Tied to the Tycoon (21 page)

Jackson looked at her like she’d just told him the meaning of life. At that moment, she had. He leapt up and kissed his mother on the cheek.

Emmie picked up her rolling pin, hiding a satisfied smile. “Have you told her about any of this? About your dad?”

“No, that’s the last thing I wanted to do if she was scared.”

If Jackson expected his mother to understand this particular reasoning, he was disappointed. Emmie rolled her eyes. “Christ, what a dummy.”

Jackson let out a surprised laugh.

“Ava called me a asshole.”

“Ha! She was right. Now get me some butter from the freezer,” she said, frowning down at the dough. “This batch is not, unfortunately, destined for greatness. Good thing I can always try again, huh?”

His mother looked very pleased with that last line.

“
Touché
, Mom,” Jackson smiled. “Anything for me to eat while you conjure up another pie crust?”

He was suddenly voraciously hungry. It was the first time he’d actually wanted food in nearly a week.

For the next several hours, Jackson wolfed down pieces of pie, pastries, and a whole bunch of things he couldn’t pronounce, and dutifully filled out comment cards for his mother’s websites on all of them. But his mind was at work while his body was otherwise occupied. He kept getting flashes of Ava, of things she’d said. They still made him wince, some of them, but he knew he was working something out.

What his mom has said kept banging around inside his head, too.
You’re not done, Jackson
. He had made so many choices in his life because of Ava, he’d felt
able
to make those choices because of Ava, and yet, he had hidden that fact from her. He owed the man he had become to Ava Barnett, and he had the actual, physical proof of that in his apartment, and he’d literally hidden it in his closet. He always thought it was to keep from spooking her, but maybe that was just a rationalization. Maybe he was just as scared and messed up as she was.

And he did owe her an explanation, on top of everything else. But how could he possible explain all of this? Hell, he wasn’t sure he could convince her to take his phone calls ever again; she sure as hell hadn’t taken them yet.

What could he possibly…

“Oh shit,” he said, leaping up from his chair.

“Language.”

“Sorry, Mom, I just…I gotta make a phone call,” he said, ham-handing his phone. He paced while he waited for her to pick up. “Lillian? Yeah, I’m coming back tomorrow morning. There’s something I need for the launch. You know the Moreau?”

“Of course,” Lillian said.

“Send it back. I have a different idea.”

chapter
22

At a loss about what to do with a broken door and not wanting to stay at a place that no longer felt like home anyway—if it ever had—Ava called her sister. Together, the two women managed to move everything of immediate importance into Ellie’s living room out in Brooklyn, and Ava put the rest in temporary storage.

“What’s your roommate going to say?” Ava finally asked. She walked in circles around Ellie, who had collapsed on the couch. Ava felt like if she stopped moving, she’d have to think, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. There were too many dangerous thoughts lurking in her mind like giant, menacing icebergs, just waiting to sink her.

“About that,” Ellie said slowly. “You can have the spare room. It’s an office right now, but it’s got a futon, and you can set up your easel.”

Ava looked around. There were two bedrooms. “The spare room?”

“So, Colette isn’t my roommate,” Ellie said. “She’s my girlfriend.”

Now Ava sat down.

“What?”

Ellie cocked her head. “You don’t have, like, a
problem
…?”

“What? No, I just…how did I not know this?”

Ellie scrunched her feet up on the couch and picked at a thread coming out of her sock. She looked just like Ava did when she got uncomfortable. “None of us are so good at sharing personal stuff, Ava,” she said. She meant the Barnett women. “I was going to tell you at dinner. I told Mom. It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?” Ava said incredulously.

“Does it have to be?”

Ava thought about this. No, obviously, it wasn’t itself a big deal to her, but suddenly finding out there was this whole side you never knew about to someone you love, someone you’re supposed to know…

Ava couldn’t miss how that particular insight might be relevant to her own life, but she couldn’t quite go there yet, even in her own mind.
Thar be icebergs
, she thought, and looked up to find Ellie staring at her with big, scared eyes.

“I didn’t mean to lie to you, it just…” Ellie said, trailing off.

