Curling upright, she wiggled her butt until she was sitting closer to him and their knees were nudging the other’s.“Thank you.”
“For listening to the liberal and avant-garde Dutchman?”
“Yeah.”She blew out a breath.“My dad always arranges these things around me.I hate it.But he knows best, I guess.He’s been dealing with this stuff for so long, whereas I just don’t want to be bothered with it.”
It was going to spoil the mood between them, he knew that and was saddened by it, but he had to know.“Why, El?”
“Why, what?”
“Why did your grandfather leave the bulk of the fortune to you?”
Just as he’d known she would, El tensed up at his side.She draped herself over her knees, and when he thought she wouldn’t answer, she murmured, “I was sixteen when he fell sick the first time.Heart attack.Brought on by stress.He was seventy-four, but he was so strong that when he just got back up and dealt with it, they let him.Plus, he was a snarky old coot, so no one dared say boo to him.They just let him work himself to death.”
“You and your grandmother included?”he asked softly.
“Grandmother wasn’t too bad.But I wasn’t afraid of him.He knew it too.Liked me being around him.Said I was the only one in the family who wasn’t a yes-man, and he loved me for it.”
“Why weren’t you afraid of him?”
“He was my grandfather,” she said simply.“Not the Forsythe-Drew.I used to tell him he believed his own press too much, but the truth was, everybody held him up as the patriarch and it was… Well, for the money, of course.He held the purse strings, and he wasn’t afraid to cut people off if they weren’t doing what he wanted.”
“I’m surprised you approved.”
“I didn’t.Not really.”
“And you told him?”
“Yep.”She tilted her head to the side and rested it on her bony knees.She looked uncomfortable, but at the same time, at ease.The posture would probably have had a body language expert crying, but Ryan was just grateful she was talking.Explaining the impossible.“I didn’t approve because he had no right to exert his opinions on other people’s life choices.But, equally, they didn’t have to listen.They could have done whatever they wanted if they’d just gone their own way, not let him bankroll them.”She sighed.“I never let him bankroll me.I went to a fancy high school.All the right names, mine being one of the best, and when I was in junior year, I left and refused to go back.”Her grin was like quicksilver.“My father huffed and puffed, my mother cried and took to her bedroom with a bottle of Valium, wailing over why I could never do as she wished.Wondering what she’d done so wrong for God to give her a daughter totally uninterested in all things social.”
“She really said all that?”
His astonishment had her eyelids fluttering open.As they did, he realized how dense and long her eyelashes were.His lips tingled with the need to feel them flutter against them, but now wasn’t the time.
“Yep.It’s nothing to what I hadn’t heard a million times before.She still does it.Father too.But they don’t hold any power over me now… Well, none that I don’t give them.”She frowned.“Grandfather talked to me, asked me why I refused to go back.I was being bullied, I told him.They said I was fat.Called me names, and though I’d been to the teacher, the kids were… we were all from too powerful families.The older we got, the more aware of our families’ power, the less respect we had for the staff.It’s hard to…” She bit her lip, paused a second.“It’s hard to explain really.What it feels like to have no authority.Of course, wedid.We had our parents.But, when I was sixteen, I just decided that I didn’t care.And I didn’t.Their threats were all futile.All centered around taking things away from me, but no one thing mattered more to me than my freedom.”
He could see that in her.She wasn’t materialistic.How that was possible with her background, he wasn’t sure but he was fucking grateful for that fact.A society queen-cum-belle of the ball would have irritated the living fuck out of him as a mate.
“My grandfather asked why I didn’t defend myself.I told him I did, but that I was being adult and taking myself out of a toxic situation.He told me he’d pay to send me to Paris over spring break—he knew how much I wanted to go—if I’d go back.I told him to shove his offer.That my freedom and sanity came at too high a price to be bought.”
Ryan’s grin was slow.“You took away his power.”
She nodded, grinned back.“I did.He loved it.”El laughed.“He tried again.Different things over the next few weeks while I was off on Christmas break, but I always refused, and when the next term started, and I expected a deluge of crap from my parents, I didn’t hear a peep.I moved from the house in the Hills to my grandparents’ place in Napa Valley.I had a tutor, who I respected, and we worked together rather than as student-teacher.My GPA was a 4.0.My mother couldn’t stand that, not when her beloved sons could only manage a 3.5.”Another quicksilver grin came and went.“I stayed there, at the house, until he died.I was supposed to go to Columbia, but I couldn’t leave him.Them.He liked me near him.Liked me to read to him as he got sicker, and I knew he was dying… We were terribly close, and I still miss him every single day.”
He could hear the thickness of tears in her voice and, in apology, placed his hand in the center of her back and began to gently rub up and down.
“Did you know what he was going to do with the will?”
She grimaced.“The family accused me of knowing, but I didn’t.Not really.I had an idea he was going to pull a stunt.He was like that.Liked to keep them all dancing.Said they were puppets and he was the puppeteer; that they shouldn’t let him have their strings if they didn’t want to waltz.”
“I think I’d have liked your granddad.”
His simple statement had her chuckling.“I think he’d have liked you too.All of you, actually.”She frowned a little.“Not that he’d approve of my shacking up with three different men, but hell, he’d probably be the only one of the family who’d accept you all.He said while the others waltzed when he told them to, that he could always believe in the fact I’d go off and tango instead.”
“Tango, huh?”he teased.
She wrinkled her nose.“I’m probably better at waltzing to be fair.”
He grinned.“You and me both.”
