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But Lucy? I’d do just about anything for my friend if it would make her well again.
“Don’t worry, Luce,” I told her. “Four weeks here, and I’ll have the new place scoped out. Then I’m coming back to London and moving to a new flat in Mayfair. Has an elevator and everything. I’ve got a room picked out for you, too.”
“And a bathroom too? You know how I feel about sharing with one of your ‘women.’” She said the last word like “cockroach” would be more fitting.
I just chuckled. “You’ll have a whole wing to yourself.”
“Well, it’s settled them. You stay in New York and take care of your business,” she said. “Go chase girls. I’m fine,really. Henry is just making excuses to get you to come home, like he always does.”
I swallowed. She sounded all right. But it was always hard to tell with her.
“I…”
I trailed off as two girls approached the bar behind me. Students most likely. Cute, in that street-wise way girls in New York tended to be. One was blonde and tall—not my type in the slightest. But the other was probably the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen. Short, small enough that I probably could have scooped her up and put her in my pocket, with a soft sinuous shape that would bring any man to his knees. Her hips swayed in a pair of painted-on jeans, and she wore a red top that slid over her curves like oil and cut off just above the navel. Her body was a map begging a man straight home.
She tossed her dark hair over her shoulder and smiled at me as she and her friend checked IDs with the doorman.
“Let’s see,” the doorman droned as he looked, clearly taking his time so he could flirt with the two of them. “Emily Bradford. You’re good. And Francesca Zola.” He looked up at the dark-haired bird and grinned. “You twenty-one, sweetheart?”
Her blush was visible even under the dim street lighting. Something in my gut pulled as she toyed with her hair, revealing an elegant stretch of neck calling for my lips.
“Fuck me,” I whispered.
“What was that?” Lucy asked.
“Have fun,” the doorman told the girls.
Just before entering, the dark-haired one winked at me, and it was like flipping a switch to an electrical current deep inside me. Not my cock, exactly, although that was wide awake too. But something else was flickering too. I didn’t understand it. But it felt fucking amazing.
“Ah, Luce?”
“It’s a girl, isn’t it? I stopped talking at least two minutes ago, and you’ve just been breathing heavily like one of Mummy’s greyhounds.”
I swallowed. “Er—sorry.”
“Go, Xavier,” Lucy said with a laugh. “Live. Please. But only if you promise to tell me everything later.”
I grinned, even though she wasn’t there to see it. Lucy always knew how to get me to smile, even if no one else could. “You got it, babe.”
“But Xavier?”
“Mmm?”
I was distracted again, watching through the bar’s window as the girl in the red shirt ordered a beer at the counter. I liked the way her big earrings dangled down near her chin when she laughed. Fuck, I liked just about everything I saw.
“Try not to break her heart, will you?”
I laughed at that, a great bark that echoed around the street. “I don’t know about that one, Luce. Who’s to say she won’t break mine?”
TWENTY-FIVE
“Imiss home, Mama.”
Xavier and Elsie had once again left by helicopter yesterday evening but had bid us to join them in the morning along with the nanny via Range Rover, driven by Ben. It was still a long ride, but I supposed better than the train.
Miriam sat up front, flirting with Ben while he navigated deeper into the Northern English countryside. Sofia, however, didn’t seem to be entertained by any of it. Not the sheep she could spot out the windows. Not the games on her new iPad. My little girl simply slumped with her head leaning on my arm, sighing every so often while she threaded her little fingers through Tyrone’s rainbow tail, which was getting threadbare these days.
I stroked her curling black hair away from her face. “You mean the flat?”
