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“Why do you always get the penthouse?” I wondered as I tiptoed into the kitchen. “I’m assuming that’s what this is. We’re too high up for it not to be.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Xavier had a thing for the top floors, even springing for the Plaza penthouse in New York as his primary residence for the last several months, despite the fact that it must have cost more than Ivy League tuition.
“Because he wants everything to be as tall as he is.” Elsie chuckled before crossing the room to sit with Sofia.
Xavier only offered a crooked smirk while he shoved his phone into his jacket pocket.
“Why?” I found myself pressing. “Considering how much you travel, it seems like you’re barely here to enjoy it.”
“I spent long enough at the bottom of things,” Xavier said quietly. “Now I prefer to be above it all. Is that so wrong?”
I frowned at the defensiveness again in his tone. We were the ones with jet lag, but that was the second time I’d heard that kind of fatigue. “I was just wondering.”
Xavier cast a sort of shy glance my way before striding to where I stood, picking up my hand, and pressing a quiet kiss to my knuckles. “Take a look around. It’s your home now, too.”
Home?
Nothing had been more uncertain than that concept was at this moment. Now that my brother was getting married, home wasn’t necessarily the red brick house in Red Hook anymore. Nor was it my grandmother’s place in the Bronx, where I hadn’t lived for over four years.
But it wasn’t this place either, cold and white and sterile. I was already imagining spending the next two months hovering around Sofia to make sure she didn’t inadvertently turn something pink with a broken marker or leave footprints across the marble. Could anyone really come back here and feel as comfortable and safe as one needed for a place to be considered home?
“‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,’” I murmured as I continued to look around.
Well, if that was the case, was Xavier taking us in here because he felt like he had to? Or was there an expiration on this invitation?
I guess we were here to find out.
A set of fingers slipped under my chin, and I looked up to find Xavier watching me with another crooked smile.
“Another quote?” he wondered.
“Robert Frost,” I replied with a low exhale. “One of my favorites.”
Xavier tipped his head. “You know, Ces, I wonder sometimes if you use other people’s words to avoid saying what you really think.”
One black brow rose, as if to dare me to admit the truth. But before I could, we were interrupted by Sofia’s loud squeal.
“Mama, watch me!”
I turned to find Sofia running all out from the dining room into the living room, then stopping suddenly to slide several yards in her socked feet across the marble. Right toward the edge of another plush carpet and a coffee table with a very expensive-looking planter in the center of it.
“Sofia!” I cried. “Oh, honey, wait!”
But before I could stop her, her feet caught on the rug, sending her head-first into the plush white expanse. She somersaulted across, knocked into the bottom of the coffee table, and sent the planter with the biggest white orchid I’d ever seen—and its collection of soil—flying.
“It’s okay, Mama,” Sofia said, sitting up proudly as if she’d just completed an impressive stunt on the jungle gym. “I’m all right, see?”
“I’m glad, Sof,” I said, hurrying over to squat next to her. “But I’m not sure Daddy’s carpet is.”
Sofia looked to where I was trying to gather the remains of the orchid into its glass container. Unfortunately, the more I dug for the bits of soil, the more they seemed to sink into the strands, which were far too soft to be made from something as pedestrian as polyester or even wool.
“Relax,” Xavier said, coming to stand next to us. He bent down to pick Sofia up. “It’s just a stuffy white rug. I don’t care about it, anyway.”
Behind him, Elsie’s brows practically touched the roof, and I thought I heard her mutter, “Since when?”
“Xavi, oh, I’m so sorry.” I wagged my hands around, unsure of what I should do.
I’d never stopped to wonder what his home might be like before we agreed to come here. For some reason, I’d pictured him in a flat like the one he’d described from his childhood, but of course, he wouldn’t be content with a one-bedroom apartment over a restaurant. This was Xavier, who liked things big and luxe and wasn’t afraid to foot the bill. Of course, he would own a penthouse in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in London. And, of course, it would be almost exclusively decorated in things that could be stained in a half second.