Ava sighed, and reached for her sister’s hand. “I think I actually get that part. I just can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

Now Ellie smiled. “Ava Barnett’s famous sixth sense,” she said. “Yeah, how’d that work out for you, mind reader? You didn’t see that one coming?”

“Shut up.”

“You know, you do have blind spots with some people.”

“That’s pretty obvious at the moment,” Ava said.

“No, but I mean it,” Ellie said, extending herself across the couch with her feet in her sister’s lap. She was noticeably more comfortable now than she had been just a moment ago.
I guess coming out will do that
, Ava thought, secretly shaking her head.

“You have a pretty big blind spot when it comes to Mom, too. No, Ava, listen, please,” Ellie said. Ava had stiffened immediately. “You’re great and perceptive with people, and you adapt immediately and just charm the pants off them because you see right through them—I know. I’ve always envied it, even though I know you got it from having to predict when Mom would fly off the handle, which actually sucks pretty hard. But I feel like that’s led you to think that you see
everything
, and you just don’t.”

“I’m actually pretty aware that I don’t see everything, El,” Ava said softly. “After today.”

Ellie winced. Ava hadn’t offered details about what had happened, and Ellie hadn’t asked, in the great reflexive Barnett tradition of Not Talking About It, but Ellie had seen the busted up door.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Ellie asked.

“Not yet.”

“Ok.” Ellie put an affectionate foot on Ava’s shoulder, just to gross her out. “I’m right about Mom, though.”

“Ellie, seriously. You didn’t take the brunt of it. I’m not saying that to, like, pull rank, but—”

“But you are. Shut up for a second, seriously, and listen to me.” Ellie got on her knees, leaned forward, and grasped Ava by the sides of her face. Ava was so startled that she actually did shut up.

“You are Mom’s favorite. Don’t argue with me, and don’t think it’s something I’m upset about. I’m only saying it because you still think Mom was, like, I don’t know, trying to destroy you, with all the stuff she did. I don’t think she was. I think she was desperate, and lonely, and drunk, and she would get afraid of losing you, too, every time she lost anyone else, and she just… I think she just wanted to keep you close, as fucked up as that is.”

Ava didn’t know what to say. Ellie fell back on her side of the couch, somehow spent, as though she’d been waiting to say that for a long time.

Ellie looked shyly at her sister. “Don’t say anything, don’t… I mean, you don’t have to agree with me. Just please think about it, ok? As, like, an option.”

“As an option,” Ava agreed, still mildly stunned. There had been a whole lot of revelations and surprises for one day. She was suddenly exhausted.

“Sleepy?” Ellie asked.

“God, yes,” Ava said. She put her head in her hands. “Oh shit. I didn’t call my boss.”

Ava had no intention of going into work the next day, or possibly even the day after that. It was the week between Christmas and New Year’s, so it wasn’t as though it mattered much, but Ava had been pretty absentee lately.

Ellie eyed her thoughtfully. “That isn’t like you.”

“I
know
.”

The strange sense of apathy that Ava had started to associate with her job while up at the Volare estate had only intensified, if that was something apathy could do. It had definitely grown. Expanded. The past day, with Jackson and thinking about painting and all the rest, had put the whole thing into even sharper focus, making her advertising executive ambitions seem even more alien and insane. She realized she wouldn’t care at all if she never worked in advertising again. It was like figuring out you’d been wearing the wrong size shoes for years, and that’s why nothing had ever felt right. She waited for the requisite terror that was supposed to follow the thought that one was on the verge of becoming unemployed, especially given the economy, and had no explanation when it didn’t arrive. She decided to send Alain an email claiming her remaining vacation days, but other than that, she had no idea what she was going to do.

But God, did she prefer thinking about that to thinking about Jackson.

Ava did lots of things to avoid thinking about Jackson. The first thing she did was give custody of her phone to her sister.

“I am not to be trusted,” she explained. The shock of the breaking in incident had worn off, and though Ava was still completely messed up about him, that didn’t stop her from wanting him. Even thinking about Jackson sent her into a mildly crazed state, confused between desire, love, hurt, and possibly some other things, too. She did not want to be getting phone calls, or worse, have to wonder why she
wasn’t
getting phone calls.

