“No. Alex and my father proposed that Will should marry her. In the past, I had been rather outspoken about my views regarding arranged marriages, and although that was always going to be my future, they were trying to give me time to come around. Obviously, they didn’t know about Emma.”
“What?” Kate said quietly, so quietly that I barely even heard her and she was only inches away. “I was going to have to marryWill?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “It made more sense on paper.”
Hinds looked deeply uncomfortable, but Kate let go of my hand and stepped around me, turning to look at me head on. “You were going to let me marry Will?”
“No.” I scoffed. “Never.”
Her eyes flashed. “That’s literally what you just said.”
“That was their plan, is what I said. It wasn’t what happened though, is it?” I held her gaze. “After that first breakfast we all had together, Alex took me into the study at my dad’s house and told me that a new condition had been pinned to the deal. A marriage. He said he and my father were going to pitch it to Will.”
“Did they?”
“No, because I wouldn’t let them.” I exhaled slowly. There wasn’t a clean or professional way to say this. Hell, there wasn’t even asmartway to say it, so I just told the truth. “I shut it down. I told Alex it wouldn’t be happening and thatIwas next in line. It was going to be me.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Why exactly would you do that, Nate?”
I looked right into her eyes, knowing that if I was going to say it, I was going to fuckingsayit. “Because I didn’t want anyone else to have you.”
Her eyebrows shot up and her jaw slackened as she searched my gaze like something didn’t add up. “But Emma… you were in love with…”
“I told you, Kate. I chose you,” I said quietly, not that I thought it mattered. The room was so silent, Pete and Abram had absolutely heard me anyway. “I didn’t know you were Emma yet. Not consciously, but I knew you. I liked you and the idea of Will marrying you—” I shook my head and stopped talking, eventually just summing it up in one word. “No.”
Kate stared up at me. “So you volunteered instead.”
“Yep.”
Her mouth opened but then closed again. Hinds cleared his throat quietly, like he didn’t really want to draw attention to himself but also kind of needed to. Probably so we would leave him in peace and take our drama elsewhere.
“Just to be clear, Emma is Kate,” he said. “Kate is the person you were supposedly having an affair with. The press have got it backward. When you agreed to marry Kate, you wanted to marry her as Kate, not this Emma person, before you even knew they were the same woman?”
I nodded. “That’s close enough.”
“God, this is complicated.” He huffed out a breath, then leaned forward and glanced from one of us to the other, his eyes softening when they fell upon his goddaughter. “This is perhaps the most bizarre situation I’ve ever come across, and I’ve come across some pretty absurd things in my time. But alright.”
“Alright?”
He nodded, reaching for the contract on his desk. “It does explain things. I’m not sure I’ll ever fully understand it, but it sounds like you kids are going to be okay.”
Relief trickled through me. “Does that mean the deal is back on?”
He looked up at me. “I forced the two of you into this marriage. The least I can do is not destroy it over a misunderstanding.”
Kate visibly relaxed. The contract was safe and absolutely everything was finally out in the open.
Abram made the call to Alex to let him know we were back on. Then he walked us out to the driveway and shook my hand, pulling me a little closer. “Good luck, son. You’re going to need it.”
I chuckled but nodded my agreement. “You’re not wrong, but we’ll be okay. We just needed time to work it all out. Time we haven’t had until now, but we’re good. I swear.”
He smiled fondly as his gaze drifted to Kate, already waiting for me with her parents at their car. “Yes. You really are.”
Instead of going back to the airstrip once we left, Kate and I opted to stay the night in New York instead. Neither of us had the energy to get back on a plane again. We’d been fueled by adrenaline and caffeine, running around with our heads cut off, and both of us just wanted to crash.
We ordered room service and ate in bed with only one of the lamps on the nightstand on. Neither of us said much until we’d finished eating, her lying in my arms in the soft glow of the lamp.
Eventually, she rolled over to look up at me, those red curls a wild halo against the pillow. “Was Will really the one who was going to have to marry me?”
