Chapter 27

Raemon was staring into his coffee cup. “I will not discuss my parents with you or anyone else,” he said shortly.

“No, look.” Octavia pointed to the large man dressed in a sagging yellow elephant costume, filling a cup at the drinking fountain.

“Oh,” Raemon said, seeing what she was pointing at.

“I simply couldn’t resist.” Octavia grinned.

“What devilish impulse would induce a man to wear such ridiculous attire in public?”

“I don’t know. It looks awfully comfortable.”

Raemon smirked. “You would ignore how much of an eyesore something like that is in exchange for the comfort, wouldn’t you?”

Octavia gave him a proud look. “I definitely would. Being able to nap in whatever you’re wearing and having it feel just like your pajamas is where the real sartorial value lies.”

“You’re not like most girls,” Raemon remarked.

Octavia took a languid sip from her soda cup. “I certainly am. There are hundreds of us sweatpants-loving slobs out there. You just don’t run into them at your regular watering holes.”

He merely shook his head and let his eyes fall back to his coffee.

Octavia paused, contemplating asking a question. “Not that I’m terribly curious…but why don’t you want to talk about your parents?”

Raemon looked up with an icy glare. “As I said, not up for discussion.”

Octavia shrugged. “Fine. Doesn’t make a difference to me either way, I guess.” She frowned in thought. “Although they seemed nice enough. Your mother seems great. And your father too—”

“My father is a cowardly, incompetent poor excuse for a man,” Raemon interjected bitterly. “He’s been nothing but a curse to my mother and me.

“It’s unfortunate that I have to share DNA with that fucking senile idiot.”

Octavia was silent, but she observed Raemon’s face with an expression of interest. Finally, she said, “So-o-o…you don’t like him very much.”

“You could put it that way,” Raemon said in disgust.

“Your mother does. She’s obviously in love with the man,” Octavia said.

She could see Raemon’s jaw tighten. “Unfortunately for her.”

“I read all the articles about their relationship. You really never met him until you were twenty-five?”

“Lord Duncan Kentworth didn’t have any use in his illustrious royal life for a poor immigrant woman or the child he’d had by her,” Raemon said through gritted teeth.

“Can’t have been easy growing up.”

“That had nothing to do with his absence.” A faraway look came over his eyes. “My mother did what she could to support herself.

“But back then, there wasn’t a high demand in the modeling industry for women with her complexion. Then after she became pregnant, there was no hope of continuing her career.”

His voice betrayed the smallest tone of sadness. “She immigrated to the US when I was ten years old in hopes of giving me a better future.

“She…she used to tell me fantastic stories about who my father was, how I’d one day get to meet him and see what a powerful and rich man he was.

“I couldn’t understand back then how we lived as poorly as we did if my father was the rich and powerful man my mother claimed he was.”

A cynical half smile crossed Raemon’s lips. “We could have been fine without him. But there was just too much working against us. My mother was young. She was always seen as a foreigner.

“Her mere presence was supposedly a threat to someone’s life. She barely made enough to feed herself—and then she had to take care of a child too.

“Moving here didn’t change anything. She worked herself to the bone—cleaning houses, taking care of other women’s kids, waiting tables—anything to keep us alive.

“And my father lived on in the Kentworth castle, drowning in wealth he didn’t lift a finger to create.”

The sadness left his voice, and anger rose up again.

“What kind of bastard takes advantage of a young woman in my mother’s position? While he was engaged to another woman at that?

“Oh, the newspapers tried to make it sound as if he met my mother before he married his former wife, but it’s disgustingly plain the engagement to Lady Kentworth was arranged before he met my mother.

“He figured he could have his way with my mother, then forget about her and go back to his upper-class approved fiancée.

“People like him think they can use anyone however they want and discard them just as easily when they’re done with them.”

“That is fucked up,” Octavia agreed. “But then again…that’s royalty, isn’t it?”

“Being the illegitimate son of a blue blood makes one consider the merits of the French Revolution.”

“Can I ask, how did you do it?” Octavia ventured. “How did you get from where you were…to where you are now?”

“Weren’t there news articles on that?”

“They all say the same thing: ‘He’s a genius,’ ‘He worked five times as hard as anyone else,’ ‘the unfailing magic of capitalism,’” Octavia said, paraphrasing words she’d read.

“But…I…I get the feeling there was a little more to it than that.”

She had expected him to shut down the conversation again, but to her surprise, Raemon spoke. “I made up my mind to ensure my mother would never have to work again.

“As soon as I was old enough, I got a job. I started a business and made sure it grew. Soon, I became a millionaire, then a billionaire. I was finally able to give my mother the life she deserved.

“We could forget about the ghost of a person my father was and live better lives than what he could ever give us.”

He paused. Anguish and resentment swirled in the depths of his eyes. “I hoped she would forget about him completely.

“I could tell the way she spoke about him…she still loved him. She still thought he would have taken care of us if it wasn’t for the people who stood in the way of her reaching him.”

He clenched a fist. “I wanted her to see that we could make it on our own. That we could be fine. We were fine. I made it fine. And that’s when the man decided to show up.”

