I frowned, my heartbeat kicking against my ribs so hard now that I could barely breathe. “What kind of misunderstanding?”
She tilted her head, answering my question with one of her own. “Jesse is overseas at the moment. Did you know that?”
“Overseas? No, I…” My frown deepened. It felt like I was trying to build a puzzle, knowing I didn’t have all the pieces to complete the picture. “No. I didn’t know.”
She nodded slowly. “I thought you might not. Have you spoken to him at all since that day?”
“No.”
She let out a soft sigh, giving another slow nod before she straightened up a bit in her chair. “Alright, well, then you should know that when word got around that Jesse called off the… relationship, I did some digging.”
“Digging?”
“Yes. There were a few things that didn’t quite make sense to me, so I spoke to Jesse and we asked Nate for help, and what we found was that your family was unfairly treated a number of years ago when it came to an inheritance.”
My chest tightened. “Yes, that did, uh, I mean, yes.Wefelt like it was unfair, but in the end, our feelings didn’t matter much.”
“Feelings never do when it comes to legal matters. Trust me, I know that better than most, but the fact is that what happened in your case should never have happened. I’m absolutely confident you know that as well.”
I nodded, but I didn’t really know what to say. I’d spent years knowing it and living with the quiet reality that the law I loved so much had failed us, but hearing her—a member of the Westwood family—say it out loud was something else.
“No,” I finally agreed. “It shouldn’t have, but it was a long time ago.”
Jane held my gaze. “Be that as it may, Jesse and Alex are working on clearing that up.”
For a second, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d heard her correctly. “Why?”
She smiled. “I understand how it looks from the outside when it comes to how things work in this family, but it’s different when you’re on the inside. We take care of our own, and even if you weren’t tangled up in the Westwoods overseas, we’d still have your back.”
My throat went dry, my fingers curling around the edge of my chair, but under the desk. Where she couldn’t see it.
What she’d just said had hit more chords and sensitive places inside than I’d even realized I had. She was countingmeas part ofthem, which I’d never thought would happen. I had so many issues around that exact sentiment that I could write a book about it.
“Thank you,” I said after a pause that had lasted a few seconds too long. Although I’d tried to hide it, my voice had also come out rough and thick. “That means a lot, but I’m not sure why you feel that way. In the end, I’m not a Westwood.”
“Maybe notyet,” she said lightly. “Setting aside the fact that your great-uncles are assholes, Westwood or not, you’ve become part of the family in your own right.”
I frowned. “How so?”
She gave me a knowing look. “Come on, you can’t tell me you don’t know that Jesse is in love with you. It’s so obvious. I know you know.”
I did know, but the fact that she spoke about it so casually knocked the wind straight out of my lungs. It wasn’t even just that. It was also the fact that she didn’t look upset about it, or worried, or disapproving. If anything, she seemedhappy.
“Alex has finally realized it too,” she said, sighing like she was exasperated about something. “That day when Jesse brought you to the house and my dear husband, stupidly, told Jesse to get engaged to you. Unfortunately, boys are silly, and by the timehe put two and two together, the damage was done. You were gone.”
I stared at her, my heart starting to pound for an entirely different reason now. “What?”
She rolled her eyes. “Fucking guys, am I right? So after you left, apparently, Jesse had this look in his eyes that finally convinced Alex that Jesse was actually serious about you. He said it looked a lot like hope. Excitement.”
I shook my head slightly, but that didn’t help me clear it at all. My pulse was roaring in my ears, my thoughts scattering as I tried to reconcile what she was saying with what I’d believed until now. “The engagement was Alex’s idea. Jesse wasn’t serious about me. Not when it came to?—”
“Yes, he was, Jacque. Jesse wasn’t even going to fight about it,” she cut in gently. “Even if Alex was dictating the timing, Jesse was going to ask you to marry him anyway. He came to talk to us about it a couple days before that.”
Everything in me went still. A couple daysbefore.
Before the bomb had detonated in the press. Before they’d needed me to help them prove that Westwoods didn’t only marry for business. Before I’d sat there, feeling like a nothing more than convenient solution.
Oh my God. My stomach twisted sharply. Jesse was going to ask me to marry him anyway, but then I took it the wrong way and ruined it.
