She’d chewed her first bite for a long time, swallowed, then made a terrible face. “The shrimp tastes like you ran it through the dishwasher.”
Gray had given up on muttering Kait by that point and only telegraphed a silent apology to Landon.
Landon hadn’t minded a bit. The shrimp risotto, like the wine, was no reflection on him. Sure, he owned the place. But he hadn’t been involved with the menu in nearly six years.
“Landon?”
The soft voice startled him from his reverie, and he snapped his head up to see his mother standing in the doorway of the office. “Did I wake you?” he asked automatically, though he knew he hadn’t. For one thing, the palatial master bedroom was two floors up, and for another, his mother didn’t sleep.
“No,” Martha said, wafting through the heavy oak doors and drifting to the large bay window. “I saw you come in on the security cameras.”
Martha had turned his father’s walk-in closet into a panic room/control center after Randolph’s clothes were donated. Landon suspected she spent more time there than was healthy.
“The perimeter secure?” he asked, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
She shrugged her slim shoulders, clearly unwilling to give the property a clean bill of health. “As secure as it can be, I suppose.”
Landon didn’t know if the paranoia was recent, or if his father had managed to keep it contained. Either way, he had work to do. “Is there something you need, Martha?”
She sent him a ghostly smile over her shoulder. “You used to call me ‘mother.’”
You used to be one, he thought and stared back impassively.
“I heard a rumor,” she said, leaving the bay window for one of the wide leather chairs on the other side of the desk. “Is it true that the LeClarks are back?”
Landon wondered sometimes if Martha didn’t have a control center from which she could monitor the entire town. For someone who was nearly a recluse, she seemed to know everything that happened in it. “You heard right,” he said shortly. And though there was no way she could know this second part because the ink wasn’t even dry on the contract, he added, “I’ve decided to invest in their new restaurant.”
Martha widened her crystalline blue eyes. “Your father wouldn’t like that very much, Landon.”
“I don’t run things by Randolph anymore,” Landon said, returning his gaze to the contract Carter had forwarded him. In New York, they were acquiring a smaller company and politely calling it a merger. “He’s not as responsive as he used to be.”
Martha gasped, but Landon heard the emptiness of the gesture and didn’t even look up. His mother didn’t have natural reactions anymore because she didn’t seem to have the emotions to elicit them. She’d become a puppet who moved only on the strings of societal expectations. She gasped and fluttered her hand to her throat like that not because she was offended, but because that was what was done when someone said something shocking.
Without a response from Landon to pull the next string, her show of indignation concluded, and her gaze returned to the bay window. “Have you seen them?” she asked the double-glazed pane.
Now Landon did glance up, and he was surprised to see her watching his reflection. “I assume you mean the LeClarks. Yes, of course I’ve seen them. Like I told you, I’ve decided to invest in their restaurant.”
“Orphans,” she said and clucked her tongue sadly. Another string pulled. “Those poor children.”
It irritated him to hear the facsimile of sympathy in her voice. “I’m busy. If there’s nothing I can do for you…”
“You can tell them to leave,” Martha said so pleasantly Landon wondered if he’d misheard her. “Offer them money to start over somewhere else.” She looked back at him. “Would that be all right, dear?”
She asked as though she were asking him if he’d mind getting the car door for her. As though it were a completely innocuous question that neither warranted nor expected any sort of surprised response.
Landon struggled not to give it to her. “Why would I do that?” he said after a moment.
“Why wouldn’t you? There’s the matter of your father, and well, Rathskeller doesn’t exactly need the competition, does it?”
She asked it all in her mild, almost childlike way, but suspicion was forming in Landon’s mind. Experimentally, he lied, “Rathskeller just had its best week yet. I think it can handle a little competition.”
Martha smiled indulgently, “Of course. You know best, dear. Just like your father always did.”
Landon wasn’t fooled. Somehow she knew Rathskeller was struggling. If he could pull aside her flimsy pretenses and see behind that innocent façade, he wouldn’t be surprised to see the restaurant’s exact loss/profit margin. He watched her with more interest than he had in years as she stood languidly, brushed a dry, whispery kiss against his cheek, and floated out as silently as she’d come in.
Chapter Five
To Gray’s immense irritation, Kaitlyn was at his door early the next day, her car filled with boxes. When he answered, blinking hazily into the morning light, she was standing on the covered porch, two stacked in her arms. He pulled the top box off and glared at her.
“It’s tomorrow,” she said and pushed past him.
It took all morning to move her boxes in and his to the condo, but when all was said and done, Gray flopped onto the luxurious couch and said contentedly, “Maybe this won’t be so bad.”
“You’re despicable,” Kait said, dropping beside him and leaning her head back. Though she hadn’t let on, the apartment was worse than she feared. The stove was gas, but that was all you could say about it. The kitchen itself was just old and poorly laid out with peeling cabinets and scant counter space. If there was room, she’d have considered a free-standing island, but that would have blocked the tiny space allotted for a living room. The two bedrooms were both equally small and dim with
