Page 20 of Prodigal Son

His grin widened.

Eden rolled her eyes.

“I might suggest coffee,” Vivian said. “And quite a lot of it, too.”

Thankfully, things moved quickly after that, saving her the chance to walk any farther down memory lane.

Albie returned with Phillip, who shook Eden’s hand with a perfectly civil – friendly, even – smile and welcomed all of them to sit. Vivian did so with a queen’s grace. Axelle flung herself down in a chair and kicked her legs up over the arm of it. A prospect brought a platter heaped with fresh bakery rolls stuffed with chicken and mustard. Phillip poured drinks from the sideboard, and set up a laptop on the far side of the table where he pulled Kingston Walsh up on Skype.

“Well there’s the king,” Devin crowed when his second eldest son’s face filled the screen, and Walsh did an admirable job of going blank-faced. Only his blond eyebrows jumped. “Hello, old bastard.”

Devin clutched his chest. “You wound me. All of my boys, so disrespectful and hateful to their poor old father.”

“Shut him up,” Walsh said, calmly, voice tinny through the laptop speakers, “or I’m logging off.”

Phillip leveled a look at his father. “Shut it.”

And, miracle of miracles, Devin shut up.

Raven arrived next, in black heels and a black wool trench, glossy and flawless as a magazine photo, smelling of Chanel No. 5. “Devin,” she greeted crisply, tugging her gloves off with sharp, agitated little movements.

“Raven,” he said. “Where’s your shadow?”

“I didn’t bring Cass. A seventeen-year-old shouldn’t have to weigh in on this decision.”

“Decision?”

“The decision to hand you over.”

Devin sighed and ran a hand through his silver hair. “No love on any side, hmm?”

Tommy showed up, and then Miles. The two youngest boys weren’t as good at hiding their emotions as their brothers. Tommy sat beside Phillip, folded his arms and glared at his old man.

Miles, by contrast, was round-eyed, almost hopeful. Poor kid.

When they were all assembled, Albie cleared his throat, and started the story.

Fox, Eden noticed, folded his arms and put his head down on them. He looked drunk and asleep…but she didn’t think he was.

~*~

Fox closed his eyes and pressed his face more deeply into the crook of his elbow, content to let Albie do all the talking for now. He himself was the sort of person who liked to do interesting things; he liked to leave the recounting of such things to people better-suited. People like his grandmotherly, furniture-making, boring-as-hell big brother Albie, who never missed a chance to organize something or suggest someone put a sweater on, or some stupid grandmotherly shit like that. God, Albie was lame.

Also, Fox was maybe a little bit drunk at this point. He’d had that drink back at the apartment, and three – no, four? – in quick succession from Albie’s secret stash. After the adrenaline crash, the whiskey had hit his system hard, his head swimming, his limbs leaden. What he really wanted was a nap, but he figured his expertise was probably needed in this meeting, so…

With a valiant effort, one he was more than a little proud of, he pushed himself upright, elbows braced against the table for balance.

Beside him, Tommy snorted.

Fox wanted to elbow him, but he needed his elbow at the moment; it was the only thing holding him up.

Across the table, Raven frowned, line appearing between her perfect, winged brows. “Wait. Pseudonym as in…” She rummaged around in her giant Coach bag a moment and came out with a little glass jar. If he squinted, Fox could just make out the product name on the lid: Gleaux. “This is face cream,” Raven said, frowning, “part of a gift basket they handed out at my last event. Supposed to tighten fine lines around your eyes, you know, and it works. But, here…” She flipped the jar over and swore. “There, on the underside: ‘A Pseudonym Pharmaceuticals Product.’” She set the jar down and looked at it as if it might bite. “That’sthe company we’re talking about?”

“Here, let me see.” Eden leaned over and snagged the jar so she could read the label herself.

She could stand to use some of that cream herself, Fox thought. She was lovely, beautiful – truth told, she’d always been lovelier than Raven, her features finer, somehow realer. He could never tell either of them that, because Raven would slap him, and Eden would get that pinched I-hate-you-Charlie look on her face. He kept that thought to himself. And thought that, due to all her frowning, Eden ought to try a dab of fine line cream.

Thoughts like that were probably the reason Michelle kept telling him he was an incurable asshole.

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