The Billionaire's Embrace (The Silver Cross Club) (20 page)

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said dryly.
Tiny man-brain
? I had to admire Sadie: there weren’t many people who would say something like that to my face. I found it refreshing. I was surrounded by people who told me what they think I wanted to hear; it was an interesting change of pace to be around someone who had no compunctions about telling me what she really thought.

“Good luck, lover-boy,” Sadie said, standing and gathering her things. “Call me if you need help.” She winked at me, pulled the hood of her coat over her head, and sailed out of the coffee shop.

I watched her go, torn between irritation and amusement. I wondered if she would call Regan and give her a full report of our meeting, and if so, what that report would entail.

Hopefully nothing but flattering statements about my animalistic appeal.

As Henry drove me back to the office, I thought about the tasks Sadie had assigned me. The first was probably the most necessary and useful. I knew next to nothing about Filipino culture, and I didn’t think that Sadie would have suggested it unless it mattered to Regan. At the very least, I was sure that Regan would appreciate the effort.

Learning the cuisine seemed the obvious choice. I was a competent chef, and I had never known a woman to turn up her nose at a home-cooked meal. Mastering the full repertoire was out of the realm of possibility, of course, but learning the basic techniques shouldn’t be too difficult. The only hurdle would be finding someone to teach me.

I put Nancy on the case. To her credit, she didn’t even blink when I asked her to find someone to come to my apartment within the next few days and teach me traditional Filipino cooking. “I’ll have a list of names for you by this afternoon, Mr. Sutton,” she said.

She had it for me by lunch: four names, along with references and brief biographies. I spent a few minutes studying the list. The first name seemed the most appealing: an older woman who ran a successful restaurant on the Lower East Side. I called the number Nancy had provided, and quickly arranged for the woman to come to my apartment the following evening for a private cooking lesson. She sounded suspicious at first—and even I had to admit that it was an odd request—but quickly acquiesced when I suggested a price.

The next evening, I left work early to go grocery shopping. The woman, Marites, had given me a long list of ingredients to purchase, and I didn’t have all of them on hand. None of it was too exotic, fortunately, and I was able to find everything I needed at the Chelsea Market. The noise and crowds at the Market reminded me why I ordinarily had my housekeeper do the shopping. As soon as the thought passed through my mind, I imagined Sadie telling me sharply that
regular
people had to do their
own
shopping.

I wished I knew how to explain to Sadie—and by proxy, to Regan—that I would never be regular.

Promptly at 6:00, my intercom buzzed, and the security guard downstairs informed me that I had a visitor. I told him to send her up, and a few moments later, the elevator doors slid open, and the woman I presumed to be Marites stepped out.

She looked like someone’s grandmother: short, round, gray hair pulled back into a bun. She carried a plastic bag in one hand, and she looked around the foyer of my apartment with a narrow-eyed suspicion that immediately reassured me that I had chosen the right person.

“Mrs. Bautista, thank you so much for coming this evening,” I said, doing my best to look friendly and non-threatening.

“Hmm,” she said. “You have a very large apartment, Mr. Sutton.”

“Please, call me Carter,” I said. “Could I offer you something to drink?”

“Yes, you’re very polite,” she said. “A glass of water. Where is the kitchen? Did you buy the things I told you to?”

I led her into the kitchen, feeling incredibly entertained. I suspected that being raised by my mother had hardwired me to respond positively to grumpy women. Whatever the case, I was looking forward to a delightful evening of being bossed around by Marites.

My kitchen, at least, met with her approval. I had gone all out when I designed the unit, and had every top-of-the-line appliance. Unnecessary and indulgent, yes, but once you cooked on a Bertazzoni, there was no going back. Marites turned on one of the burners and clicked her tongue appreciatively when the gas flared into life. “Good,” she said. “We’ll make some good food tonight.”

We laid out the ingredients on the counter, and she set me to chopping vegetables. “I will teach you to make beef kaldereta,” she said. “A very popular dish. Nice flavors. It has liver paste, maybe you think that’s weird? But it makes a nice flavor.”

I did what she told me: fried the potatoes and carrots in a pan, sautéed the onions and garlic, processed the liver into a fine paste.

