Fanfare (23 page)

“Check,” he said again as he positioned himself for another attempt at my king. “I would like that very much.”

I beamed at Tom’s father. “I’m really glad.” I prepared to sacrifice my white knight to save my king and finished setting up the stage.

“Thank you. My son is very lucky to have you in his life.” He removed my knight from the board as he grinned kindly at me.

“I’m very lucky to have him in mine . . . Checkmate.”

His jaw dropped in shock as he took a closer look at the board in front of him. I remained silent as he studied the pieces.

“Quite feisty,” he muttered.

With a wry smile of defeat, he knocked his king over.

Two hours later, I helped Tom’s mother prepare breakfast in the kitchen. Tom was still fast asleep and blissfully unaware of the fact I had been unleashed on his parents without a chaperone. Anne lived with a roommate in a flat about half an hour away, so her bubbly presence could not serve as a buffer.

“Are you sure you don’t want more sleep, dear? Thomas stays out quite late when he spends time with his friends, and I don’t want you to fall apart later on,” she said with concern as I turned over the sausage in the frying pan.

“I’ll be fine! I’m on my second cup of coffee so far, and I think I’ll manage to keep it together. Maybe I’ll try to grab a nap later this afternoon.”

She studied my face carefully before replying. “Just don’t let him drag you all over the city until you’re half-dead. Sometimes he gets caught up in a moment, and someone has to bring him back down to earth.”

“I really don’t mind. I’ve spent most of my life grounded, so it’s probably not a bad thing for me to learn how to fly.”

She laughed in response. “Tom does fly, to be sure! That boy has always been a dreamer! I’m so glad he brought you to visit us. You’re not what my husband was expecting, and I mean that in the kindest way possible. In fact, I was a bit surprised myself . . . not about the fact that you’re wonderful; I never had any doubts about that. Tommy is far too particular to settle for anything less than wonderful. I was a bit surprised by how much he cares about you.”

A flush crept up my neck, so I thought it was best to remain silent.

“I’ve never seen him look at any girl the way he looks at you, and I’m so happy for you both.” She reached over to take my hand in hers as a lump formed in my throat.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“Of course. I hope you don’t mind if I request a small favor: please don’t break his heart; I’m becoming quite certain that he won’t be able to get over it,” she murmured tenderly.

I stared back into her earnest eyes, nodded, and cleared my throat to stifle the rising tide of emotion building in me. “Breakfast is almost ready. I’ll make sure he’s awake,” I stammered.

I fled the kitchen before I cried on her shoulder and spilled my guts as if she were Oprah Winfrey and had just given me the keys to my first house. What a contrast Tom’s mother was to his father! For every cold and calculating maneuver he made, she had one filled with warmth and openness to combat it.

I knocked softly on the door of Tom’s bedroom. No response.

I pounded a bit more forcefully and heard a stilted groan that reminded me of a grizzly bear being prodded out of hibernation. Trying the handle, I found it unlocked, so I pushed my way into his darkened bedroom. Just in case his parents held more conservative views on propriety, I left the door wide open.

“Tommy?”

Another groan.

“Thomas? Breakfast is ready. Wake up.” I walked carefully over to his bed and leaned over his face.

“Get up . . . I made your father cry,” I murmured in his ear.

His eyes shot open in surprise. “What?”

“I’m kidding. Get out of bed, lazy ass. I’ve been up for hours!”

“I’ve been up for hours!” he mimicked in a nasal voice. “God, you’re annoying.”

I sat on the edge of his bed and poked his ribs with my index finger. “Since I’m already annoying, I thought I might as well take it a step further.”

Without warning, he sat up quickly and wrapped his long arms around my shoulders to restrict my movement. His hands grasped each of my wrists to prevent me from wiggling my way out.

“Game over.” He grinned with half-lidded eyes.

“Fool, this game is far from over,” I teased.

He laughed quietly and blinked the sleep away from his eyes. “Your face is a wonderful thing to wake up to, but your fingers between my ribcage are another story. Have you really been awake for hours?” He released me and ran his hands through his hair in an attempt to banish the bedhead.

