Because of You

Touching the corners of his mouth with a damask napkin, Noah pushed back his chair and stood up. He pointed to his parents. “Now you see why I don’t bring a woman into this.” He shifted his angry gaze to Rhett. “Get your girlfriend out of here before she finds herself with a bull’s-eye on her back.”

The young woman whom Rhett had introduced as Amelia pressed a hand to her chest. “Please don’t mind me. I grew up with my folks going at each other like cats and dogs. After a while, I learned to tune them out.”

Jordan joined Noah when he, too, stood up. “Excuse me.”

Turning on his heels, he walked out of the dining room, his brother following in his footsteps. He knew if he’d stayed what would’ve ensued would have been an argument that would have been certain to pit him and Noah against their parents and grandfather. Edward was fifty-five, yet he still hadn’t been able to stand up to his tyrannical, controlling father. Wyatt had clawed his way out of poverty on New York City’s Lower East Side to create a real estate dynasty second only to Douglas Elliman in New York City, and now at seventy-eight, he was tough as steel and wasn’t above using his fists when necessary to prove a point.

“When are you going to learn not to entertain Grandfather’s taunting?” he asked Noah.

“I just can’t stand it when he comes off so condescending. And just because I won’t subject a woman to his holier-than-thou attitude he thinks I’m gay.”

“He is who he is,” Jordan said, taking the spiral staircase instead of the elevator to the second floor and their suites. “After I had that dust-up with him last year I made myself a promise never to let him see me that angry again.”

“How do you hold your temper?”

Jordan pushed open the door to his apartment that included an en suite bath, dressing room, living/dining room area and a utility kitchen. He probably would’ve lived in the mansion until he married if he hadn’t had such an angry confrontation with his grandfather. The apartment suite afforded him complete privacy, and a full-time household staff was on hand to provide him with whatever he needed regardless of the day or the hour. However, purchasing the maisonette less than a mile away gave him something he hadn’t been able to achieve living under the same roof as his family—independence. Noah preceded him, flopping down on a club chair with a matching footstool, while he draped his long frame over a sofa.

“Remember, Noah, I’ve got ten years and a lot more experience, and with that comes maturity. I learned more working as a litigator protecting the interest of well-heeled clients than I had in three years of law school. And now working in Harlem with clients whose needs are as great or even greater than those at Trilling, Carlyle and Browne has forced me to examine who I am and what I want for my future.”

“What do you want, Jordan?”

“I want the best for the clients of Chatham and Wainwright.”

Noah gave him a long, penetrating stare. Ten years his senior, Jordan was considered tall, dark and handsome. His black hair and olive coloring was a dramatic contrast in a family where everyone was blond. However, whenever he saw photographs of their grandfather in his youth, the resemblance between Wyatt and Jordan was uncanny. Wyatt Wainwright had been quite the rake with his raven hair and penetrating blue eyes.

“What about your personal life?” he questioned again.

“What about it, Noah?”

“Don’t you want to get married? Start a family?”

Jordan rested his head on folded arms as he lay across the sofa. “I suppose I do one of these days.”

“Why are you so ambivalent?”

“I’m not ambivalent. It’s just that I haven’t met the right woman.”

“You haven’t met the right woman and I have.”

Sitting up as if he were pulled by a taut wire, Jordan planted his feet on the carpet. “Who is she?”

“You’ll meet her if you come down to the Bahamas with me.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow night. I’m not coming back until January the third.”

Jordan shook his head. “I wish I could. I promised Brandt I would attend his New Year’s Eve party.” Their professional football player cousin hosted a New Year’s Eve bash at his penthouse every two years.

“Damn! I forgot about that,” Noah said under his breath. “Well, maybe you’ll meet her another time. Now, tell me about your summer liaison.”

Leaning back, Jordan stared at objects in the room that were as familiar as the back of his hand: the suede and leather seating grouping, the marble fireplace with the mantelpiece lined with family photographs, the floor-to-ceiling windows with glorious views of Central Park. As a child he’d spent countless hours sitting on the padded window seats watching the change of seasons.

The park had become his personal playground when he’d ice skated at Wollman Rink and walked the 86th Street transverse road to the West Side to visit the American Museum of National History several times a month.

It was at the Museum of the City of New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Natural History, where he’d lost himself in art and history, where he’d escaped the orderly life his mother had created to mold him into someone he hadn’t wanted to be. Christiane Wainwright had wanted him to attend the boarding school where countless Johnston men had received an exemplary education. But it was Jordan’s first memory of his father asserting his authority when he told his wife that he refused to warehouse his son in a drafty New England school where he would act and react like a robot instead of a six-year-old boy. He’d been quick to remind her that their son was a Wainwright, not a Johnston. His parents had finally reached a compromise, and he had been enrolled in a prestigious Upper East Side preparatory school, where all of the students arrived and were picked up in chauffeur-driven limousines.

Life as Jordan knew it changed the year he’d celebrated his tenth birthday. With Noah’s birth he was no longer an only child. Rhett was born less than two years later, and Chanel five years later. He was seventeen when his sister was born, and her birth was a mixture of delight and sadness for Jordan. The joy of having a baby sister had softened him. But because he’d left for college, then enrolled in law school he’d missed seeing her first steps, hearing her talk in sentences and other important milestones during the first seven years of her life.

“Jordan!”

He jumped as if coming out a trance. “What’s up?”

A frown marred Noah’s handsome features. “I asked you about Natasha Parker.”

Jordan closed his eyes. “There’s not much to tell. She needed money for tuition for her last year in culinary school, so I hired her to teach me to cook—”

“Did you learn how to cook?” Noah interrupted, smiling.

He nodded. “I can put together a nice breakfast and grill steaks and fish. We got close, real close, but we both knew it was going to end once she returned to school.”

“Where’s she in school?”

“Rhode Island.”

“Come on, Jordan. It’s not as if Rhode Island is halfway across the country. You could still see her.”

Jordan shook his head. “No, I can’t. She’s married. I didn’t know it at the time, but she and her husband were separated.”

“When did you find out?”

“He was involved in an accident, and that’s when she told me.”

“Were you in love with her?”

The sweep hand on the clock on the mantelpiece made a full revolution before Jordan spoke again. “No. If I was, I would’ve fought to keep her. What’s up with you asking if she had a sister?”

Noah closed his eyes for several seconds, long pale lashes brushing the top of his cheekbones. “I don’t have a particular type when it comes to women.”

Attractive lines fanned out around Jordan’s eyes when he smiled. “I take it you like a little diversity.”

“It’s more than a little, big brother.”

Jordan sat up, leaned over and bumped fists with his brother. He knew instinctually when Noah did decide to marry, the woman he would choose was certain to change the complexion of the family in more ways than one.

The brothers talked for hours about the women they’d dated and those they wished they hadn’t. It was close to ten when Noah retreated to his own apartment and Jordan went into the bathroom to shower before climbing into bed. He was asleep within minutes of his head touching the pillow. He’d promised his mother he would spend the week with her, but chided himself for giving into her plea that she didn’t see him enough. He loved Christiane, but could only take his grandfather in small doses. Hopefully the week would go quickly, and after the first of the year he wouldn’t be obligated to hang out with his family again until the Easter break.

Chapter 2