by Lauren Layne
Alton leaned forward. “I’ve always liked Audrey.”
Clarke blinked. “Really?”
Alton smiled. “You sound surprised.”
“Well. Can’t say I’ve ever felt the waves of approving warmth rolling off you when she’s around.”
“Have I ever given off approving warmth?”
Clarke bit out a sharp laugh. “True.”
“Just because I’m not some teddy bear father figure doesn’t mean I don’t see that she’s good for you. That she’s always been good for you.”
“Dad,” Clarke said, shifting uncomfortably. “You know that this thing with me and Audrey, it’s all—”
“A sham?” Alton said, his smile widening slightly.
“Well… yeah,” Clarke said. He and his father might not have a warm relationship, but he drew the line at outright lying to the man. “It started as a joke mostly, because Internet trolls were giving Audrey a hard time, and then we kept going because—”
“Because your mother tried to coerce you into a relationship with her vision of the perfect partner for you.”
“Pretty much,” Clarke admitted.
Alton nodded slowly, turning his head and gazing out the window for a while. “She’s wrong, you know.”
“About trying to control her grown son’s love life? Yes, I’m aware.”
“That, but also about Elizabeth being the better partner for you.”
His dad was still looking out the window. Clarke studied his father’s profile, trying to figure out what had brought on the odd mood. He had never discussed any relationship with his father before, much less a romantic one. That his father even noticed Clarke’s ex-girlfriend or best friend was unexpected. That he commented on it was unsettling.
“You don’t like Elizabeth?” Clarke asked cautiously.
Alton waved a hand. “I like her fine.”
“But not for me.”
His father turned back to Clarke, his expression serious. “Elizabeth reminds me of your mother in many ways.”
Clarke smiled. “Probably why Mom likes her so much.”
“Yes. Probably.” Alton didn’t smile back. “And your mother in many ways reminds me of my mother.”
Clarke winced. “Jesus, Dad. You’ve got to warn a guy before you go all Oedipus complex.”
Alton leaned forward again, his expression intent, ignoring Clarke’s discomfort. “Your grandmother was not a soft woman. She had strong opinions, and she was very good at getting her way.”
“Okay?” This was hardly a surprise. Clarke’s grandmother had passed a few years ago, but he remembered her well as a fearsome, unyielding woman.
Alton looked down at his hands for a moment. “Your grandmother introduced me to your mother. Did you know that?”
“I did not.”
Alton nodded once. “She introduced us. Urged me to court her, even though I was dating someone else at the time. A pretty, sweet girl who made me laugh.”
Clarke looked up in surprise.
Alton gave a fleeting smile. “Yes, son. I know how to laugh. Or at least I used to.”
“What happened?”
Alton merely held his gaze.
“Mom happened,” Clarke said flatly.
“Your mother is a good woman. She loves you very much. She wants what’s best for you, just as my mother wanted what’s best for me.”
“But you think she’s wrong.”
Alton hesitated. “I think they were both wrong. I’m sorry if that’s hard for you to hear.”
“You forget we all lived under the same roof,” Clarke said quietly. “You don’t have to shield me from the fact that your and Mom’s relationship isn’t exactly… affectionate.”
It was an understatement, but Alton surely didn’t need his son to relay just how chilly his own marriage was. Clarke couldn’t remember his parents touching unless it was to pose for a photo, couldn’t remember them going out to dinner unless it was with another couple for networking purposes. Couldn’t remember them even talking unless it was to discuss Clarke’s grades or their social calendar or a monotone summary of their respective workdays.
“Why did you get married, then?” Clarke asked.
Alton was silent for a long moment, looking out the window once more. “I’m ashamed to admit that I can barely remember. I suppose it felt like the path of least resistance, and I had both my mother and yours reminding me that it would be an advantageous match. We were from the right families, and on paper, Linda and I are well suited. Serious, committed to our careers…”
“Dad. If you’re trying to warn me not to follow in your footsteps, you don’t have to worry. I have no intention of marrying Elizabeth.”
