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think last night helped a lot. And I'm not even divorced yet.” Then he asked Xavier a question. “If we ever got there, would you approve?”
Xavier hesitated for a long moment, thinking about it. This was new to him, too. “I guess so, if you think you can make each other happy. It's not what I expected, but life takes funny turns sometimes. Maybe this could work. I'll let you two figure that out. I'll take care of my sister while you do.”
“I appreciate it a lot,” Liam said with a tremor in his voice. What he appreciated was his friend's blessing on their relationship, more than his help with his irate sister, although that was useful, too, and would mean a lot to Sasha, who still looked distraught. Liam handed her back the phone then and went outside to stand on the porch and look at the beach. It was a foggy day, which seemed appropriate to him.
Xavier tried to calm his mother when she got back on the phone. She was crying softly, and he felt sorry for her. He could easily sense how awful it had been for her. “Mom, try to relax. I'll talk to Tat. Just try to have a decent weekend. She'll get over it. So will you. He's a good guy. He says he loves you. That's all you need to know.”
“I love him, too,” she sniffed, “but I'm not willing to lose my children for him.”
“You won't. She'll yell and scream and stomp around for a while. She'll be a diva. That's how she is. You have a right to this, if that's what you want. You have my support. And if you stick with it, and it works, you'll get hers, too. If not, chalk it up to experience and we'll all laugh about it one day.” But no one was laughing yet. Xavier was being incredibly mature and generous, far more so than his sister.
She thanked him profusely, they talked for a few more minutes, and then they hung up and she went out to find Liam on the porch. He was looking out to sea and thinking, and turned as she sat down on the swing next to him.
“I'm sorry, Sasha. I didn't mean to make a mess for you.” He looked genuinely sorry it had happened.
“You didn't make a mess. It just happened. They were bound to find out sooner or later.” Others would, too. This was just not the way she wanted their affair to come to light, to say the least. Neither did he.
They spent the rest of the weekend quietly, and went back to the city Sunday night. She had tried to get through to Tatianna several times on her cell phone, and it was always on voice mail. At her apartment, all Sasha got was the answering machine, and left several loving messages for her. Liam hated to hear her crawling, but he knew how much her daughter meant to her. He thought Tatianna should be spanked, but he said nothing to Sasha. How she handled it now was up to her.
Xavier left his sister several messages, and she called him back in London. But she was intransigent when he tried to reason with her, and furious with him for endorsing Liam.
“You're as nuts as they are. For chrissake, he's about twenty years younger than she is. How crazy is she?”
“She's not crazy, Tat. She's lonely. And he's only about eight or nine years younger than she is,” Xavier said quietly, trying in vain to reason with her.
“He looks like a kid.”
“In some ways, he is. He acts like one, but he isn't. He's an adult. He says he loves her. And I think she loves him. Whether we like it or not, she has a right to be with whoever she wants. And I'd rather it be him than some uptight prick we really hate, or some guy after her money.”
“This is sick, Zav. And he probably is after her money.”
“I don't think so. All he cares about is art. He's a decent guy who was married for twenty years and has three kids.” He didn't tell her that the marriage had broken up because he had slept with his wife's sister. “You just have to trust her on this one. Maybe they'll get over it. They're not hurting anyone.”
“She'll look like a fool, and so will we, if anyone finds out, or she goes out with him.”
“I've done a lot worse, believe