the stairs and down the hall to his room.
I hadn’t poked around too much on this, his wing. Just stuck my head in a few rooms, worried that I’d run into someone’s private quarters.
But I’d noted they were all like my current one. Much bigger. Sitting rooms. Huge closets. Massive bathrooms. Not rooms as such, but suites.
That was the family wing, created so they each had their own personal space to escape to, and a lot of it, or at least, somewhere in modern times, it had been fashioned into it.
Ian’s suite of rooms was handsome, masculine, and looked like a tornado went through it.
The double doors that framed his massive bed in the bedroom area—a tall bed made taller because, for God’s sake, it was on a dais, of all things—showed that space was tidy. As such. At least the bed was made.
The rest was an absolute mess.
“This is a disaster,” I said, taking in the papers, folders, portfolios, two laptops, graphs, printouts, an overflowing, if attractive attaché. This mess was on his toffee-colored button-backed leather couch. The end tables. The coffee table. Stacked on the floor by the big desk. Stacked on the big desk.
“I have a lot of projects on the go. Diversity is the key to making a fuckton of money,” he called from his bathroom. “And my assistant isn’t here to keep it in check.”
“Have you not heard of a cloud?” I called back. “I think the amount of paper in here is responsible for the extinction of two species of birds, one of squirrels, three chipmunks, and an adorable class of owls.”
He came out of his bathroom grinning.
He stopped in front of me. “Do you know you’re at your most fuckable when you’re giving me shit?”
“A girl tries,” I quipped.
He reached, grabbed my wrist, lifted my hand and dropped the two halves of a small blue pill in my palm. He then curled my fingers around them.
“Go. Sleep. When I finally seduce you, I want you firing on all pistons too.”
I rolled my eyes. “Flirt.”
“Tease.”
I winked at him then got up on my toes and kissed his cheek.
