“And you’re paying his fee.” Unbelievable. But also, unbelievably sweet.
“Eh, let’s just say I’m providing financial compensation for him doing you a favor.”
I think about arguing, but judging by the way his jaw is set, it’s just going to be wasted breath. I’ll pick a time when he’s feeling more amenable to me arguing with him. “What about you, what did you do in the last few days?”
“I’m looking for a farm. Well, a ranch.”
I didn’t expect that. “For Baxter Enterprises?”
He shakes his head and wipes his mouth after taking the last bite of his food. “Nope. For myself. It’s just something I’ve been thinking of but… well, since I was getting out of the city, it was as good a time as any to look at some of the places I’ve been thinking about.”
He pours a little champagne into his glass and swirls it around. “The longer I live in Manhattan, the longer I realize I need a place to get away from Manhattan. Damien has Baxter winery in Barossa Valley. Kylian has his island in Ko Kaeo, Thailand. And even though Kingsley’s least favorite thing is leaving the office, even he has a place just out of Edinburgh to get away when the doctor tells him he needs to take a break. I have properties in Houston and Chicago, but those are mainly because I don’t like staying in hotels long term when I’m there for work. I’ve just been so busy since I moved here, I haven’t really had time to turn a place into a home. A place I can fly to just for the weekend, you know?”
“Sure.” I imagine everyone wants that, but not everyone has that luxury. Even if it’s just the luxury of time.
He seems a little sheepish that he talked so much, but I wish I could tell him that I liked it. I like listening to him, I like learning more about him.
“Did you ever go to Baxter Winery?” he asks.
“Damien never invited me.” I answer.
“Clarissa, I’m sorry. He should’ve been better to you than that.”
I wave his words away. “It’s fine. We… should never have gotten into the arrangement, I see that now. We were so naive making that decision, when we didn’t even really know who were as people yet, let alone what kind of people we wanted to be in the future. We both were hyper-fixated on what we both thought we wanted out of life. Turns out we were both wrong.”
“You don’t have to answer this but…”
I already know what he wants to know, I’m just surprised he didn’t know.
“Yes. We slept together once.” I rub my hand, anxiety rising in my stomach, but I know this is a conversation we need to have. “You’re not going to like me very much after this. We came home from a gala and he had had a lot to drink. We were joking around about something, and we ended up kissing. And then it just happened, even though I knew that if he was sober, he would never have gone through with it. It was stupid. And instead of it making us closer… that day was when he started pulling away. He never blamed me, but I think he didn’t want to give me the wrong idea. He didn’t have any romantic feelings for me. Anyway, he broke it off a month after that.”
It must be a day for long speeches, my throat is dry once I finish. Or maybe it’s wondering how Matthias is feeling after knowing the truth.
But he surprises me. “He should’ve been more upfront with you, maybe you two could’ve ended up as still friends. He’s not a bad guy, you know.”
It might be a while yet before Matthias is going to be able to convince me of that. But for the first time in a long time, I’m seeing my part in the whole debacle more clearly, and realizing that it was actually better that it never did play out.
For more reasons than one.
I wipe my hands with a napkin, and fold it, placing it on the tray. “You know, you never gave me a full tour of this place.”
“You’re telling me you haven’t gone snooping yet?” he laughs.
“Rude!” I poke my tongue out at him “I’ve either been sleeping or at the club, thank you very much.” “Well, then, let’s go, Rissie.”
Without telling me, I know this place must’ve cost over $75 million, which is like petty cash for
Matthias Baxter but it takes my breath away. The interior of this place was obviously built with Matthias in mind. Half of the apartment is an open plan, with a living and dining area that boasts sitting places and a view of the entire city through floor to ceiling windows. The kitchen runs along one side of the apartment, with bar seating enough for ten. He has a few pieces of art around. One piece, that I recently heard went for almost $300, 000, is right there in the middle of his living room. I guess that tells me who that anonymous buyer was.
“I brought this piece from London,” he says, when he sees me looking at a bureau. “It used to be my great-grandmother’s.
“It’s beautiful.” I can smell history emanating from the whorls and grooves in the wood.
“If you want to see beautiful, come see my office.”
He pushes on what I thought was a wall. It opens into another room that has a large desk that also points out over the same view. What really catches the eye, though, are the floating wall shelves and display cases in the middle of the room. And on them, hundreds and hundreds of toys.
What in the world? “Matthias, it looks like an adult version of Toys R Us in here.”
“Right?” He sounds excited rather than insulted. “That’s exactly what I wanted it to be!” He picks up a little plane off the middle shelf and waves it in the air a few times, and then lets go. It whizzes around the room until it lands right in the middle of his open palm.
He puts it down and grabs a toy car and does the same thing, letting it go on the floor. It does a few laps around and then ends up at his foot, like a loyal dog. He claps and laughs with joy.
“You’re thirty-six years old.”