The One For Me (Danver #8)(86)
Celine gave up all pretense of drinking her coffee. For the first time, Crystal thought the woman probably looked close to her real age. There was a fatigue about her now that had little to do with sleep. She was a woman who had buried her head in the sand for years and was now having to face the consequences of her actions. “I don’t know what to do,” she murmured. “I’m tired of living this way, but Marcus would implode fully without me. We both have our own . . . lives at times, but we always come back to each other.”
“How about your son?” Crystal snapped, tired of hearing excuses made for the older man. Had anyone even considered some tough love where he was concerned? God knows giving her mother some of that was next up on her agenda.
“I can only help Mark by getting control of his father,” Celine hissed back. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I need some time to make decisions. After what happened at Mark’s, I’ve already been attempting to put a plan in place.” Crystal wanted to argue when the woman got to her feet, but she could tell by the closed-off expression on her face that she’d said as much as she was going to for now. “I’ll get your number from Denny and call you when I’m ready.”
Crystal nodded. “I’d appreciate anything you can do.”
As they went to part ways in the lobby, Celine turned back to her and said earnestly, “I am sorry. You seem as if you really care about my son, and I promise you that I’m going to do everything in my power to help him.”
Crystal made it a few more feet to the plush sofa in the lobby before collapsing down on weak legs. She’d done it. She’d faced one of the obstacles in her path to Mark. She dearly hoped that in doing it, she wasn’t making things worse for the man she loved.
Chapter Twenty-three
Mark looked at his Twitter account for the first time in a few days as he sat in his office. Yeah, he had more important things to do than check his social media accounts, but as usual, lately his focus was shit just knowing Angel was somewhere in the building. They’d been apart for almost three weeks now, and he was still a mess. He was pretty sure he hadn’t gone this long without sex since his first time, and the sad thing was that he had no desire at all to do anything to remedy that dry spell.
He was scrolling through his Twitter stream, pathetically hoping for something from Angel when he saw a picture that had him yelling, “Denny!”
As usual, the other man took his time strolling into Mark’s office with a resigned “Yes?”
Mark flipped his iPad around, showing his cousin the picture of him kissing Margot at the charity event in Charleston a few weeks back. “Who in the hell posted this?” he asked, now in a panic. “What if Angel saw that? Oh God, do you think she has?” He frantically scrolled through the remaining posts to see if she had left him a message, but there was nothing.
“You need to calm down.” Denny rolled his eyes in exasperation. “You broke up with her, so it’s not like this is an admission of cheating. What’s the big deal? I mean, I’m sure that she assumes you’ve returned to your loose ways by now.”
Mark felt like his head was going to explode. He got to his feet and rounded his desk, intent on wringing the other man’s neck. “This would upset her!” he shouted, waving his hands in agitation. “And you know that’s Margot. We’ve never even kissed, much less slept together.”
“Um—looks kind of like you’re kissing in that picture,” Denny pointed out helpfully.
“I swear—” Mark began, only to be cut off when Denny suddenly snapped.
“I really don’t want to hear any more of this whining! I liked you when you were with Crystal. Hell, I even liked you okay when you were banging everything on the East Coast. Now you mope from one city to another because you’re miserable without her. But you’re too much of a pussy to do anything about it! So your dad’s a big asshole. Do you think you’ve got the market cornered on that or something? Big—fucking—deal. Crystal’s mom is a rabid bitch from what I’ve heard too, but at least she has some balls. How about you grow a pair and take charge of your life again. Or, at the very least, borrow Crystal’s for a while. Now, I’m taking the afternoon off because I’m at my limit with you for today. And you can call a cab when you’re ready to leave.” With those final parting words, Denny slammed the outer door impressively and left Mark in oppressive silence.
Without giving himself time to think about his actions, he called Declan and, after a fair amount of ass chewing, got the information that he needed. Then he looked up the number for a cab company and ordered one to arrive in fifteen minutes. If Denny’s fit had done nothing else, it had given Mark an idea—or really a plan. And fuck it all. When you had nothing, what was left to lose? It was time to find the balls that he’d obviously lost, and he knew where he wanted to look first.