Because of You. Rochelle Alers

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СКАЧАТЬ wanted to tell his mother that she had to stop treating him as if he were six years old, but knew it was futile. Christiane said “once a mother, always a mother,” regardless of how old her children were. She was the mother of four and still without grandchildren—something that had become a bane of her existence. Many of the women in her social circle were grandmothers or had married children. Although three of her four children were in their twenties and thirties, none seemed remotely interested in exchanging vows.

      “Grandpa,” he said, acknowledging Wyatt Wainwright sitting at the head as the family’s patriarch.

      “We’re so glad you decided to drag yourself away from Harlem to visit with your family,” Wyatt drawled facetiously.

      “Grandpa, why do you always have to start with Jordan?” Noah Wainwright asked.

      “Watch your mouth, son.” Edward Wainwright glared at his middle son, who was his spitting image in every way except temperament. Noah’s mood swings kept everyone off balance and on guard because of his sharp tongue. “After all, we have guests present.”

      A pale eyebrow lifted a fraction when twenty-three-year-old Noah leaned back from the table. Shaggy ash-blond hair framed a deeply tanned face. He’d cut short his stay in the Caribbean to return to the States to share Christmas with his family. His blue eyes changed color depending on his mood. Noah was very angry because he’d been coerced into joining the family’s real estate firm after Jordan had refused to take over the reins from their father.

      “That has never stopped Grandpa from saying what he had to say.”

      Jordan gave Noah a look that he had no trouble interpreting. He wanted his brother to drop it. A barely discernible smile parted Noah’s lips as he nodded. Shifting his gaze, he glared at the elderly man with a shock of thick white hair and sharp, piercing sky-blue orbs that hadn’t faded despite having lived seven decades. The coal-black eyebrows of his youth remained. The less he said to Wyatt the better it was for grandfather and grandson. He nodded to the young woman sitting beside his youngest brother. Rhett would celebrate his twenty-first birthday in another month, and he was just beginning to assert himself.

      Taking his seat, he leaned to his right and pressed a kiss to his sister’s hair. “What’s up, Charlie?”

      Chanel Wainwright flushed a bright pink. Jordan had promised never to call her Charlie within earshot of their mother. “Don’t call me that around Mother,” she whispered with clenched teeth.

      Jordan wanted to tell his sister that if their mother hadn’t named her children after a character from Gone with the Wind and her favorite fragrance, she wouldn’t have a problem explaining her name.

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