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“Actually, Luna, I thought you were apologizing for running out without a word.” The whisper of something like hurt catches on the end of the sentence, but his face doesn’t show it.
Wow. He really knows how to go for the jugular. And I’m in serious danger of bleeding out on his perfect white cashmere carpet.
That, though, I think he does deserve an explanation for.
“I saw a picture of you with my father.”
His eyes close for a split second, and a soft curse escapes his lips. “On my wall,” he says with a shake of his head, like it’s all making sense to him. “Of course you’d react like that…”
“He was the last person I expected to see there. On a night when…”
“You were just trying to escape it,” he finishes, his voice soft.
Understanding. Closure.
He gets up, holding his hand out for my empty plate, and I hand it to him with a mumbled thank-you. He puts them on the bureau and then comes back with a bowl of sliced fruit and a fork.
“Eat this,” he says, holding the bowl out to me.
I take it but not without a little side-eye. “Do people usually do what you tell them to?”
“Not usually—”
“That’s surprising.”
“Always.”
“Oh.” Of course.
“Eat your fruit. It’ll help hydrate you. You’re still thirsty.”
I spear a piece of pineapple and pop it into my mouth. There’s an explosion of sweet, tart juice. Delicious. “How do you know that?”
“Just eat. Stop asking questions.”
I choose a piece of watermelon next and bite into it, ignoring the errant drops dripping over my lips. It’s so sweet, it’s almost like a candy popsicle, cool and juicy on my parched throat. Not that I’d tell him that. “Is being forty-one years old what’s given you a God complex?”
He settles back down on the other end of the lounge, wiping the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “No, running a Fortune 100 company, being responsible for literally hundredsof thousands of people’s jobs, and being worth over £13 billion is what gives me a God complex.”
I choke on the watermelon. “Did you saythirteenbillion?”
He nods, reaches over with his own fork, and stabs a red grape. “Give or take.”
“Holy shit!”
“Language.”
I wave my fork laden with kiwi at him. “Excuse me, I think that bombshell warrants some special language. How can you have that much money?”
“I inherited some of it. But it’s grown somewhat in the last five, ten years. Since my brothers and I have been running Baxter and our own investment portfolios. But mostly from Baxter.”
I shake my head, trying to imagine what thirteen billion pounds worth of piles of cash would look like. I get to about a million before I give up. “I have no comprehension of how much money that is. Have you always been rich?”
“Yes.”
“You say that in a very matter-of-fact way.”
He looks so disinterested in the conversation that I almost want to drop it, but not enough to actually do it.