“Yep. I couldn’t sleep past six.”

“What have you been doing since then?” He yawned absentmindedly. His white T-shirt was wrinkled and askew on his chest, and that in combination with the unruly hair and bedroom eyes sent a flurry of tantalizingly inappropriate images through my head. Hah hah . . . if he only knew how dangerously sexy he was.

“I had coffee with your father, and we played chess.”

He chuckled as he threw his legs over the side of his bed, stood, and stretched.

“How did that go?” he asked nonchalantly.

“Pretty well. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that your father thinks about things even more obsessively than I do.”

“No kidding. It drives me insane.” He grabbed some track pants from the floor and pulled them on in one fluid motion.

“By the way, you’re having lunch with him today,” I stated in a casual tone.

He froze mid-step. “What?” His voice was dangerously low.

“I told your father you would have lunch with him today.”

He pursed his lips and cut his eyes at me. “I’m guessing that wasn’t his idea.”

“No, it was mine.”

He took a deep breath to steady himself for a moment. “Cristina, why the hell would you do that?”

I was dismayed by the amount of anger I saw in his features, so I just sat there and stared at him in bewildered silence.

He took three long strides to his door and slammed it shut.

“Why?” he demanded furiously as he spun around to face me.

“I thought you should talk to him, so . . .”

“So, you just planned a sweet little father-son luncheon without even consulting me?”

“You want me to consult you?” I sputtered. “That’s a joke! You never consult me about anything! Plus, we talked about this last night!”

“Talking about it and making me do something I’m not ready to do are two different things! I’m not going!” he said in a wrathful whisper.

I stood up from the bed and crossed my arms over my chest. “Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not!”

“You’re acting like a spoiled brat! It’s not going to fix itself, Thomas! Whether you talk to him now or next year, it will never get any easier. It will, however, get worse and worse if you keep acting like a brat about it, sitting there snorting at the dinner table and muttering under your breath. Grow up!” I spat.

“You think it’s just that easy? You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about! Your father worshipped you and thought everything you did was worth its weight in gold. My father thinks everything about me is a fucking joke! You want me to sit across from him and pretend that I give a damn?”

“Yes, because you do give a damn! He needs to know that you give a damn! Maybe if he thought you cared, he would stop for a moment and look at things from your perspective!” I tried not to yell for fear that everyone in the house would hear every word we said.

“It’s not that easy. Christ! It’s a bit naïve of you to think you can fix this. This problem was here long before you were, and me forcing you to go to a party with people who don’t matter is not the same thing as you forcing me to have lunch with my father who hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you! Don’t say that!” I gasped.

“Just because you said so, it suddenly makes it true?” he shot back.

“No, but . . . you saying he hates you doesn’t make it true either!”

“I’m not going,” he stated flatly.

“Then don’t go!” I said with exasperation. “But you have a choice: either deal with your father at lunch today, or deal with me for the rest of this trip. I don’t have control over you or your father, but I promise to be the biggest pain in the ass you’ve ever seen!”

I marched over to the door and yanked it open with my heart rapidly beating in my chest.

Breakfast was interesting, to say the least. Tom sat in stony silence for most of the meal and attributed his lack of communication to the fact that he was still tired from the flight. Desperate to make up for his childishness, I overcompensated by talking entirely too much and laughing at things that weren’t that funny. What I wouldn’t give to have even a slight amount of skill when it involved acting. The irony. I was sure his parents knew something was wrong, but they didn’t mention it. Midway through the meal, I started to feel guilty. I had raked Tom over the coals for taking me to the Vogue party without consulting me, and now I had definitely taken it upon myself to be a hero and ”save” Tom’s relationship with his father by planning their lunch of my own volition. He was right, I grudgingly admitted to myself. I had no business becoming an intermediary when it came to their issues. All I should have done was make suggestions and offer encouragement. I had gone too far. Fuck.

Tom walked upstairs after the meal, and I followed him to clear the air. I stopped in the doorway of his bedroom. “Um . . . Tommy?” I hesitated.