“I know.”
“Really?” Clarke said doubtfully. “Then what the hell has this entire talk been about, if not to warn me not to follow in your footsteps?”
“I don’t want you to make my mistakes—”
“Right, I got that. Don’t marry someone Mom picks out for me. Check.”
“Not just that,” his father said, impatient. “I want you to marry the girl who makes you laugh. Don’t let her get away…”
“What do you— Wait, Audrey? I already told you, we’re just friends. We were just messing around with the engagement thing—”
“Marry that girl, Clarke. You won’t regret it.”
Clarke gave a good-natured eye roll. “Fantastic. Now both my parents are trying to rush me to the altar with different women.”
“It’s not the same thing,” his dad said quietly.
“How’s that?”
Alton studied him with a cryptic, knowing look. “You’d figure it out in time, but because I’m not a particularly patient man, maybe I can help speed you along.”
Clarke gave his dad a wary look.
“Marry Audrey,” his father said, looking him straight in the eyes. “Marry Audrey, and the company is yours.”
Clarke had been idly tapping his fingers against one another, but he went completely still at that. “What? Jesus, Dad, and I thought Mom was the master manipulator, but this… this is a whole other level of… I don’t think there are words.”
His father said nothing. Or maybe he did. Clarke was too busy trying to gather his reeling thoughts.
When he finally got ahold of them, he stood and looked down at his dad. “I deserve this company because I’ve earned it. Because I’ve done a damn good job. I don’t want it handed to me because of some game you and Mom are playing with my future.”
“Your mother and I may be the ones playing the game, but you’d be the one with the prize.”
“Only you would describe your own company as a prize,” Clarke replied, turning away, disgusted.
“No,” Alton said, his voice so sharp that Clarke froze. “Audrey, son. Audrey is the prize.”
Chapter Thirteen
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1
As far as man caves go, it’s a damn good one,” Clarke said approvingly, looking around the upstairs loft area of Oliver and Naomi’s apartment.
“I guess that’s a pretty good compliment from a guy whose entire house is a man cave,” Oliver said.
“Is it?” Scott asked curiously, taking a sip of beer and eyeing Clarke. “You know, I’ve never seen your place.”
“Me neither,” Oliver said. “I’ve only heard from Naomi who’s heard from Audrey that it’s basically man-heaven.”
“If you’re hoping I’ll be appalled at my oversight and invite you two over for tea, you’re going to be disappointed,” Clarke said cheerfully, settling onto the black leather sofa. “I know better than to invite an architect and contractor into my home.”
“What exactly is it that you think we’re going to say?” Oliver asked.
Clarke shrugged. “That the foundation’s shaky. The drywall’s shit. My floor’s crooked. That my ceiling doesn’t have the right support beams. I don’t know, something that will necessitate me moving out while it gets fixed.”
“You�
�d think you’d want to know all of that about your own house,” Scott pointed out.
“Nope.” Clarke sipped his beer. “Ignorance is bliss.”
“What if we promise not to utter anything other than ‘it’s nice’?” Oliver proposed, leaning back against the pool table and crossing his feet at the ankles.
Scott was already shaking his head. “I do not agree to that. If your ceiling’s about to cave, I’ll tell you. Which, by the way, is a compliment. It means I count you as a friend.”
“What if I weren’t a friend?” Clarke asked curiously. “You’d just let me be crushed by shoddy house construction?”
Scott grunted. “Let’s just say if I’d walked into Brayden Hayes’s house when he was still alive and saw a wall about to fall on him, I wouldn’t have said a single word. Assuming, of course, Claire wasn’t in the house when it came crashing down around the bastard.”
Oliver reached out and clinked the neck of his beer bottle against Scott’s. “I’ve had some fantasies in a similar vein.”
