That last part tripped me up more than anything else. Besides, I wasn’t dragging Emma into this mess, so Alex didn’t need to know about her. Even so, my grip tightened on the glass as I shook my head. “No.”
The word scraped the inside of my throat on the way out and Alex’s eyes narrowed slightly, like he’d felt that slight sting of pain himself, but he didn’t call me out on it. I tossed back the rest of my drink and stood up. “If that’s all?—”
“It’s not.”
I paused and he looked up at me again, his expression shifting from big brother to executive in the blink of an eye. “Kate and her parents are having dinner here this weekend.”
“I didn’t know her parents were coming too, but sure. Why are you bringing that up now?”
“Because whatever is going on between you two needs to stop,” he said, his voice not loud, but it carried the full weight of his authority. “I’m serious. We need the Hinds account and we need them to be able to secure it. Just play nice, okay? This isn’t like you.”
Heat flared in my chest, hot, fast, and defensive. “There’s nothing going on.”
“Then act like it,” he replied evenly.
I stared at him for a beat, every instinct telling me to argue, to push back, or at the very least to tell him he had no idea what he was talking about. Instead, I grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair.
“Good talk,” I muttered, then left, desperately needing a walk to clear my head.
Naturally, that meant rain was battering the driveway in thick, relentless sheets by the time I got outside. The cold hit me instantly when I stepped past the front door, not bothering with any of the umbrellas hanging on hooks inside.
I just kept walking, the rain soaking through my shirt and jacket in seconds, but I welcomed it. I needed something to cut through the noise in my head. Dad’s neighborhood was quiet, streetlights glowing through the downpour. I shoved my hands into my pockets and strolled down the street without having a destination in mind.
It’s your time. Good women from good families. Blood ties. Duty. Legacy. Stability.
In my family, when the topic of marriage came up, it was never about love. Alex was desperately in love with his wife now, sure, but it hadn’t been that way on his wedding day. Charlotte? God, it’d nearly broken me what she’d had to go through, but she was beyond happy now too.
So were my cousins. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the same thing could happen for me, but Emma’s name surfaced in my mind again, uninvited and stubborn. None of them, not my brother, my sister, or my cousins had had an Emma when they’d been told to marry.
More importantly, none of them had already been emotionally involved with someone else at the time, so completely in love that they couldn’t imagine a day when they didn’t hear from that other person. Cleverly, they’d done as I should’ve and kept their hearts firmly out of whatever else they’d had going on.
A gust of wind shoved the rain sideways as I reached the corner near a bus stop. I slowed without meaning to, spotting a young couple under the narrow shelter, huddled close together beneath a shared umbrella that wasn’t nearly big enough.
The guy said something I couldn’t hear and the girl burst into laughter, swatting his chest while their fingers stayed laced together like they didn’t know how to separate. I forced myself to keep walking, but as I passed a restaurant farther down the block, movement inside caught my eye.
Another couple sat near the glass, leaning across the table, laughing before they kissed. The action seemed so natural, it looked like it was second nature to them.
Meanwhile, just seeing it, bearing witness to the world other people lived in but knowing I wasn’t part of it, felt like it was slicing through whatever muscle and tendons were keeping my heart attached to my chest.
The fantasy I’d been building of meeting Emma in person and seeing if whatever we were could survive outside of cyberspace suddenly felt too fragile. Reality was closing in and it was making that dream fade under the starkness of what was real.
My world wasn’t built for spontaneous kisses across restaurant tables or laughing under tiny umbrellas. It was about contracts, alliances, and carefully selected futures, and the sooner I accepted that, the sooner I could let Emma go so she could live her life, happy and unencumbered.
No matter how much I would rather run away with her, it was becoming abundantly clear that the time for fantasizing and fucking around with pretty little daydreams was over. All that remained was to tie up half a decade worth of online history in a nice bow and then, somehow, to get the hell over it—before I wound up emotionally cheating on a wife I didn’t even have yet.
CHAPTER 8
KATE
Thursday evening came right on time after what had been a pretty brutal workweek. It’d been worth the hours I’d put in, though.
By some miracle, the Hinds bid had come together much faster than anyone had expected. I hated to admit it more than words could possibly express, but Nate and I had ended up working exceptionally well together.
With the occasional input from Will, we had put together a plan that Alex seemed satisfied with. If everything held, my parents would finalize discussions after tomorrow night’s dinner and I could be back in New York by next week.
It was the absolute best-case scenario I’d hoped for coming over here, and it was actually happening. I was even smiling as I grabbed my coat and shut my apartment door behind me.
My nail appointment was across town, and if I was going to endure a formal dinner with the Westwoods, my armor needed to be flawless. I headed down the hall, pulling up my Uber app to book a ride, but the elevator dinged just as I turned the final corner.