“The Kentworth fortune dwindled; the properties mortgaged to the hilt,” Octavia added.

“Bloody fool knew more about spending money than making or keeping it,” Raemon snarled. “I can never forgive him.” He stopped and stared into his cup.

“I can never forgive…myself. I made a fortune to free my mother from the shadow of him—of his class and supposed rank. And she ended up right back in his clutches because of it. The irony.”

Octavia let silence prevail until Raemon’s fist had relaxed and he wasn’t staring into his cup as if he was attempting to make the coffee boil from his gaze.

“I’m actually glad my parents never married,” Octavia said out of nowhere.

Raemon looked up.

“My mother met my father in college,” Octavia explained.

“They didn’t know each other, had never even dated. They met in their senior year at a party. Then they both graduated and went their separate ways. Three months later, my mother realized she was pregnant.

“Strange, I know, but my mother’s always been scatterbrained that way. She’s a biochemical researcher, you see. At the time, she was in Brazil, studying plant extracts from the Amazon forest.

“She told me she thought the tiredness was from jet lag. Apparently, she thought she was jet-lagged for three months.” Octavia smiled.

“She also told me that she had every intention of getting an abortion when she found out.”

Raemon’s dark eyebrows drew together at her words.

Octavia continued. “She was very frank about it. She didn’t want children. She wanted to do research. But then there was a major flood in the area she was in, and the roads were impassable for months.

“By the time she was able to leave the little village she’d been living in, I was already born.” Octavia sighed. “She told me many times: ‘Don’t have kids unless you really want them.’”

“So,” Raemon said, “we both have parents we despise.”

Octavia blinked. “I don’t despise my mother. She was a great mom.”

Raemon raised a quizzical eyebrow.

Octavia continued. “She never was the type to say ‘I love you’ every day or anything. In fact, I’m not sure I ever heard her say those words. But…I don’t think she had to. I always knew it.

“She did sit with me all three days I lay sweating and shivering when I contracted malaria in the Congo.

“She trekked through a snowdrift in the Tibetan mountains to the nearest town to buy an ice-cream sandwich because it was my birthday.

“I traveled all over the world with her. If she hadn’t loved me, I wouldn’t have lived through most of what we went through.”

“Where is she now?” Raemon asked.

Octavia’s gaze became distant. “Far away. Somewhere I can’t reach her.”

“I’m…I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s all right. She wanted to go. And she’s better off where she is. It’s the perfect place for her, but kinda hot, I’ve heard.”

Raemon’s brows furrowed with something resembling concern. “Should…should you really talk about your own mother that way?”

Octavia’s eyes shot back to him. At the sight of his expression, she said hurriedly, “She’s not dead! She’s in the Sahara.” A smile sprung to her lips.

“I can’t reach her because she’s traveling across the desert on camelback, doing research on desert animals.”

Raemon scowled. “You should have made that clear.”

Octavia gave a short laugh. “The look on your face, though. Priceless.”

“I’m so glad you never fail to find the humor in everything,” he said dryly.

“My point was,” Octavia continued, stifling her laughter, “I never had a father. I met him once when I was sixteen. It was an okay experience.

“My mother and I happened to be in his city, so I sat down for coffee with him. We had a decent, civil conversation.

“And then he went back to his wife and kids, and Mom and I went on to Alaska. I think that was when we were doing the whale expedition.”

“Did his family know about you?”

“Of course. My mother told him about me when I was born, which was before he married. His wife and my mother had never met, but they’ve always been on good terms.”

Octavia paused in thought before continuing. “The thing is, it wasn’t complicated. I knew the man was my father, but that really only meant he was the other half of the human pair that I came from.

“That was it. I didn’t expect or want birthday presents, or Christmas phone calls. He wanted to pay child support, of course, but my mother made enough for the both of us anyway.

“They agreed he’d fund my college education, though. It all worked out. Sure, I didn’t have the traditional, white-picket-fence, nuclear family, but what I had was still great.

“And I don’t resent either of them for the choices they made.” Octavia stopped; she had been staring out the window as she spoke.

“I guess none of that addresses your own family troubles,” she said.

“No. It does not.”

“Sorry. At least look at it this way, your mother is happy.”

His scowl deepened.

“And since you’re so much richer than he is, he’ll do his damnedest to keep her that way.”

“He fucking better,” Raemon muttered.

“You know what’s crazy, though?” Octavia said. “You could be a duke someday.”

“I wouldn’t stoop so low,” Raemon scoffed.

“Anyway, there are two sons in line before myself and a slew of cousins who would claim a right to the title over me based on the fact that I was conceived out of wedlock,” he said.

“Yeah, okay—whatever. But just imagine it, being a duke. You’d get invited to all kinds of fancy-schmancy events, you’d have people falling over themselves just to kiss your feet, you’d have all that money…”

Octavia’s voice trailed off and she wrinkled her nose. “Damn, it’s not much different from what you have now, is it?”

Raemon replied, “I have a greater net worth now than I would as a duke.”

“Hardly worth the time worrying over the title, is it?” Octavia said. “You might as well let the peasant blue bloods fight over it.”

Raemon raised his cup as if giving a toast. “Exactly.”