“I don’t want to argue with you, Kat. I brought you back early so I could make it clear where I stand. There is no reason to draw out the rest of the week when I already made my decision.”
When had Leo even come? Kat racked her brain to try to figure out when that might have happened and she came up empty. He’d been gone the last day or so, but his mother had said he was going to an auction or something nearby.
Her father’s brusque voice was sharper than she expected as he drew her attention back to him. “I’ll let you sleep on it. Since you weren’t supposed to be here for a week, I’ll let you take this time to mull it over.”
Kat gaped at him. “One week? You want me to decide whether I’ll marry Chaz in a week? Do you even hear yourself? I don’t know him. Not like that.”
He gave her a flat look. “Come dear, you’re not seriously telling me that you care for Mr. Chambers, are you? When he told me…” He chuckled mirthlessly.
“Told you what?” she demanded.
“It doesn’t matter. He was spouting nonsense. You’re confused.”
If she wasn’t already feeling like she’d been knocked off her feet by this conversation, she might have snapped at him that she was far from confused. But the fact was, maybe he was right.
She didn’t know what she wanted now.
Leo had gone behind her back to speak to her father and that felt like the worst kind of betrayal.
She wasn’t going to get the Montana location.
And if she wanted the career she’d spent her life working for, she would have to marry Chaz to get it.
All because she’d taken her eyes off the ball and let herself catch feelings.
Not just for Leo.
But for Montana, too.
“I can’t decide in a week, dad,” she rasped. When he didn’t immediately speak, she finally forced herself to meet his eyes.
“By the project’s end, then.”
She nodded numbly. “Fine.” Without another word, she grabbed her purse and strode from her father’s office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Kat grimacedwhen her phone buzzed again. She’d been avoiding talking to Leo the entire week she’d been in New York. What was she supposed to say to him after finding out that he’d talked to her father without her permission?
It wasn’t clear what he’d said. Her father wouldn’t dream of telling her what had been said in that meeting besides the confession of feelings.
Just thinking about it had her face flaming.
While she sat in the back of the cab she’d hailed at the airport, she pulled out her phone and dismissed the call so the driver wouldn’t have to hear its incessant buzzing.
After that first meeting with her father, she had several others to attend over the week. Each and every one gave her an excuse to avoid speaking to her father and Chaz about the impending marriage arrangement that hung in the air like a dense fog. It was suffocating to say the least.
Was it bad that she held a little gratitude toward her father for giving her some time to think about it?
The old Kat wouldn’t have hesitated. When pushed into a corner, Kat wasn’t against snapping back. But she was also smart enough to know when she had been beaten.
Her father was right about one thing.
She wasn’t the type of person to walk away from a dream she’d worked her entire life to obtain. It wasn’t in her blood.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t accurate. Hadn’t her mother walked away from her promising career just to be a mother?
Was her father’s reaction to Leo a clue as to how he’d felt about his own wife’s decision? Maybe her father resented himself for letting his wife walk away from her dreams.
