“Hi, Jordan,” said a soft girlish voice.
He leaned forward, smiling at Paige. “Hello, Paige. Where are your parents?”
“It’s all right, Jordan,” Christiane said, as she signaled for the first course to be served. “Paige’s folks went to Monte Carlo for the holiday and I told them Paige could stay with us rather than with a sitter.”
Jordan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He couldn’t and would never understand why people had children only to hand them over to a nanny or sitter, while they continued to live their lives as if by their leave. Only parents without a conscience would leave their only child—a sixteen-year-old girl—with the family of her friend to fly across an ocean to gamble and party on the French Riviera.
When—no, if—he married and had a family, he would make certain to play an active role in the lives of his children. That was where Christiane differed from her peers; she hadn’t left child-rearing to nannies, housekeepers or au pairs. Her face was the first one Jordan had seen when he woke up and the last one before he’d closed his eyes at night. Even Edward had become a more involved parent. Jordan didn’t agree with everything his parents said or did, but there was never a question as to their unwavering support when it concerned their children.
The mood lightened considerably after several glasses of wine accompanied by asparagus soup, a radicchio, fennel and walnut salad, rib eye roast with a mustard and black peppercorn sauce, winter greens with pancetta and potatoes au gratin. Chanel and Paige asked to be excused before dessert was served. The chef had outdone himself when he’d prepared Apple Charlotte with whipped cream.
Jordan was amused when Rhett, who was not yet legal, refilled his wineglass. He knew his brother had begun drinking before he’d celebrated his twenty-first birthday, but usually not in front of their parents. He, on the other hand, had raided the liquor cabinet at fourteen and had drunk so much that he had been sick for more than a week. It was another ten years before he took another drink.
“Jordan, are you currently dating anyone?” Christiane asked, breaking into his thoughts.
Tracing the rim of the wineglass with a forefinger, he stared at the prisms of color on the glass reflected from the chandelier. “No, Mother.”
“Didn’t you tell me you were seeing a girl?” Edward said, accepting a cigar from the engraved silver case Wyatt had handed him. “Thanks, Dad.”
“I was,” Jordan said truthfully, “but it was nothing more than a summer fling.”
Christiane sat up straighter. “Who was she, darling? Do I know her family?”
A pregnant pause ensued before he said, “Her name is Natasha Parker, and I doubt whether you’d know her family.”
All traces of color disappeared from his mother’s face, leaving it frighteningly pale. “Not that girl who worked with Jean-Paul for a few days.” Her words were a breathless whisper.
“She’s a woman, not a girl, Mother.”
Wyatt did something he rarely did in the dining room. He lit his cigar, inhaled deeply and blew out a perfect smoke ring. A gray haze obscured the sneer around his mouth. “It didn’t take long, did it, Jordan? I had no idea you liked dark meat. But then I really shouldn’t be surprised, because what else is there in Harlem.”
Noah flashed a white-tooth smile. “Does she have a sister?”
“Don’t you mean a brother?” Wyatt drawled.
Touching the corners of his mouth with a damask napkin, Noah pushed back his chair and stood up. He pointed to his parents. “Now you see why I don’t bring a woman into this.” He shifted his angry gaze to Rhett. “Get your girlfriend out of here before she finds herself with a bull’s-eye on her back.”
The young woman whom Rhett had introduced as Amelia pressed a hand to her chest. “Please don’t mind me. I grew up with my folks going at each other like cats and dogs. After a while, I learned to tune them out.”
Jordan joined Noah when he, too, stood up. “Excuse me.”
Turning on his heels, he walked out of the dining room, his brother following in his footsteps. He knew if he’d stayed what would’ve ensued would have been an argument that would have been certain to pit him and Noah against their parents and grandfather. Edward was fifty-five, yet he still hadn’t been able to stand up to his tyrannical, controlling father. Wyatt had clawed his way out of poverty on New York City’s Lower East Side to create a real estate dynasty second only to Douglas Elliman in New York City, and now at seventy-eight, he was tough as steel and wasn’t above using his fists when necessary to prove a point.
“When are you going to learn not to entertain Grandfather’s taunting?” he asked Noah.
“I just can’t stand it when he comes off so condescending. And just because I won’t subject a woman to his holier-than-thou attitude he thinks I’m gay.”
“He is who he is,” Jordan said, taking the spiral staircase instead of the elevator to the second floor and their suites. “After I had that dust-up with him last year I made myself a promise never to let him see me that angry again.”
“How do you hold your temper?”
Jordan pushed open the door to his apartment that included an en suite bath, dressing room, living/dining room area and a utility kitchen. He probably would’ve lived in the mansion until he married if he hadn’t had such an angry confrontation with his grandfather. The apartment suite afforded him complete privacy, and a full-time household staff was on hand to provide him with whatever he needed regardless of the day or the hour. However, purchasing the maisonette less than a mile away gave him something he hadn’t been able to achieve living under the same roof as his family—independence. Noah preceded him, flopping down on a club chair with a matching footstool, while he draped his long frame over a sofa.
“Remember, Noah, I’ve got ten years and a lot more experience, and with that comes maturity. I learned more working as a litigator protecting the interest of well-heeled clients than I had in three years of law school. And now working in Harlem with clients whose needs are as great or even greater than those at Trilling, Carlyle and Browne has forced me to examine who I am and what I want for my future.”
“What do you want, Jordan?”
“I want the best for the clients of Chatham and Wainwright.”
Noah gave him a long, penetrating stare. Ten years his senior, Jordan was considered tall, dark and handsome. His black hair and olive coloring was a dramatic contrast in a family where everyone was blond. However, whenever he saw photographs of their grandfather in his youth, the resemblance between Wyatt and Jordan was uncanny. Wyatt Wainwright had been quite the rake with his raven hair and penetrating blue eyes.
“What about your personal life?” he questioned again.
“What about it, Noah?”
“Don’t you want to get married? Start a family?”
Jordan rested his head on folded arms as he lay across the sofa. “I suppose I do one of these days.”
“Why are you so ambivalent?”
“I’m not ambivalent. It’s just that I haven’t met the right woman.”
“You haven’t met the right woman and I have.”
Sitting up as if he were pulled by a taut wire, Jordan planted his feet on the carpet. “Who is she?”
“You’ll meet her if you come down to the Bahamas with me.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow night. I’m not coming back until January the third.”
Jordan