Flesh and Blood by Tricia Owens

Author:Tricia Owens [Owens, Tricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tricia Owens
Published: 2019-11-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Maxmillian’s first instinct was to back up, keeping Ethan protected behind him as though he were a client. Max was somewhat startled by that initial urge, for although his relationship with his father had never been warm, neither had it been physically abusive. He didn’t fear his father, yet clearly a part of him viewed Philip Poole as a threat to the one he loved.

Finding his father lying in wait for them at their hotel stirred mixed feelings. Beyond that first protective urge, Max experienced a degree of pleasure. His father had sought him out. His father had made the effort to come speak to him. It flipped their usual dynamic on its head, and Max could admit to himself that it made him happy.

Yet the joy was short-lived since Max understood exactly why his father had come here. As usual, his father refused to be insignificant to anyone. One did not blow off Philip Poole, ever. The elder Poole had made an appearance here to remind Max of that fact, and to drive home the point that even in attempting to avoid a confrontation, Max was subject to the force of his father’s will.

The older man was seated in one of the hotel's armchairs, his regal bearing managing to make it look like a de facto throne. He wore a tailored tuxedo, one of several that Max knew he owned, with his overcoat draped across his lap. One leg was crossed over the other, showing off a gleaming, aggressively polished dress shoe.

He was obviously older than the last time Max had seen him, but the aging seemed to have reached deeper than the new wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and in his forehead, or the increased crepiness of his hands, folded atop his overcoat. Philip’s hair remained thick and lush and was now completely silver—a harbinger of things to come, Max noted with little interest—and he would be considered dashing by most. But something lurked in his blue eyes that Max couldn’t put a name to. Not simple weariness or resignation, for Philip Poole considered those things weaknesses and would never reveal them, but something akin to a frantic exhaustion, as though he’d been holding up a heavy weight for a very long time and his knees were beginning to fail him.

Then again, that hint of vulnerability could be wishful thinking. His father’s gaze was stony, and his thin lips looked stiff and incapable of curling upwards into a smile. This was the face Philip wore to a board meeting or to negotiate with those who opposed him. It had frequently been the face he wore when Max returned from boarding school for the holidays. Any twinge of sympathy Max had begun to feel for him drained away with that reminder.

“Did you run here from the gallery event?” Max inquired mildly.

His father’s stoic expression didn’t shift. “Are we being petty, Maxmillian? It was my understanding that you’d come all this way to speak to me. Yet when I sought you out, I was informed by your mother that your nerve had failed you.

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