Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 134133 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 671(@200wpm)___ 537(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134133 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 671(@200wpm)___ 537(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
Clearing my throat, I try to shake off the memory as I look back down at the phone.
His last text reads, "You're welcome.”
As if he's actually granting me a privilege.
I suppose he is.
"Thank you for dinner," I type back, my manners getting the best of me. "It was loud at my apartment, and there wasn't much to eat there, anyway."
"Anytime," he says. "Though, typically, you'll have to accept me as part of the deal," he adds with a winky emoji.
I never plan to accept an invitation from him again, but there's no point telling him that now.
"Where's Hugh taking me?"
"A restaurant my family has owned since the roaring twenties," he answers.
"Wow, that's a long time. So, you come from a restauranteur family?"
"No. The restaurant was more of a meeting place than an enterprise in and of itself. Opened up at the start of prohibition. My great-grandfather had business dealings with, uh... questionable friends, so they needed somewhere more private to meet and entertain, but not as private as our home. The restaurant has a cellar underneath where they used to meet. That's where we eat when we go there. It's where you'll be eating tonight."
I like the idea of privacy, but a private cellar makes me a bit nervous. Not sure about the place's history of shady dealings, either. "Is it actually the restaurant? Will any other people be there? You're not trying to kidnap me, are you? If I end up chained to some wall in a cellar beneath a restaurant, I am going to be pissed."
"If I wanted to kidnap you, I'd probably be a little more discreet than this," he assures me. "After all, I'd expect to get away with it."
Ugh. I roll my eyes in disgust and text back, "You're terrible."
"But not stupid, so you can rest assured, no one's trying to kidnap you this evening."
I like how he had to add this evening, as if it might be on the menu later.
"Almost there, Miss Bradwell," Hugh calls back.
"Thank you, Hugh." I look back down at my phone. "Well, I should probably go. Hugh said we're almost to the restaurant."
"All right," he answers. "Enjoy your meal."
Chapter nine
Silvan
She orders a charcuterie board to start, then a grilled baby pear salad with roasted pecans. For her main course, she gets chicken—a nice safe choice, like most of the choices she makes.
I am not a safe choice, so that might present a bit of a problem.
Nothing I can't get past, of course. Just a small obstacle. Every relationship has them.
I look forward to getting past it.
I come from a long line of very certain men who tend to know the moment they get a taste of what they desire that they must have it forever, no matter the cost.
This very restaurant was the beginning of that cycle.
While it was my great-grandfather whose name was listed as the proprietor of this restaurant, it was my great-grandmother who ran it. It was a labor of love. She was adventurous and intelligent and different, the kind of woman plenty of men fell in love with. She was destined for greatness.
But then she met him.
She was only 19 when they met. It was a whirlwind romance that knocked the sense right out of her. Within three months, he’d impregnated her, but she wasn’t worried.
They loved each other madly, and though he couldn’t marry her right then, he promised he would once he’d made his mark in the business world. The “friends” he met with at the restaurant got him a lucrative opportunity to make money in the Soviet Union.
She didn’t want to go with him. He was only in Boston for school, but she’d grown up here, had family here. Plus, she had some concerns about the kinds of people he was associating with in his efforts to amass himself a fortune. Moral reservations about the work he was doing and who he was doing it for.
She stayed behind with their son, James, and ran the restaurant.
He went off to see the world and make his money.
When he finally came back, he brought his new wife with him.
Mary was by all accounts the perfect woman—educated, athletic, creative, and gentle. She came from a wealthy, prominent family and didn’t pay any mind to my great-grandfather dirtying his hands; she simply used his fortune to bolster the arts and culture scene, donating blood money to fundraisers and collecting humanitarian awards for her efforts.
According to him, it was love at first sight. That’s why he married his wealthy young bride only a month after they met.
It’s why it was so easy for him to forsake the love of my grandmother who was still running this restaurant, raising their child, waiting for the day he would come home to her, and they would be a family again.
It may be true that he loved my great-grandmother the way she swears he did, and it may be true that he fell in love with Mary as soon as he met her and realized all she had to offer him.