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“Mind if I take this one?” someone asks of the stool beside mine.
“No, I’m alone,” I say, barely paying attention as the bartender smiles and asks for my order.
I order a vodka martini, although it’s not really mydrink. I’m not actually sure why I order it. It’s Mrs. Fox’s cocktail of choice.
But it doesn’t matter much what I drink. I just want the warmth of it, the numbing effects the vodka will deliver. The bartender makes small talk and somehow, I smile along and answer his questions about my plans for Christmas. I’ll be going home next week, with just one more project to turn in before I’m done for the semester. He sets the martini in front of me, and I take my wallet out of my purse to hand him a credit card. Before I can, the man next to me slides his across the bar.
“I’ll have the same. First one’s on me,” he says.
I look over at him. He’s a few years older than me, and I can tell from his accent he’s not from here.
“Oh, that’s all right, thanks.”
“It’s Christmas,” he says, putting his hand over mine to stop me. “And I just closed a big deal so…” he trails off as the bartender sets his drink in front of him and takes the man’s card. The man holds his drink up. “Help me celebrate?”
I don’t feel like it but don’t really see a way out of it without making it into a big deal, so I pick up my glass and touch it to his.
“Thank you and congratulations,” I say, and take a sip of mine. I turn to look straight ahead at all the shiny bottles on glass shelves set on a mirror wall. The bar is polished mahogany and spans the entire lengthof the wall. The female bartenders are wearing reindeer headbands.
“Everyone seems to be celebrating something,” the man beside me says. “How about you?” he asks, clearly oblivious to my mood.
I should have insisted I pay for my own drink.
“Oh, I still have some work I need to do before the celebrations. School. So, I’m a little preoccupied,” I say, trying to add an upturned lilt to the end of my sentence.
“You’re a student?” he continues.
I nod, then take a sip of my martini—which tastes like rubbing alcohol—but I already feel the warmth of the vodka, so I take another. I’m grateful that the man is happy to tell me about his deal and his Christmas plans and his everything rather than asking me any more questions. I nod along, drink my martini, and try not to think about the engagement ring that probably cost a fortune just dropped there in my coat pocket.
Try not to think about my father’s face on the news.
When the bartender places a second martini in front of me, I realize I’ve already finished the first and thank him. He takes my empty glass. I don’t often drink, but tonight of all nights, I need it. I want it. By the time I’m halfway through the second glass, it doesn’t taste so bad, but I hardly ate anything at dinner so I should probably watch it.
The man asks something I don’t hear when a group near us bursts into laughter. The noise draws my attention,and I rotate my chair to glance over when a turquoise gaze collides with mine.
My heart leaps, and I almost spill my drink in my surprise.
Because there, in a half-moon booth at the far end of the restaurant, is Silas Cruz.
The noise stops for a moment, people seeming to freeze mid-sentence as he and I take each other in. His back is to the wall, a group of maybe a dozen men and women, all well dressed, sitting around him. Several bottles of champagne are turned down in their buckets and a waiter is serving what I guess to be espresso martinis to all but Silas, in front of whom the waitress sets what I guess to be a tumbler of whiskey.
I haven’t seen Silas Cruz in over a year. He and his mother moved out of the Fox cottage soon after he graduated college. They went to Atlanta, as far as I knew. I’ve only seen Silas in the news a few times since. I remember Mr. Fox’s surprised and irritated reaction when an investment firm had hired Silas. When he’d received his first promotion just two years later, Mr. Fox had been outright angry.
Actually, the whole of the Fox family was not pleased, to say the least. The company Silas had found work with was run by a man Sly considered an enemy, and Mr. Fox felt it a personal betrayal that Silas, after graduating with a degree that Sly paid for, would do this to him. To all of them.
I kept my mouth shut, but it wasn’t easy. Over theyears we were neighbors, it took me a little while to figure out the dynamics between the families. I knew early on that Silas was Sly’s son by Esmerelda. I found it strange even then, when I was just a girl, why the Foxes let Silas and his mom live on their property, why they had Esmerelda working for them, but I overheard bits and pieces of conversation here and there and Ethan’s full version of the story eventually.
It turned out that when Esmerelda had come to work for Mr. Fox when she was barely seventeen, he’d taken an interest in her.
Mr. Fox had been engaged to Mrs. Fox, but he’d had what Ethan called an affair with Esmerelda. I’m not sure I’d call it an affair given the age gap and her being staff, though, and as I’d gotten to know Esmerelda over the years, I knew she’d never have an affair with a man who was engaged to marry another woman.
But in the end, she got pregnant with Silas and, according to Ethan and Mrs. Fox, she blackmailed them into allowing her to stay at the cottage and work for them. It seemed like a strange deal to me, but I knew that Silas was Esmerelda’s priority. She’d do what she needed to do to make sure he had a good start, even if that meant living with and working for a family who hated you.
Silas getting a job with an enemy of the man who fathered him—who never acknowledged him, who treated his mother the way he did—well, I know thatwas as calculated a move as any Sly Fox would make. Like father, like son, and good for Silas, I’d thought.
Now, though, looking into his eyes across the room, seeing him here in the flesh, it’s got my heart racing and blood pumping in my ears. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that when it comes to Silas Cruz, there is some magnet between us—well, for me at least. I am drawn to him like I’ve never been drawn to any other man.
But when the gorgeous woman on his right leans in to whisper something into his ear before intimately brushing her fingers across his chest, I clear my throat and blink away, bringing my attention to my martini and taking a giant sip.
