Trusting the Billionaire

Chapter Seven: Lunch II

They were finally settled, the table filled with delicious food, the aroma of the smell of roasted chicken and garlic mashed potatoes drifted around, his mum and the kitchen staff outdid themselves as usual.

Logan sat at the head of the table, his newspaper forgotten. Evelyn sat to his right, presiding more than sitting.

Donald across from Marshall with Ethan wedged into a booster seat beside him and Laura, banging a spoon against nothing in particular. And Angie — poised, pretty, entirely too aware of her own posture — seated beside Marshall, where his mother could watch them both at once.

Marshall unfolded his napkin and thought, not for the first time, that he could probably script this entire lunch from memory. The new woman. The compliment about her character. The pointed remark about Francis and Prisca, aimed at him like an arrow that never quite landed. He wasn't even irritated anymore, not really, irritation required surprise, and there hadn't been a surprise at this table in two years. Just the same performance, restaged with a different lead actress in recent months.

Two chairs sat empty.

Evelyn noticed before the first dish had even been passed. "Where are Francis and Prisca?" she asked, frowning down the table as though they might materialize if she looked hard enough. "I know I told Prisca one o'clock. I said it twice, actually."

"Francis sends his apologies," Marshall said, reaching for his water glass. "Something came up an engagement they couldn't move."

"An engagement they couldn't move," Evelyn repeated, in the tone of a woman filing the phrase away for later use. She let it go, but only because she had bigger plans for the afternoon than her nephew's absence.

Those plans became clear the moment the dinner rolls were passed.

"Isn't it beautiful," Evelyn said, to no one and everyone, "seeing two young people so in love. Francis found his person. Prisca is going to make such a wonderful wife." Her eyes slid, deliberately, to Marshall. He kept his face still. He'd had two years of practice keeping his face still at this table.

"Speaking of wonderful wives," Evelyn went on, brightening as if the thought had only just occurred to her, "Marshall, dear, this is Angie Carol's daughter, you remember Carol from church. Angie teaches grade six." She said 'teaches grade six' the way other women might say 'cures every ailmet. "Do you know how rare that is now? A woman who's patient, who's grounded, who actually wants children one day instead of just a career. A man would be so well taken care of with a wife like that. His children would turn out right."

Angie smiled politely, prettily, the smile of someone who had clearly been told this lunch might go somewhere. She reached for the breadbasket and held it out toward Marshall a beat too long, her eyes finding his in a way that was meant to be an invitation.

Marshall took a piece of bread, said "thank you," and nothing else. The flat, unreadable calm look he wore into board meetings, the version of himself that gave nothing away was already in place. He was polite. He was pleasant. He was distant, Angie must have realized, because he saw the shift in her facial expression.

Logan, sensing the temperature in the room, cleared his throat and tried to steer them toward safer water. "So, Angie grade six. That's a tough age, isn't it? My money's on the boys giving you the most trouble."

"You'd be surprised," Angie said, grateful for the lifeline. "It's usually the quiet ones."

It might have worked, if Donald had let it.

He'd been quiet too long already quiet through the greetings, quiet through Ethan's spoon-banging, quiet through his mother's opening act and quiet had never suited Donald for very long.

Marshall felt it coming before Donald opened his mouth, the way you feel a storm in the air before the first drop. He knew what this was. He'd known for two years, since the day their father had stood up at company's award dinner and announced that Marshall would be taking over as CEO, he had watched something close behind his brother's eyes that had never fully opened back up since. Donald had never said it outright. Not once, not in two years. He circled it instead, jabbed at it sideways, dressed his resentment up as jokes and 'just saying' and concern for whichever woman happened to be sitting besides Marshall each month. Marshall could have ended it in a sentence. He could have told their father to hand the company to Donald and been done with it, could have confronted his brother directly and asked him to just say what he meant for once. But he hadn't, and he wouldn't.

"You're wasting your time, Angie, honestly," he said, not unkindly on the surface, reaching for the chicken like he'd said nothing at all. "Marshall's a lost cause. He's never going to choose a woman over a spreadsheet. He loves his numbers more than he's ever loved anybody."

Marshall almost smiled but not at the obvious jab, but at how Donald sounded like a broken record. There was something almost sad about it, watching his brother reach for the same worn-out line every time, as if repetition might eventually make it land. He didn't feel angry. He felt, if anything, a small ache of pity for Donald, who is twenty eight years old and still measuring his worth against a title their father had handed to the wrong son in his opinion, still needing an audience every time he wanted to take a swing.

"Donald," Logan said, a low warning.

Under the table, Donald's wife found his knee and pressed down, once, deliberately a wordless 'enough' she'd perfected over three years of marriage. Donald didn't so much as glance at her.

Donald ignored it, warming up now, something harder creeping into his voice. "I mean it. People talk about him and women like it's some big mystery everyone's 'heard' about Marshall's little rendezvous, nobody's ever actually 'seen' one. Maybe there's nothing to see." He shrugged, too casual, the spite underneath it not quite as buried as he thought. "Maybe our CEO's just not into women" They table became quiet all of a sudden "and doesn't want to say so. Wouldn't be the first man to hide behind a corner office." he continued ignoring the shock in the faces of the women at the the table.

His wife's hand tightened on his knee again, harder this time, a real warning now instead of a nudge. Still he didn't stop, didn't even seem to feel it, he is too far into it now, too pleased with the sound of his own voice cutting through his brother's calm.

The table went still. Ethan's spoon stopped banging, as if even he had felt it. Angie's polite smile froze somewhere between amused and mortified. Evelyn opened her mouth to scold him, to smooth it over, it was hard to tell which but Marshall got there first.

"I'm not gay, Donald." His voice was even, unhurried, the same voice he used to close a deal that was already won.

"so how come we don't get to see your Date or previous 'Dates'" Donald emphasized

Marshall set his fork down. "I'm in a relationship. It's just not something I've made public."

It was the one thing guaranteed to work. Not their mother's warning look, not their father's low voice, not even his own wife's hand digging into his leg under the table nothing had ever managed to shut Donald up as fast as those two sentences did. His mouth actually closed.

He didn't elaborate. He didn't bother to. He picked his fork back up and returned to his food like he'd merely commented on the weather, leaving the whole table to sit with it, his mother's mouth slightly open, Angie's polite smile finally, mercifully cracking, and Donald staring at him across the table with the particular fury of a man whose shot had just missed.