“It’s not mentioned in features about him, I know. He didn’t go to my schools. I never heard his name until he became famous and was linked to Bristol’s. It’s my favorite restaurant. Incredibly elegant, yet so comfortable. But you’re well aware of that.”
Rory said, “Our first restaurant. Christian’s vision, my menu.”
“And your money?”
He gave her a sideways glance. “Not all of it. Christian had an insurance check after his mom passed and he’d been saving up, investing the funds to gain a little more capital. He went to Columbia mostly on academic scholarships and three jobs he worked in between classes and studying. Made the rest of us look like slackers.”
“He said he didn’t come from money.”
“Yeah, but the rest of us did.” Rory let out a puff of air. “Funny how we all felt so privileged. Then Christian Davila appeared on campus, making a mockery of our GPAs, hitting the books harder than we did.… Hell, even in his worn jeans and sweatshirts he looked smarter than all of us combined. The man has a steel trap of a mind and anyone who might have doubted he’d succeed big-time in the world was just one more person for Christian to prove wrong.”
Bayli fell silent. Rory knew exactly what she was thinking. For as diligent as Rory had been in building his reputation and the reputation of Davila’s in every city in which they opened a restaurant and creating a more impressive menu than the last, he’d had a safety net all along. Christian never had.
That was one of the things that had always impressed Rory when it came to his friend. Christian had been balls to the wall from the start, truly leaving footprints worth following. He wasn’t the type to let obstacles stand in his way. Not that Christian had skated through school or his first business ventures. Rory knew that firsthand. But his friend was a force with which to be reckoned. Always had been. Always would be. And Rory not only respected him for that, but he also admired Christian for the free yet determined spirit that he was.
Rory told Bayli, “Christian should have been born a Kennedy or a Bush, or something. He could change the world if he had the right last name and financial backing. He has the uncanny ability to see things in black and white—yet, Jesus Christ, he never misses the gray matter in between. I don’t know anyone whose brain churns twenty-four-seven like this guy’s. Well. Maybe yours does.”
Bayli gave a sma
ll, pained chortle. “Sort of goes—or I should say went—with the territory. I spent many, many hours in hospital waiting rooms, and even more time studying medical terminology so that I had some semblance of an idea as to what the surgeons were trying to explain to me in their words, versus layman’s terms, when my mother was ill. My first glassed-over-eyes experience when I was twelve—after my grandmother died and she wasn’t there to field all the questions and information from the cardiothoracic staff—convinced me that I needed to truly understand what was happening with my mother’s heart condition.”
Rory didn’t say anything until he pulled into his reserved spot in the underground parking garage of his complex. He went to the passenger’s side to collect Bayli, taking her books and carrying their grocery bag.
But before he led her to the elevators, he asked, “What was happening with your mother’s heart?”
Bayli blinked a couple of times—to keep tears from her eyes?
That just plain killed him.
But he tried to remain focused on the conversation at hand.
She said, “Mom was born with heart disease. It worsened over time. Having me was … hard on her. She shouldn’t have done it. Shouldn’t have gotten pregnant.”
Rory’s own heart wrenched. A world without the beautiful Bayli Styles …
Inconceivable.
Since Wednesday at his restaurant, Rory hadn’t been able to imagine a brighter New York without this woman’s smile to light it. Julia Roberts had nothing on her.
With unmistakable remorse in her tone, Bayli said, “I can’t begin to fathom why it was so important to my mother to have a child if it meant she was cutting her own life short. But according to Grams, it meant everything to Mom. So she went for it—with her high school boyfriend. And it was all good for her, health-wise, in the beginning. A couple of years later … not so much.” She used her hip to close the car door and sniffled. “I don’t really want to say anything more about that, okay?”
Rory kissed her forehead. “Okay.”
When they were in his apartment, Bayli perked up again, as he’d suspected she would. The foyer was a rounded sitting room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and equally tall windows featuring city and park views. Chairs and sofas with accent tables were scattered about.
“Look at all of this.…” Bayli circled the room with an expression of awe on her face, her fingertips lovingly grazing over spines of classic literature, some first-edition works, numerous biographies and memoirs. She met Rory at the entrance where she’d started and said, “Please tell me you actually read these books.”
“That’s sort of the point of owning them.”
“Not just to impress bookworms such as myself?”
He set her own bundle on an end table. “I don’t know women who’d go all soft on me just because I had a personal library.”
“I’m not going all soft on you,” she insisted.
“You’re not?” His arms slipped around her waist. “Because you seem much less annoyed with me than the first time we met.”
“Well, the second time we met you gave up on teaching me the merits of oca—which I’d never even heard of until today—and settled for carrots instead. So I figure we’re even.”