Chapter 13
Roman braced himself as the gates to his father’s property opened. This wasn’t the house he had been raised in. This monstrosity was a status symbol acquired at the insistence of his father’s latest wife.
He drove past the manicured gardens to park in front of the house and then sighed as he got out of his car. It was his fault. If he had come for breakfast instead of lunch, he would have avoided this.
He reached into the car and grabbed the box of imported cigars on the passenger seat. He never bought anything for his dad’s wife, though he had never been questioned about it. Not that his opinions about his father’s wives had ever made a difference or counted for anything.
The house was quiet, as it usually was when Esther Ashfield wasn’t throwing one of her parties. He firmly believed that when she was home she ignored his father, and on the many occasions that she wasn’t, she was off spending his money like the gold-digging whore that she was. But that had stopped being his concern years ago. His only job now was to play the dutiful son and let his father do whatever he wanted, as he had always done.
The door opened quickly and the butler smiled at him when he saw him.
“Master Roman. Welcome home,” the old man said as he stood aside to let him in.
William had been more of a father to him as he was often left alone for long periods while his father attended to his businesses or his wives. Then once he had been carted off to boarding school, he was probably the only kid there whose butler came to the Parent-Teacher meetings and visiting days. He hadn’t minded. He had preferred it that way.
“William,” he greeted with a smile. “How are you?”
“As well as I can be, I suppose, with a child in the house at my old age.”
He grinned at the sarcasm as William led him towards the back of the house. The child he referred to was Esther, and she was just as demanding as a five-year-old.
“Cheer up. She’ll probably be gone in a few months and will take this house off your hands, too,” he said drily.
They always took the house. He’d lost count of how many times his father had moved because his ex-wives always took him to the cleaners. He had no idea why the old man was such an optimistic, sentimental fool to believe they actually married him for love. None of them signed prenuptial agreements.
“Lunch will be ready soon, they have prepared your favourites,” William said as he left him in the sitting room.
It was a beautiful day so the bifold glass doors were open all the way. The spacious sitting room seamlessly opened up to the patio, where he could see his father reading the paper while his young wife lay on a sun lounger closer to the swimming pool.
Esther would have been told he was coming, but there she was in her barely-there bikini, waiting for him to see her.
He shook his head at the sight.
Charles Ashfield looked up from his reading when he stepped out onto the patio, and a big smile formed on his face. His father was always genuinely happy to see him. It wasn’t that he had been a bad father as he had been growing up, but he was a people pleaser and so damn gullible. All his foundation years had been ruined by women he had brought into their lives because, for some reason, his father believed he’d needed a mother.
What was his excuse now?
“Rome!” his father said as he stood and pulled him into a hug.
His father was the complete opposite of him with his open and somewhat naive nature. He had no idea why his father was always happy when everyone was always waiting around the corner to take advantage of him. He knew he had inherited his more practical temperament from his mother, who was like all the women Charles had married after her. She had come into the marriage with one goal and had left the moment she had achieved it. She had been the first woman to take half of Charles’ assets, and the only one to abandon her child.
“Dad,” he greeted when he was finally released.
He sat down without acknowledging the woman whose attention had been drawn to him. From the corner of his eye, he could see her rearranging her bikini top and fluffing her hair.
“Did you manage to get your work done? It must have been important to bring you out here so late,” Charles said as he sat back down.
“I was just tired. Late night,” he explained.
His father grinned, and he regretted saying that.
“Are you finally going to give me a daughter-in-law?” his father asked.
And end up like him? Never. Marriage was not on the cards for him, and neither were children. His father’s other children could carry on the family name.
“I was working, dad,” he lied.
“Oh. How completely boring. You need to loosen up. You need to have some fun before you get old.”
Like he did.
“Oh, darling, you know age means nothing,” Esther drawled as she finally strolled over to the table.
Charles smiled as he put an arm around her but he felt his anger rising at that action. Esther was a few years younger than him and yet she was his stepmother. It was completely obvious what she wanted from Charles. Her plastic body had probably already cost his father an arm and a leg, but the result was the plastic Barbie in front of him.
And that plastic Barbie thought she could have both father and son.
There was nothing wrong with having fun but to deceive someone into believing that you loved them? To make them think you wanted to spend the rest of your life with them? That was despicable.
It was why his contracts worked. Everyone got what they wanted and there were no nasty stories in the paper about cheating wives or fake abuse allegations. There were no children to be abandoned in the wind.
“How are you, Roman?” Esther asked. “It seems like forever since I saw you.”
Because she was never able to wake up before noon. Her life was full of excesses that would put anyone to shame; it was a wonder she woke up at all. It was why he came for breakfast instead.
“Oh, you know how it is when someone works for a living,” he drawled.
Esther didn’t respond to the dig. Instead, she pulled a chair out next to him and angled her body so all her assets were perfectly arranged.
“You do work too hard,” she pouted.
How many injections or surgeries had gone into those pouty, red lips?
“That’s why you should come to my birthday party next month. You can invite your friends as well so you won’t be bored,” she continued.
“I’m sorry, I don’t go to children’s parties,” he said just as the servers started bringing out the food.
“Be nice, Rome. She’s still your mother.”
Charles lifted Esther’s hand to his lips and smiled at her. The worship in the older man’s eyes was obvious and it was nauseating.
And it made him clench his fists under the table that someone so young could make a fool of his father. He was looking forward to the day Esther got tired of playing with Charles and let him go.
He would never, in this life or the next, be like his father. No woman was going to wrap him around their little finger like this.