Same, Clarke thought. Hatred for a dead man was a strange thing to form a friendship on, but it had formed one all the same. Though, technically, Oliver and Scott had been friends since architecture school, long before Clarke had met either of them. But in the past year, their friendship had been cemented even further as Oliver had moved in with Brayden’s ex-mistress and Scott had married the man’s widow.
Clarke had joined the crew at first on the periphery, as Audrey’s occasional tagalong, but over time, he’d become friends with Oliver and Scott in his own right. He and Oliver had run loosely in the same circle for years. In fact, on paper, he and Oliver had plenty in common. Born and raised on the Upper East Side, fathers established business leaders. Had they not been sent to different prep schools, Clarke expected they’d have been friends long before now. As it was, though, it had taken Oliver falling in love with Naomi, and Naomi and Audrey becoming fast friends, to bring them together.
Scott was a bit more of a mystery to Clarke. He was from Vermont or New Hampshire or some place with a population of twelve, but he had made a name for himself, not just in the New York real estate world, but internationally, as a contractor in charge of some of the most prestigious skyscrapers and landmarks of their lifetime.
The result was a man who looked as comfortable in a tuxedo with champagne in his hand as he did with a leather jacket and beer. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. The leather jacket, jeans, and boots Scott wore now seemed a far more natural fit. But Scott fit into their world when it suited him. Which wasn’t often.
“You know, maybe the bachelor party would be a good time for us to see the house?” Oliver said with a smirk as he looked at Clarke.
“Yeah, tell me you at least get a stripper out of this whole fake wedding thing,” Scott said. “I thought Claire was joking when she told me about it.”
“Not a joke. You were at the engagement party,” Clarke pointed out.
“I was,” Scott drawled. “Didn’t see much about it that looked fake.”
Clarke sat forward and ran this thumb over the label of the bottle.
“He’s referring to the kiss,” Oliver said.
“I know what he’s talking about,” Clarke said irritably. “Is this why I got invited to your dinner party? So you could interrogate me about it?”
“No, Naomi invited you to the dinner party so she could interrogate you. I’m merely giving you a reprieve,” Oliver said. “Though I suspect our man cave moments are limited before we’re summoned to the salad course, or some shit, so if you want to spill, do it now.”
“I don’t want to spill,” Clarke said. He realized the moment the words were out that it was a lie. He did want to talk about it, and these two guys were as good a bet as any. He stood and paced the room, looking around without really seeing Oliver’s big-screen TV, the pool table, the built-in fridge, and the wet bar filled with an assortment of whiskies.
“You guys think I’m nuts.”
“To be willingly going through the wedding planning process without even getting sex out of it?” Scott said. “Yeah. A little bit. Wait, you’re not getting sex out of it, are you?”
“No,” Clarke said.
“You don’t sound entirely pleased about that,” Oliver observed.
Clarke ignored this. He did not want to talk about sex. Or the fact that he wasn’t having any. Or the fact that he’d been thinking about it more than a teenage boy lately. To say nothing of the fact that the subject of his rather vivid fantasies was entirely off-limits.
“Did you at least get to taste cake?” Scott asked. “That was my favorite part.”
“I thought you and Claire eloped.”
“We did. I meant cake tasting at my first wedding. Well, almost wedding.”
“That’s right,” Clarke mused. “I forgot you guys were both engaged.”
Clarke didn’t know all the details, but if he was remembering correctly, Scott’s fiancée had cheated on him, and Oliver’s had bailed when she’d learned that being married to Oliver meant she’d also have to deal with his sick parents.
“Well, good news, you’ll soon be joining our club,” Oliver pointed out.
“What club?”
“The broken engagement club.”
“Ah,” Clarke said lightly.
Scott’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What was that?”
“What’s what?”
“You know what,” Oliver said, straightening. “That ‘ah’ was loaded.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You and Audrey are engaged for pretend, right?” Scott asked, frowning. “I didn’t miss some crucial development?”