So Ava spent a quiet week with Ellie and Colette, eagerly getting to know this side of her sister’s life. She was both delighted and a little incredulous to find that they seemed to have a totally functional, happy, and loving relationship, and realized that she still didn’t quite believe such things existed, at least not for anyone in her family. And yet, here was the proof. Every night over dinner, there it was. Her sister and even her mother had apparently managed it. Ava had never been so happy for Ellie, but it made her feel her own failings more acutely.

During the days, though, Ellie went to her job as an assistant art director at an off-Broadway theater, Colette went to go do whatever it was that lawyers did, and Ava painted. She hadn’t had a plan when she’d started, she’d just kind of…started.

And it turned out that her first painting was of her mother.

“Huh,” Ava said.

It had been painted from memory, and it was full of soft light. It was a far more gentle, caring sort of picture than Ava had thought herself capable of producing where Patricia Barnett was concerned.

She painted portraits of Ellie, of Colette. She tried to paint a portrait of herself, but stopped when she started to cry. She wasn’t there yet.

She didn’t try to paint Jackson. She couldn’t handle that yet, either. She already knew what it would show: she was in love with him, she hated him, and she was afraid, if not of him, then of what he made her feel. Not that it mattered. Someone with Ava’s past couldn’t possibly make it work with someone who had such a tendency to push past every boundary he saw, with someone who withheld so much while demanding even more.

He wasn’t abusive—he didn’t take it that far, and seemed aware of where that line was—but…but Ava didn’t think she could handle it, not yet. Jackson had talked about how much he’d changed over the years, and Ava—Ava hadn’t, because she hadn’t. She obviously had some issues to work out before she was ready for anyone, let alone Jackson. Well, she assumed. It wasn’t like he’d confided in her, either. She had to think it couldn’t work as long Jackson Reed remained a black box of mystery.

She’d been thinking about that man for ten years, and had next to nothing to show for it. There was something profoundly unfair about being indelibly tied to someone you couldn’t have because you were never quite ready for each other.

Or maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe she just wasn’t right for him. After all, if he felt he could truly be himself with her, the way he’d asked her to be with him, wouldn’t he have actually just
done
it? Wouldn’t he have confided in her, too? Shown that he trusted her?

Or maybe he was just an irreparably screwed up jerk.

Ava would torture herself with such thoughts, then remember that she was trying to give herself a break, and move on to something else. But the thoughts always returned. She always circled back around to Jackson, as though anchored to him.

It sucked.

So Ava was actually relieved when Ellie announced that they were going to a New Year’s Eve party, and Ava was coming whether she wanted to or not.

“I’m gonna doll you up,” Ellie said. “It’ll be fantastic.”

“Where is it?” Ava hadn’t been
out
out in a while.

“Some artsy fartsy fashionable thing in SoHo,” Ellie said vaguely. “One of Colette’s clients got us in. Now, let’s talk about what you’re going to wear.”

Aware of Ava’s highly tuned social sensitivity, Colette waited until Ava was off in the other room trying on clothes before shooting Ellie an inquisitive, confused look.

“So where did my client get us in?” she asked.

“Shush,” Ellie said. “It’s a surprise.”

“I’ll bet.”

chapter
23

Jackson wasn’t used to nervousness. Even before big meetings with prospective investors, even at the very beginning of ArTech, when he was a nobody trying to convince millionaires to give him money, he’d never been a ball of nerves. He’d been sure of himself and his ideas, and had known that would be enough.

Now, in the middle of this giant party he was throwing for his now-successful company, he wasn’t sure of anything. Except that if he put his hand out, it might actually shake. The whole jittery, mind-racing, sweaty feeling was new to him.

It sucked.

He should be able to enjoy the spectacle. Arlene had really outdone herself in every possible sense, and so had whoever was responsible for…well, whatever the hell was going on around him. There were performance art pieces going on periodically, there would be some band from Brooklyn in a little bit, there were models covered in silver paint for some unknown reason walking around with trays of champagne flutes. Everywhere people were drinking and composing art poems and messages and all kinds of things on the touchscreen stations they had set up around the transformed loft office space. All the computers and desks had been banished to a supply room and art and lights decorated the suddenly vast space.