“Why do you want to learn to make Filipino food?” she asked me. “To impress a woman?”

I smiled wryly. Right in one. “You could say that,” I said.

“How do you know this girl? She works in your office, makes pretty eyes at you?” Marites narrowed her eyes at me.

“Nothing like that,” I said. “She was... well. Someone very special to me.”

“Oh, and you want to win her back,” Marites said, nodding. “This kaldereta will do it. My grandmother’s recipe, from Luzon. She will fall into your arms, and maybe cry.”

“I would rather not make her cry,” I said, scraping liver paste from the food processor.

“Tears of joy,” Marites said. “Probably.” She pursed her mouth at me. “Now slice the beef into cubes.”

She walked me through the recipe, step by step. She made me do everything myself, and while I worked, she told me about Filipino cuisine: how it was a blend of Spanish and pre-colonial cooking, which spices were the most important, how regional variations influenced dish preparation. She left me with handwritten directions for the kaldereta and a number of other recipes, and strict orders to let the beef simmer for two hours before I touched it. I wrote her a check and thanked her profusely.

“Bring this girl by my restaurant, if the kaldereta works,” she said. “Or I can set you up with my niece.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, amused.

With the cooking taken care of, I turned to the next item on Sadie’s list. Despite the fact that she had never actually seen my apartment, she had instructed me toss out any “ostentatious rich guy stuff.” Seeing as she hadn’t specified anything in particular, I decided to ignore that commandment. But the other part of task #2 was a list of things that I should
add
to my living quarters, things that Sadie evidently thought would make Regan feel that I was welcoming her into my life: books, houseplants, a particular type of tea, a silky bathrobe, a framed photograph of the San Gabriel Mountains.

On Saturday, I worked from home for a few hours in the morning, and then spent the rest of the day shopping. I tried to think of things that Regan had liked or expressed interest in, foods she had enjoyed, and added them to the list from Sadie. It took me several hours of running around lower Manhattan, and several more hours of arranging things to my liking, but by the time I went to sleep on Sunday, I was pleased with what I had accomplished.

The next step was to see if Sadie would be equally pleased.

* * *

S
adie came over on Tuesday evening, after we both finished with work. I had already started on dinner by the time she arrived, and left my pork chops searing in the pan to greet her.

“Nice place,” she said, looking around as I led her into the living room. “Not as over-the-top as I expected.”

“What did you have in mind?” I asked. “Oil paintings of myself all over the wall? Gold-plated marble statues of nude women?”

“You tell me, you’re the billionaire,” Sadie said. “I don’t know, maybe a pet tiger or something.”

“It would ruin the drapes,” I said. “Please, have a seat. I need to deal with dinner before it sets off the smoke alarm. Could I offer you a pork chop?” I left her there and went back into the kitchen, a little concerned that my food would be ruined.

Sadie said, “No, I’ll eat when I go home. But thanks.”

The pork chops, fortunately, still looked edible, albeit a bit charred on one side. I watched through the pass-through as Sadie started snooping around my living room instead of sitting down. She rifled through the stack of magazines on the table, and then went over to the bookshelf and started examining my tchotchkes.

I waited, keeping an eye on my pork chops, until she got to the end of the bookshelf and noticed the photograph I had hung on the wall.

“Huh,” Sadie said. “You really did it. I didn’t think you would.”

“You told me it was necessary,” I said, annoyed.

“Well, sure, but I didn’t think you would take me seriously.” She spent a long, considering moment gazing at the photograph: the San Gabriels in winter, covered in snow. “This is a nice picture.”

“The artist does nice work,” I said. “Would you like also to see my fully-stocked snack cupboard?”

“Lord,” Sadie said. “Yeah, okay, hit me with your best shot.”

I showed her the cabinet I had cleared out and filled with Regan’s favorite non-perishables: tea and honey, crunchy (not chewy) peanut butter granola bars, unsweetened dried mango, lightly salted cashews. Sadie looked and said nothing, but I could tell from her expression that she wasn’t displeased.

“I’m going to eat dinner now,” I said. “You can keep snooping around my apartment, or you can sit down with me and have a glass of wine.”

“I could use a glass of the most expensive red wine you have in this apartment,” she said.