“No, you’ve got it right,” Clarke said distractedly.
“Okay, I’ve heard the women’s version of why,” Oliver said, “but what’s your story. Something about your mom being sort of…”
“A bitch,” Scott said unabashedly. “No offense.”
“None taken. She can be.”
“And your ex, too, right? She and your mom are in cahoots trying to, what, rush you down the aisle?”
Liz’s plea whispered through Clarke’s mind. I miss you. But that little bombshell was nothing compared to the wallop his father had delivered hours later.
He and his father hadn’t spoken since the bizarre meeting in his office a few days earlier. Clarke had been half hoping it had all been a dream, that his father hadn’t actually dangled the company in front of him like a carrot to entice him down the aisle.
But though his father hadn’t pushed him on the issue, he also hadn’t retracted it.
Clarke was terrified—and quite certain—his father had meant every word. That York would be his if he and Audrey went through with the wedding.
The idea was preposterous and… not nearly as unappealing as it should have been.
“Can I have another?” Clarke asked Oliver, pointing at the beer bottle.
“Help yourself.”
“So who is this ex of yours?” Scott asked. “Anyone I know?”
“Elizabeth Milsap.”
Both men shook their heads.
“We dated for a year or so. A few years back. We broke up when she went to DC.”
“You didn’t want to go with?”
“I wasn’t invited.”
It was Oliver’s turn to utter a telling ah.
“You want her back?” Scott asked with his usual bluntness.
Clarke popped the top off another beer, though he didn’t take a drink. “I don’t. In fact, this whole fake-engagement thing started as sort of a childish need to tell her she was wrong about me.”
Oliver shook his head. “Not following.”
Clarke sighed and leaned against the wet bar, facing his friends. “When Liz left, it wasn’t acrimonious, necessarily, but it didn’t exactly feel good, either. She’s always been very career focused, goal-oriented. The type of woman who’s got her life plan outlined in an Excel spreadsheet. She made it clear that I hadn’t made the nec
essary growth to warrant a spot in that plan.”
“What sort of growth?”
Clarke shrugged. “You know. Not marriage material.”
“And you thought you were?”
“I thought I deserved a chance to try. Back then, at least. Now, I know I’m not. Now, I know she had it right the first time.”
“Bullshit. You’re a good guy.”
“I know,” Clarke said with a smile, appreciating the compliment. “But I’m also sort of a man whore.”
“We’re all man whores until we’re not,” Scott said. “I had a different woman in every city and never promised a single one that I’d call again.”
“What changed?”
Scott looked at him like he was an imbecile. “Claire.”
“Right. Of course. But how did you… why did you—”
“I didn’t even really think about it,” Scott said, preempting Clarke’s question. “I just woke up one day and felt that ending that wild-oats part of my life wouldn’t be a sacrifice in the least. Given the choice between sleeping with a dozen different women or sleeping with the woman for the rest of my life? No-brainer.”
“Why, are you thinking you might be the marrying type after all?” Oliver asked Clarke curiously.
“Maybe,” Clarke admitted, somewhat surprised to hear himself say it out loud and even more surprised to realize that it didn’t fill him with immediate terror. Maybe it was just getting older, but the thought of coming home to someone—the same someone—sounded a lot more appealing than it ever had before.
“So this Elizabeth woman. You think she’s changed her mind about you as husband potential?”
“What? Oh,” he said, shifting his thoughts back to Liz. “I don’t know. I guess. She came to my office on Wednesday and made some definite noise about wanting to get back together.”
Scott whistled. “That’s ballsy. As far she knows, you’re engaged.”
“Yeah, well, I think she’s got a pretty good sense of just how engaged Dree and I really are.”
“Which is to say, not at all.”
“Exactly. But—”
“Hiya, boys,” Audrey said, bounding into Oliver’s man cave. Dressed in dark jeans, a plain white T-shirt, and her usual ponytail, she was the epitome of the girl next door.
