Page 80 of Finding Lord Landry

The man who spent years trying to be everything to everybody while pretending to flit around like a dilettante.

His story was unbelievable. And so incredibly isolating.

After a while, the door creaked open, and Turkey’s heavy body landed on the mattress next to my legs. She wobbled over the folds and lumps in the duvet until curling behind Landry’s knees.

I let out a breath. At least when he was here, he was loved and supported by his family. And when he was in the States, he was loved and supported by the Brotherhood.

My nose burned with emotion as my brain helpfully supplied the truth.

But not by you.

Landry was right when he said I’d kept him at arm’s length. I’d believed the lies. I’d tried to protect myself from him.

What would it have been like if I’d given him a chance? Would he have ever confessed the truth of his identity to me? How long would it have taken? And how would I have reacted?

The answer to the last one was clear. I vividly remembered the things I’d told Landry in the car leaving the city airport. My first reaction had been to leave. To pick up my toys and go home.

To flee, like any other animal when scared.

I’d been an idiot.

And if that realization wasn’t galling enough, I’d planted myself squarely in the center of a public farce where I had to pretend to be fake-married to the man just as I was finally realizing that he might, in fact, be the one for me.

It was like having everything you’d ever wanted dangled in front of you on a stick just out of reach. You could look but not touch. You could live adjacent to it but never claim it as your own.

My eyes stung from trying to see Landry’s face in the dark.

But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t make him out.

“Pretty sure consuming opiates before a public appearance is a bad idea,” Cora murmured without taking her eyes off her phone screen.

The Range Rover smoothed to another stop as we made our way through London traffic.

“Fine.” Landry shifted in the seat next to me and rubbed his hands up and down his thighs. “But we have time to stop at a pub for a quick pint. I just need to take the edge off.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, not for the first time. “You’ve done things like this before. You helped Zane cut the ribbon on the community center in Barlo and then said a few words to the crowd about his generosity. You and the guys did a meet and greet last September for Sterling Chase employees and partners.”

“Not the same,” he grumbled, glancing out the window.

“How is it not the same?”

His chest heaved. “I didn’t have to remember how to speak in exactly the way I’d been trained by political strategists while knowing people are fixated on my American accent. I didn’t have to worry about making a stupid joke, or finding a way to drop a casual child poverty fact into my speech without scaring the children in the audience, or referring to three different schools without showing preference for one over the other. Or, god forbid, touching a child.”

I reached over to take his hand, if only to keep him from ruining his pants, when I realized it was drenched in sweat.

“Hey,” I said, reaching up to feel his forehead as if he was fevered instead of nervous. It was plenty cool, but I took secret delight in seeing his eyes flutter closed at my touch.

His reaction simply didn’t make sense. “You’ve spoken publicly a million times,” I reminded him again.

“I’ve thanked Calvin Klein for selecting me. I’ve joked about jet lag. I’ve announced my next appearance. I’ve thanked people for coming or congratulated someone on a job well done. Those are not the same thing.”

“He’s right,” Cora called back from the front seat. “A lot is riding on this.”

“Thanks, asshole,” Landry groaned. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. His skin had a slightly green pallor.

I scrambled to think of a way to help. “Focus on the kids you’re helping. This program is a difference-maker. When I was in elementary school in Baltimore, we didn’t have a place to play outside. There was a city park down the street, and the teachers would take us there sometimes, but it wasn’t dedicated for our use at all, which meant we never knew what we were going to find.”

As the Range Rover meandered through the congested streets, I told Landry stories of stray dogs nosing for food, homeless people under benches muttering to themselves, and the time Vonnie Cecil found a hypodermic needle and a candy bar in the same plastic baggie. I also told him about the time there was a random guy dressed as a clown doing cartwheels, the time a hot dog cart offered to give us all free dogs, and the day the sun shone down in full summer warmth on an early February day when the sky was a blinding blue.

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