He glanced morosely over his shoulder at me and sighed. “Back for round two?”

I balked momentarily. “No. I’m—I’m really sorry.”

He turned to face me.

“You’re right—it’s not my business how you choose to handle your father. I just . . . it hurts me to see you so frustrated about something, and I wanted to help. Please forgive me.”

The tension on his face melted as I spoke. He wavered a bit and then smiled wryly. “I’m sorry I yelled at you like that. I know you were just trying to help.”

“But still . . . I should have known better. It’s your decision about whether or not you go to lunch. I won’t say anything either way, and it was really shitty of me to issue an ultimatum like some crazy girlfriend with nothing better to do than make your life difficult.”

He laughed softly to himself. “Self-aware to a fault. The ultimatum was a really shitty thing to do, by the way.”

“I know. Truce?” I stuck out my hand.

“Truce.” He took hold of my palm and pulled me into an embrace.

Without pausing to let me catch my breath, he pressed his lips to mine and lifted me off the ground. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back fervently, while my rationale tried to remind me I was in his parents’ house. Thankfully, my ears detected the sound of falling footsteps on the stairs, and I struggled to push myself out of Tom’s ironclad grip. He chuckled at my expression as I steadied my pounding heart and breath before anyone saw my flustered state.

“Stop laughing, Tommy!” I demanded under my breath.

“Incidentally, when did you start calling me ‘Tommy’?”

“Um . . . I don’t know. I think it’s because Anne and your mother keep referring to you that way. If it bothers you, I won’t do it anymore.”

“No, no. It doesn’t bother me. For some reason, I rather like it coming from you.” He grinned.

“Cristina?” Tom’s father called from the hallway.

“Yes sir?” I scrambled towards the door and into the hall where he stood waiting for me.

“I just wanted to thank you again for the book. I’ve already read some of it, and it was very thoughtful of you.” He smiled earnestly at me, and I felt as though I had made a good deal of progress with the toughest member of Tom’s family.

“It was my pleasure.”

“I was also hoping . . . to have a chess rematch later on? A proper game, this time.” The hopeful expression on his face made him look even more charmingly boyish.

“Absolutely.”

He nodded in satisfaction, and then turned to walk back to his bedroom.

“Dad?”

Tom’s father stopped in his tracks and twisted around awkwardly at the sound of his son’s voice.

“Yes?”

Tom had come to stand behind me. He took a deep breath and placed his right hand on the small of my back before he spoke to his father.

“Where would you like to go for lunch? My treat.”

I looked over my shoulder at his handsome face and beamed with uncontrollable pride.

Chapter Seventeen

“Is what I’m wearing okay?” I asked Tom at the top of the stairs that evening.

“They’re not the type of guys who care what you’re wearing, so don’t worry about it,” he replied with amusement.

I tugged on the front of my fitted red shirt as I glanced down at my jeans and beige espadrilles one last time.

“I don’t regularly hang out in pubs, and I don’t want to stick out too badly.”

“You’re going to stick out no matter what you wear. It tends to happen to beautiful women,” he noted.

I gave his arm a lighthearted shove before we made our way downstairs to leave.

“You don’t need your ‘disguise’ here?” I asked after we bid his parents goodnight and strolled out the front door.

He shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out. Honestly, I don’t think many people know I’m in London at the moment. I haven’t been back home for a while, so I guess I’ll know soon enough if I made a bad decision about the disguise. Last time I was about, I didn’t need anything.”

He reached for my hand as he spoke. I noticed his stride seemed more at-ease here than the times we had gone out in public back home. He walked with unfailing confidence, and it was painfully obvious he felt a great deal more comfortable in this small section of London than at any fancy party or on any red carpet. His calm bearing was infectious, and soon I matched his relaxed gait and drank in the sights around me as though I knew exactly where we were and where we were headed.

“Your dad looked really happy when you came home from lunch,” I commented casually.

He glanced at me with a wry smile. “It definitely went better than I would have thought. There’s still a great deal that needs to be dealt with on both sides, but I was surprised by how willing he was to admit that he hasn’t been very pleasant towards me.”