Escorting the Billionaire - Part 3

He looked straight ahead as we headed to the restaurant, gripping my hand. His easy demeanor of a minute ago was gone. He was almost a little scary right now, striding toward the restaurant in full-blown preparedness for combat.

“Audrey,” he said when we got to the door, “I want you to remember something. This is about to be a show. Don’t lose the plot, okay? Remember who the enemy is. And remember that no matter what I say in there, I will love you forever.”

James

We marched into the restaurant, and Audrey’s face was pale and concerned, just the way I wanted it to be. There was another long table with a white tablecloth; chandeliers and candles shimmered throughout the room. I was getting tired of these fancy dinners. I was certainly tired of my fancy parents, with their misplaced faith in their abiding superiority.

Danielle had been better, a better person than my mother, not the other way around. My mother needed to understand that. I wasn’t sure she was capable, but I was going to try my damnedest.

I just had to make sure that Audrey and I were credible right now. We needed to be pitch perfect. My mother didn’t miss much, and there was no room for error. The vacation was ending, and we were going back to the real world. Audrey was going to be a part of my world. I just had to make sure I got her there unscathed.

Mostly unscathed.

“Let’s sit here,” I said to Audrey, pulling out a chair across from my parents. Audrey nodded at me silently and didn’t look at them: it was as though she couldn’t bear to.

My father nodded to us over his bourbon, and I saw his eyes slip down to Audrey’s chest. “Father,” I said to him coolly, “eyes on me.”

He gave me a dirty look and sipped his bourbon. “I was young once, you know.”

“Really?” I asked, taking a seat next to Audrey. “I don’t remember. It seems like you’ve been an old man forever.”

He snorted at me. “You’re in rare form tonight,” he said, peering at me over his glasses.

“So are you. You’ve said more than four words.” Per his usual, he grunted at me and turned back to the menu. Compared to my mother, my father was like a cardboard cutout of a person. He’d been forever in the background, a voice on the other end of a line from his office. I would always think of him as dressed in neutral tones, nursing a bourbon, scowling at the world from behind his Armani glasses. I’d often thought my mother had chosen him largely because he did what she said.

I wonder if he’d fought her about Danielle, or if he’d just fallen in line. Maybe she never told him, but he had to have guessed. My mother was a difficult woman. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d never said a word and just gone back to his office on the Monday morning after the accident, as though nothing had happened.

As though his wife had never killed a girl.

Celia swept in after that, in a blush-pink gown that ruffled at the neck, probably to mask the few existing lines she had left there. If she was surprised that we’d chosen to sit across from them, her face gave nothing away. Not that I expected it to. She was either so morally bankrupt that she was completely without remorse or her filler had settled in just enough that her face wouldn’t really move for another few weeks. Either way, her smooth expression was just as I expected.

“Hello, James,” she said. “Audrey.”

Audrey nodded at her and looked away, and I settled in for what was going to be an excruciatingly long multiple-course dinner.

* * *

“Have another drink,” I said to Audrey in a low voice, just before dessert was served. “You’re about to need it.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, motioning to the waiter. My parents had been civil during dinner, but little else. My mother had asked me to no avail about several business ventures. After finally giving up, she’d turned to my father to discuss their various upcoming social obligations.

After Audrey got her drink and we finished dessert, I stood abruptly. “Mother, we need to speak with you,” I said. “Follow me.” Both Audrey and my mother obediently followed me out to the almost empty lobby, where we grabbed a table near the fireplace.

“What’s this about?” Celia asked. She gave Audrey a quick look.

“James can speak for himself,” Audrey mumbled, still not looking at my mother. She’d barely said a word all through dinner, and now she looked tense and small against the enormous chair she was seated in.

I knocked back the rest of my bourbon and sat forward in my seat. “I wanted you to know something, Mother. Audrey told me last night about the conversation she’d had with you—about her brother and the fact that you called her mom. I want you to know that I’ll be handling those issues going forward.”