looks like you believed them.”
Russell looked back down at his food. “It’s not for me to judge.”
“And a Maxwell takes whatever he wants, is that it?” If Travis had been hoping for an argument, he didn’t get it.
Calmly, Russell finished his coffee. “In my experience, yes.”
The truth of that made Travis’s anger calm down. He refilled Russell’s cup. “Maybe so,” Travis said. “Taking what he wants is a creed of my father’s.”
“But not yours?” Russell asked.
Travis wasn’t fooled by the man’s nonchalant tone. He was asking a very serious question. “No, it’s not what I believe in at all.”
Russell ate his toast and for a moment he didn’t reply. “How do you plan to get the ring back?”
“I’m a lawyer, remember? I’ll threaten him with grand larceny and prison.”
Russell used the napkin Travis had given him to wipe his mouth. “And what will you tell Miss Aldredge? That her boyfriend only wanted her for her successful little shop?”
Travis grimaced. “That will kill her ego.”
“And this weekend you’ll have a depressed, crying female on your hands.”
Travis looked at Russell and they exchanged a male understanding between them. An unhappy woman wasn’t a good companion.
Russell stood, picked up his coat and prepared to leave, but then he turned back to look at Travis. There was no humor in his eyes. “If you leave your father’s firm, what will happen to my mother? Will she be thrown out with the rubbish?”
Travis was used to being attacked, used to barely suppressed rage from people who’d had encounters with his father. But this man was different. His resentment was for Travis. “It’s all happened so quickly that I haven’t had time to think about it. I guess I assumed she’d go back to working for my father.”
“No,” Russell said. His expression said that he wasn’t going to elaborate on that statement, but it was final.
“Tell me what she wants and I’ll see that she gets it.”
“It must feel like being an emperor to have such power,” Russell said.
Travis understood the man’s hostility toward him. He knew the late hours, weekends, and holidays that Penny had worked for his father. And Travis hadn’t been much better. He’d never thought twice of calling her on Sunday afternoons—and Penny had never complained, never even commented. Her son must have spent most of his life without his mother. He must hate the Maxwell name. And it looked like he especially hated Travis, the Maxwell son who was the same age as he was. But then, did he think Travis grew up with loving parents who doted on him?
“What do you do? For a living, I mean?” Travis asked.
The friendliness that had started between them was gone. Russell’s face was hard, unforgiving. “I don’t need anything from you or your father, so there’s no need to pretend interest. I’ll get back to you about my mother and I expect you to keep your word.”
The hostility in his voice and eyes made Travis’s hair stand on end. To lighten the mood, he said, “Within reason, of course. I can’t give her the Taj Mahal. It isn’t for sale.”
Russell didn’t smile. “If it were, your father would have bought it and fired the caretakers. Are we finished here?”
“Yes, I think so.”
As soon as Russell was out of the house, Travis called Penny. She seemed to be expecting the call because she answered before the first ring finished. The first thing he needed taken care of was business. He wanted to know where David Borman was right now. As Travis expected, Penny said she’d find out and text an answer.
That was Travis’s cue to hang up, but he didn’t. “I met your son,” he said tentatively. “He, uh . . .”
Penny knew what he was trying to say. A few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have dared comment, but lately Travis seemed to be jumping off the fast track to becoming a second Randall Maxwell. “Hates everything with the Maxwell name on it,” she finished for him.
“Exactly. Is it curable?”
“Probably not.”
Travis took a breath. “I promised him that when I leave the Maxwell firm I’d see that you got whatever you wanted. To make sure I get it right, why don’t you tell me what it is you want?”