Page 63 of Theirs to Desire (Club M: Boxed Set)

MADDOX

“ I didn’t think you were talking to me.”

It’s Sunday. It’s a cloudless, warm summer day. A light breeze dispels the worst of the humidity. There won’t be too many afternoons like this. In less than a month, summer will change to fall.

It had been past three by the time I went to bed last night. Sleep had been elusive. Avery’s grey-green eyes had haunted my thoughts, filled my restless dreams.

Stop thinking about her.

I give my mother an exasperated glance. “Why’d you invite me for lunch then?”

Kiki Wake shrugs her shoulders, a small smile curling on her lips. “I thought it was worth a shot. After all, the worst you could do was say no.”

Estranged is too strong a word to describe the distance that has grown between us in the last two years. The truth is, no matter how angry I was with my mother for hiding the truth from me, I love her. “I needed space.”

She nods slightly. “I can understand.”

My father, Stuart Wake, had died two years ago. The death wasn’t unexpected—the five-year survival rate of patients with lung cancer is heartbreakingly low—but the events that had happened after had rocked me.

My brother Gage had taken me to court over my father’s will. “Maddox Wake is not Stuart Wake’s biological son,” his lawyer had stated in the filings. “As such, he has no claim on Mr. Wake’s estate.”

Until I’d received notice that I was being sued, I’d had no idea. I didn’t know that I was the product of an affair that my mother had had thirty-five years ago.

The whole thing was a fucking disaster. It was summer when Gage had contested the will, and Congress had been in recess.

There’d been nothing else to talk about, and so the Wake lawsuit became the hot topic of gossip.

Things that should have been private became topics of tabloid articles.

Anonymous sources accused my mother of having affair after affair, including one with my father’s oncologist.

In the end, Gage had lost his court case. When the final judgment was handed down, I thanked my lawyers, and I left, and I haven’t been back since.

The waiter appears, and we both order. Once he leaves, I turn back to my mother. “I saw your show at the Metzler.”

“Were you at the opening? I didn’t see you.

” There’s a trace of bitterness in her voice.

“The room was packed. I’d have been thrilled, except it was obvious they didn’t care about the paintings.

They just wanted to speculate on the art I’d created when my husband was on his deathbed, and I was supposedly fucking Dr. Painter. ”

“Rubberneckers. Ignore them.” Kiki Wake doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone. I know she loved my father, no matter what might have happened between them in the past. I’ve heard her sob in the middle of the night when she thought she was alone.

Of course, it’s not the bystanders that my mother cares about. Her own son had betrayed her for money. That’s the thing that’s hard to live with. The fact that your own flesh and blood would throw you to the wolves of public opinion for twenty million dollars.

Her smile is sad. “What did you think?”

My father had lived for twenty months after he’d been diagnosed.

There had been twenty paintings at the show, one for each month.

She’d captured his journey. At the start, a determination to fight this, to overcome the odds and be the outlier.

Then denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression and acceptance.

“It was hard to look at them.” I take a deep breath. “It might be your best work.”

“Thank you, darling.” Our burgers arrive, and we dig in. “Where have you been this last year? Morocco for a few months, I know. I saw your photos in the Smithsonian Magazine.”

I reel off the cities. “Marakkesh, Casablanca, Tangier, Granada, and Barcelona.”

She shakes her head. “You were always bitten by wanderlust. I don’t know where you get it from. I hate leaving my studio. I can’t get anything done if there’s even a paintbrush out of place.”

She stops talking as she realizes she’s wandered into a minefield. She’s never spoken of the man she had an affair with. Never mentioned him to me. I don’t know anything about him. Not even his name.

“Still keeping it a secret?”

She dips a French fry in mustard, and then ketchup, her movements slow and deliberate. Finally, she breaks the silence. “You deserve answers,” she says, her voice barely audible in the busy diner. “After everything that happened, that’s the least of what I owe you.”

I frown at her. “I don’t blame you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Are you sure you don’t?” She gives me a steady look. “You didn’t ask me about your biological father during the trial. Not once. And when you’d won, you just left. You didn’t talk to me.”

“I was angry,” I admit. “With everyone and everything. I was furious with Gage for putting money above family. Mad at you for not telling me the truth. Gage blindsided me at a time when I was already reeling, and I blamed you. You could have warned me.”

“And you were afraid that Stuart didn’t know,” she finishes. “That’s the heart of it, isn’t it, Maddox? You thought I’d kept it a secret from your father too, and had he known, he wouldn’t have loved you.”

“That thought crossed my mind.” I should have been ready for my father’s death, but I hadn’t been as prepared as I thought I was. When he died, I’d been left reeling. Stuart Wake had bought me my first camera. He’d built me my first darkroom. I feel his absence every day. “Can you blame me?”