“That would be a twenty dollar 2012 Cabernet,” I said, and grinned at her expression. “I’m a Scotch drinker. I don’t keep expensive wine on hand.”

“That’s a shame, but twenty bucks a bottle is still better than what I usually drink,” she said. “Bring it on.”

We sat at the table and I ate my pork chops while she sipped at her wine and complained to me about her job. She was a graphic designer, and thought that the company she worked for gave her minimal room for creative self-expression. “It’s stifling,” she said. “They want everything to look exactly the same. Why bother having multiple designers, then? It makes no damn sense.”

“Have you thought about going into business for yourself?” I asked. “You’ve got quite the portfolio, it sounds like.”

She snorted. “Yeah, freelancing is everyone’s dream, isn’t it? I’ve got bills to pay, though. I like getting regular paychecks.” She shook her head. “Maybe someday. Anyway, I told Regan that I met with you.”

I set down my fork. It hadn’t occurred to me that Sadie would tell Regan about our collusion, but in retrospect, it would have been surprising if she didn’t. “How did she respond?”

“She was pretty mad at first, but she got over it,” Sadie said. “She doesn’t like people doing things behind her back.”

“I don’t think anyone particularly enjoys it,” I said. “Is she willing to meet with me?”

“Yeah,” Sadie said. “You can get in touch with her when you’re ready. I’m officially giving you my blessing.”

“Well,” I said. “Thank you. Let’s hope it goes well.”

After I finished eating, I went into the kitchen to put my plate in the dishwasher, and Sadie got up and began wandering around the living room again. I was about to offer her another glass of wine in an effort to stop her snooping when she bent and looked at one of the photographs arranged along the sofa table. “Who’s this?”

I walked over to where she stood and glanced at the picture she was referring to: Nelson and me at the mini-golf place on Randall’s Island, him beaming widely after beating me three rounds in a row. “That’s my Little Brother,” I said.

Sadie made a face at me. “You are
not
related to that child.”

I grinned. “You don’t think we look alike? Little Brother as in Big Brothers Big Sisters. His name is Nelson.”

“They let you out of the office long enough to do that?” Sadie asked.

“I’m the boss,” I said. “I can play hooky whenever I want. It’s true that I don’t get to spend as much time with Nelson as I would like, but I make an effort to see him every week.”

“Okay,” Sadie said. “I give up. You win. Regan wasn’t exaggerating when she said you were perfect. Are you sure you aren’t a robot sent to earth by a technologically superior alien race to monitor the progress of our civilization?”

“Fairly certain, yes,” I said. Had Regan really told Sadie that I was perfect? “But I guess it’s possible that I’m a sleeper agent, so I can’t make any guarantees.”

“Ha,” she said. “Right, I’m going home now. Ben worries if I’m out too late. Let me know how it goes with Regan, yeah?”

“I will,” I said. “Thanks for all the help.”

“Good luck,” she said.

There was still one more thing I needed to take care of before I contacted Regan. It would be fairly time-consuming, and so I waited until the weekend, when I could more easily justify taking the time off from work. Nobody was tracking my hours, of course, but there were always more things that I could be doing. I existed in a constant state of guilt and denial.

On Saturday, I woke early and went up to the roof. It was a cold morning, but the sun warmed my face as it crested the roof lines of the buildings to the east.

I was going to make Regan a reading room: a sanctuary, somewhere she could hide when she needed to.

When I designed my apartment, I chose to sacrifice a certain amount of square footage—extra bedrooms, a dedicated home office—in favor of an extensive, two-story outdoor terrace, with abundant greenery and a sweeping view over the Hudson. Now, in early March, it was too cold to spend much time outside, but come summer, I would spend nearly every free hour outside.

I zipped up my coat and walked up the narrow staircase to the smaller garden on the roof of my actual apartment. There was a small garden shed on the upper level, tucked against the surrounding wall. When I first moved in, I had the notion that I would do all of the gardening myself. I didn’t have enough time, of course, and had been forced to hire a gardener, who came once a week and kept things in much better condition than I would have been able to do on my own. Consequently, the shed had sat vacant for the last two years, empty of everything but a couple of cracked terracotta pots and a small spade.