The Evolution of Man (The Trust Fund Duet 2)

“Because it wasn’t about the money,” he says, his frustration almost tangible.

I hold my breath because I’ve wanted to hear those words forever. Wanted them to be real. Wanted something that wasn’t about the money—but Sutton isn’t talking about me right now. He’s talking about Christopher Bardot while his deep inner turmoil vibrates through the air around us.

“What was it about?” I whisper, knowing he won’t answer me.

The closed look on his face reminds me of Christopher. He can be just as cold and ruthless, even with his handsome golden-boy features, even with his easy charm. “It doesn’t matter,” he says finally. “The company is over. Dissolved after the library was purchased and the assets distributed.”

I take a step closer, needing to know the answer. Feeling it at the tips of my fingers. Reaching for it. “Come to dinner with me, Sutton. We can go to L’Etoile again.”

And we can fall on each other in a hallway. He can lift my couture skirt and make me see stars. It doesn’t matter what restaurant we go to. That’s how the night would end.

His blue eyes turn dark. I don’t mistake the desire. “We’re business partners. That’s it.”

“The way you and Christopher were business partners?”

Something flashes across his face. “Yes,” he says. “Like that.”

“Then we can meet where you met him. At the Den, for cognac or whiskey or whatever the hell rich men like to drink these days. We work together now. You don’t have an excuse.”

There’s every chance tonight will end the same way.

He stares me down, willing me to look away first. Except I want this too much. I want him too much, in all his conflicted glory, even if he is some kind of consolation prize. Even if that’s what I am for him. He courted me once, and he was damn charming then. But now he’s resisting me, trying to be reserved, and he’s damn near devastating.

I might be the one falling to my knees in front of him tonight.

“Beer,” he says, his voice rough. “At the Den. Nine o’clock.”

I take off the yellow hard hat and hold it out to him. “You need this more than me. I don’t want any wayward pieces of concrete knocking you out. I’m pretty sure they don’t serve beer in the ER.”

He gives me a small smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

I’m still wondering about that look as I step back through the heavy plastic sheeting, as I cross back through the looking glass into the real world of traffic horns and exhaust.

The way you and Christopher were business partners? There was something in his expression when I asked the question. Guilt. Longing?

It makes me wonder if there was more to their relationship than money. It makes me wonder if I broke more than their company when I stood between them.

My mother’s nurse is a stout woman with perpetually pink cheeks and a tendency to call everyone sugar. Freida dutifully prepares the chopped kale salads and wheatgrass smoothies my mother prefers, but I suspect she laces the brownies with pot.

Whatever we’re paying the agency, it isn’t enough.

I like her so much I can almost forget that she isn’t a regular nurse. She’s a hospice nurse, part of a whole hospice team that consulted with my mother for weeks when we moved here.

Daddy died in the middle of my first art gallery show, to the shock of everyone.

What came after, the will and its humiliation, that was a surprise, too.

My mother seems determined to die in exactly the opposite way—slowly, with every stage planned out. I’m sure it comes from a kindness, a wish to prevent the kind of paralysis that gripped us in that New York City hotel room, the air still tinged with the smell of paint.

Freida manages to corner me. I’m usually more careful than this, but I sneaked into the kitchen for a pot brownie and a glass of milk. I could have used a little natural high before seeing Sutton in his natural element. There’s nothing behind me except a walk-in pantry, no possible escape from the conversation I’ve been avoiding for almost a month.

“Harper,” she says. “I’m glad I caught you, sugar.”

I wave the plate with the pot brownie vaguely, as if I’m not panicking inside. “Oh, you know, just getting a midnight snack. It’s something I do when I’m sleepwalking. Like right now.”

She gives me that hospice-nurse smile. “We should talk about your mother.”

“You already told me what she ate today,” I say as if she’s just so silly. As if there’s nothing else to say about a woman determined to die in the most drawn-out possible way.