“Your father was always a workaholic,” she says quietly.

“And I was a new mother, completely unprepared for the reality of having a baby. My life was suddenly about midnight feedings and dirty diapers.” She grimaces.

“For two years after he was born, I couldn’t paint.

Sure, I tried, but the stuff I created… It was garbage, pure and simple.

” She pauses. “What would you do if your creativity dried up?”

I’d wither up and die. “I don’t know.”

“I wasn’t prepared for the way I felt,” she admits. “ I felt erased. Damon was an artist too. He understood the way I felt. He was sympathetic. For two weeks, I lost my head.” She makes a face. “It’s not a good excuse.”

Two weeks. Every significant event of my life seems to last fourteen days. “But you went back to dad.”

She nods. “I did. He was angry and hurt, of course. Do you blame him? But we worked through it. Therapy helped. We both made some changes in our lives. In the end, it made us a stronger couple. And when I found out I was pregnant…” Her voice trails away.

“Maddox, Stuart always knew. It never made a difference. You know that.”

There’s a lump in my throat. “Did this guy, Damon, know about me?”

She shakes her head. “He drifted around a lot. He was living in Mexico then. Somewhere near La Paz. I should have told him, I know, but it seemed simpler not to.” She gazes at her half-eaten food. “I made a lot of mistakes.”

I drift around a lot too. Guess I know where I get that from.

“What’s his last name?”

She sucks in a breath. “You want to contact him,” she says flatly.

“Do you blame me for being curious?”

Her face has turned white. “Is this why you agreed to have lunch with me?”

My expression softens. “Of course not, mom.” I put my hand on top of hers. “If you don’t want me to contact him, I won’t. I’m not Gage. I have no desire to bring you pain.”

Avery would have been hurt that I’d left without a word.

She doesn’t look at me. “Damon Ettenberg.”

I whistle through my teeth. I’ve heard of him. “The glass sculptor?”

“Yes.”

“Stuart Wake was my father,” I say quietly. “He taught me to throw a football. He took me fishing.” My lips quirk. “Remember that time we went camping in New Mexico? The ground was so hard that dad couldn’t get the tent stakes in.”

She chuckles, her pensive expression lifting. “You decided to sleep in the car. In the middle of the night, the winds picked up. I was too fast asleep to notice, but Stuart got up and searched for rocks to anchor it down.”

“Gage heard the noises and thought dad was a bear,” I continue. “And of course, the next morning, you woke up and said…”

We both finish the sentence. “Rocks. Oh good. I think I’ll paint them.”

The story lifts both our moods. Those had been simpler days. My dad had been alive and healthy. Gage hadn’t been a greedy little fuck.

“Speaking of Gage…” My mother takes a sip of her sparkling water. “He left me a voicemail yesterday.”

I go very still. “He did? You can’t tell me you’re talking to him. Not after everything he did.”

She sighs. “He’s still my son, Maddox.”

“He was willing to tear our family apart for twenty million dollars,” I bite out. “You owe him nothing. How long have the two of you been in touch?”

“I haven’t spoken to him since Stuart’s funeral,” she responds. Another French fry gets carefully dipped in mustard and ketchup. The colors, yellow and red, appear in a lot of my mother’s paintings. Kiki Wake taught me to see art everywhere, even on a plate of food.

I’d become a photographer while Gage had followed my father into the family firm.

Not for long. Wake Industries is now owned by strangers.

I’d always wondered why my parents had made the decision to sell the company when my father got sick, but after what Gage did, I think I understand.

Maybe my father saw something in Gage that led him to believe that my brother wasn’t the best person to take charge of the company he’d founded.

“What did he want?”

“He’s getting married,” she replies. “To Melissa Lee. Her father, Sampson Lee owns half of Hong Kong.”

“So what?”

Her mouth twists up in a wry smile. “Gage’s lawsuit was exceedingly unseemly ,” she says. “And Mr. Lee is a great believer in family unity.”

My brother’s a greedy fuck. “Let me guess. Gage wants to kiss and make up so he can marry into money.”

“Something like that,” she replies. “He’ll be reaching out to you too, no doubt.”

He can go fuck himself. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no coming back from what Gage did. “Are you going to do it?”

She shrugs. “I haven’t given it much thought,” she lies.

I squeeze her hand. I shouldn’t have taken my anger out on my mother.

Her world had been ripped apart when my father died.

In one fell swoop, she’d lost her husband and both her sons.

“I’m staying in town for a while,” I tell her.

“Why don’t I drop by your studio next week, and you can show me what you’re working on? ”

Her answering smile is warm. “Thank you, darling. I’d really like that.”