Beautiful Surrender(19)

She stopped whisking. “You weren’t married or something, were you?”

“No!” I cried. “Why? Do you think Vincent would do something like that?”

“I don’t, but people have a way of surprising you sometimes.”

I knew all about that, but I had forgotten what Vincent told me about her history. I wondered if he had told her about the situation with Marty. That was a private thing: the only people who knew about it were Vincent and Riley. Well, and Kurt and Bernie. It still upset me that he had done that. That had surprised me. As sweet as he had been all week, I still wasn’t over it.

“I guess that’s true,” I said. “Anyway, we actually met through work. I work for a personal wealth management firm and head up his account.”

She turned and looked at me. “Good for you! I hope you’re reining him in somewhat. Every time he travels I worry he’s going to have some horrible accident with all the risky sports he’s doing.”

“Oh, you too?”

She let out a short laugh and shook her head. “He seems to like you. I haven’t met a girlfriend of his before.”

Here was another surprise. The fact that Vincent had never introduced a girlfriend to his sister, who he was obviously close to, made me feel special. My mind shot to Ariel Diamond. If his sister had never met her, maybe things weren’t as serious between them as I had thought, even if the tattoo was strange.

“Not even Ariel?” I asked, before I knew the words were out of my mouth.

Giselle stopped whisking the frosting for a moment, but continued. “No, not Ariel. That was a different period in Vincent’s life. And mine, really. We didn’t talk much while he was dating her.”

“I see.”

“He’s much more family oriented now than he was then.”

“Oh?”

“Ever since our parents died. He grew up after that.”

I stopped in place. Vincent’s parents were dead? He had never talked about them, but then I rarely talked about my parents and they were still alive and kicking back in Texas. How had it never come up that his parents had already passed away? Did he just not care?

I began spreading the frosting again. “I didn’t know your parents had passed,” I said quietly.

It was her turn to put her whisk down. “Oh, sorry. I guess it’s been so long. They passed away nine years ago.”

So Vincent must have been very young. Younger than I was as I stood in that kitchen. Even though I didn’t talk to my parents much and didn’t rely on them financially at all, I couldn’t imagine them being gone.

“Wow, you two were young then.”

“I like to think thirty is still young!” she said, laughing.

My cheeks flushed. “That’s not what I meant!”

“I know, I know. It was way too young to lose our parents. Vincent took it very hard. It actually turned out to be the beginning of his success.”

“What do you mean?”

“After they passed away, he finally got his act together. He developed the camera a few months after the funeral. It was like he was possessed. We were both staying at our parents’ house for awhile after the accident and living on the small inheritance we got. He would be working twenty hours a day for weeks on end, out in the garage and on the computer and on the phone. It was a transformation. He went from being a slacker with potential to someone who was totally obsessed.”

The tone in her voice had changed. Her words took on a strange sharpness, like she was trying to cut them into me and make sure they sunk in. She obviously admired Vincent very deeply. This wasn’t a connection that was for the sake of appearances: Vincent meant the world to her. Listening to her talk about him, I could see why.

She continued. “Any time he wasn’t working he was saying he was going to take care of me and of us. To a twenty year old it’s pretty weird to have your surfer brother tell you that he’s going to take care of the family. It sounds like wishful thinking from a guy who’s just grieving for his parents, but Vincent really changed. He became this very intense person who found success everywhere he looked because he wouldn’t accept failure. He was selling that camera in three months and had it with retailers soon after, and he just built and built. Everyone underestimates him because of his appearance and his hobbies, but he just keeps plowing forward.”

I had researched the story of Vincent’s company from a financial perspective, but I hadn’t given thought to what it meant on a personal level to grind out so much success. Giselle had seen it first hand. In a way, I was almost jealous.

“It sounds like you admire him,” I said, simply because I hadn’t spoken in a while. We had both stopped with our frosting duties.