“That’s not necessarily true.”
I scoffed. “She doesn’t want this, Colin, but she’ll go along with it because it’s what she’s being told to do.”
Just like the first time.
He was quiet for so long that we had reached the next hole by the time he spoke again. “Is it bothering you that she has kids?”
“What?” I asked, but the question came out of me as sharp as a needle. “Why would you even ask me that?”
“It’s a fair question,” he said. “It changes things.”
“No,” I said roughly. “That has nothing to do with it.”
I dropped another ball and didn’t even bother resetting it properly before I swung. The impact of it cracked through the air so violently this time that Colin flinched.
“Okay,” he said after a second. “So it’s not that, then. Glad we cleared that up.”
I sighed. “It’s really not that. It’s just… everything else.”
He let me rant at times as we finished our game, and he put up with my silence at others.
Back at home later, I was huddled away in one of the rooms in my wing of the house, staring at a tumbler of whiskey that I hadn’t taken a sip of just yet, and wondering if I would ever really be able to put words to everything I was feeling.
A sharp knock at the door snapped my attention back to the present, to Bear lying at my feet, and the sun setting over the lake outside. “Come in!”
I was fully expecting it to be Theo, but then the door opened and my dad walked in instead. Without really meaning to do it, I sat up a little straighter, my jaw hardening and my insides bracing for a fight.
Dad came in slowly, though. Almost like he was waiting for me to tell him to get out. He’d changed into loungewear after spending the week back in suits, now wearing terrible, orange sweats with blue stripes down the sides and a white hoodie that readMaldivesacross his chest in navy blue lettering.
He was tanned these days too, his hair whiter than ever, but his gaze had lost that edge that had been back during that meeting. Despite the fact that he looked like the relaxed guy we’dall been getting to know recently, I knew that my bachelor days were limited with him back in residence.
I didn’t know yet how long he planned on staying, but even though I’d thought—again—about biting the bullet and getting my own place now that he was back, I hadn’t done it. More than ever actually, I wanted to be here.
“Can we talk?” he asked as he lowered himself into one of the armchairs in my private living room.
I arched an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think I have much of a choice, seeing as I’m being asked to marry an ex-girlfriend who, eight years ago, I was separated from by the same man now pitching the idea. Assuming it came from Mr. Morris, that is.”
“It did,” Dad said slowly. “He came to me with it. You’re right about that.”
“Splendid.” I finally took a small sip of my whiskey before I looked back at my dad, just patiently sitting there in his ridiculous sweats, looking at me like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. “What is it?”
“I tried to stop that marriage, you know,” he said after a brief pause, his gaze suddenly unfocused, like he’d gone someplace far away. “Eight years ago, I mean. I tried to stop Clark from marrying Adeline off to Louis.”
Ice cold shock took hold of me. My lips parted as I stared at him, but every other muscle I had just locked up. “I didn’t know that.”
Dad nodded slowly. “It seemed unnecessary to tell you under the circumstances. I tried, but I failed. Obviously. It wouldn’t have done any good, telling you about it.”
“Youfailed?” I frowned. “Forgive me, but I find that hard to believe.”
He let his head hang forward and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I have failed at a great many things in my life, son. Besides, the fact that it’s hard to believe doesn’t make it untrue. Iwent to Clark and explained that I realized you were both young, but that I would enter into negotiations regardless.”
“So what happened?” I sat up all the way now, swinging my legs off the couch I’d been lounging on. “Why didn’t he go for it?”
“The Morris Company was going through a major rift at the time and their stocks were falling fast. Weatherby had offered a lifeline that neither Clark nor Adeline’s father could refuse. Gregory especially wasn’t in a position to wait and Adeline, as his daughter, was part of that.”
Dad fell silent for a beat before he refocused on me, a heavy kind of sadness in his eyes that I wouldn’t have expected. “Things had to happen too fast and the Weatherby deal was already on the table. That’s changed now, though.”
“How so?”
