You surprised her when she was asleep. She wasn’t offering anything. And stop being a creep. Maybe that was why Belle disappeared and Hensley cheated on you—because there’s something wrong with you.
And why your parents didn’t want anything to do with you.
I was the fourth of six kids, and by that point, the novelty of children had worn off for my mother. She trotted us out only to take the annual Christmas card photo or to pose for a magazine article about the fantastic new neurological discovery she had made, and oh look, she’s a mother to six amazing children! Isn’t that something? We don’t know how she does it!
Except I knew. Belle had picked up all her slack. My older brothers hadn’t helped at all. To be fair, I hadn’t been the greatest kid. But my older brothers had certainly had money. Yet they had just sat by while Belle had paid for everything—all our schooling supplies, college, computers, sports. Even Christmas presents.
I still felt horribly guilty.
You should buy her a nice Christmas present.
I gazed around the market. Would she even want anything here? She had money now, and was a big-shot investor. She could probably buy anything she wanted.
I was terrible at giving gifts. Hensley had always complained about that. That was why the estate house was a stroke of genius.
“Bath products? A candle?” I asked Kringle as we made our way through the crush of Christmas market-goers laden down with packages and sipping hot drinks as they strolled around the stalls. “Maybe a mug?”
“Shopping for your fiancée?”
Kringle barked in surprise.
I forced myself not to seem startled. I composed my expression and turned.
Inside I was screaming,What the hell are my parents doing in Harrogate?
There were my mom and dad. Everyone thought my dad was handsome. My siblings and I all had his coloring—same blue eyes, same platinum white hair.
“Son,” he said. My mother was lightly grasping his arm. She didn’t look like someone who had had six kids.
Probably because she didn’t have to raise them.
My father gave me a critical look. “I hope you came to your senses and got back together with Hensley.”
The fuck?
“No,” I said, sounding surly. I didn’t want to sound like a teenager. I wanted to sound like what I was—a grown man who ran his own company, goddamn it, and owned property.
But when I was around my parents, it was like I reverted to being a kid who alternated between antagonizing them for attention or just wanting them to leave him alone.
“I am not getting back together with Hensley. She cheated on me. We’re done,” I said sharply.
My father’s mouth twisted. “You shouldn’t have let it happen. If you walk away now, you’re admitting defeat.”
“She didn’t mean to,” my mother insisted, cupping my face. The gesture felt more performative than warm and motherly.
“Hensley did it for attention. I had coffee with her mother the other night, and we talked it over and got everything cleared up. Hensley is prepared to go through with the wedding.”
My head spun.
This was why my brothers cut off contact with our parents.
I never had much contact with them to begin with, so I had never gone through the whole blow-up of cutting them off.
“We were expecting a Christmas wedding,” my mother said. “We already told all our friends about it and invited them.”
“You did?”
Hensley had never told me about any of that, not that it mattered now.
