by Kendall Ryan
I saw right through his plan, of course, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is how deep Noah seems determined to dig himself. (Although I couldn’t help but be a little insulted by the obviousness of his lie. How stupid does he think I am? I called my father the second we hung up.)
And then to top it all off, he started interrogating me the instant he set foot in David’s place, accusing me of letting all sorts of strange penises into my vagina. What the fuck? He acted like I was the one who’d done something wrong and needed to account for my behavior. Even if I had screwed David, my sex life wasn’t Noah’s business anymore. He forfeited all husbandly rights the instant he chose to conceal my own inevitable pregnancy from me.
He didn’t even tell me anything when he barged in. He just kept insisting that he’d never do anything to my body without my consent—totally contradicting the scene I stumbled into that night—and bitching about how much his regrets hurt. I could tell that he was genuinely sorry about damaging my trust, but that didn’t mean my trust wasn’t still damaged. I wasn’t going to forgive his stupid, selfish decisions just because they backfired on him. The asshole made his bed, and now he can lie in it . . . far, far away from me.
Although, speaking of bed, one thing he said did give me pause. When I asked him why we were using condoms if he was trying to knock me up, I was struck by the plain way he said, “Because that’s what you wanted.” As if the reason was obvious. As if my wishes, my desires, were his first priority. I’m still not sure what to make of that, in the context of everything else that’s happened lately.
And somehow, despite all my anger and hurt and suspicion, I found myself agreeing to come back for an emergency meeting with him and Dad and Prescott. Temporarily, mind you, just to try putting this mess behind me . . . but still. How does that man always persuade me? How does one look into his intense dark eyes always end with me believing in him?
Maybe I was just sick of always running away from disasters. Noah had hit a nerve with that comment. One way or another, I wanted closure. A definite end to this story, leaving no room for regrets or second guesses later on down the road. Closure.
Whatever my reason was, I got in Noah’s car. I let him drag me down from that Catskills retreat and back to civilization. And two hours of driving later, I’m sitting here in the house I grew up in—where I have no choice but to stare our problem in the face.
I do my best to push down my feelings and find the cool, rational mindset I work best in. Now isn’t the time to wallow in negative emotions. I can’t let my confusion and anger and sadness run away with me . . . yet again. Noah arranged this meeting to get everything out in the open and everyone on the same page. If all goes well, we might even be able to start straightening out this mess. I can wait until I’m back in my own private space to scream or cry or tear my hair out, or whatever the hell my wounded heart desires.
Except I don’t have my own space anymore. Shit, I almost forgot. What are we going to do about that little issue? Unless I want to kick Noah out of the penthouse, or rent a hotel room for the foreseeable future, I’ll have to see him every night. I’ll have to deal with his puppy-dog eyes following me around the room, silently begging me to understand his side of the story and accept his apology. I’ll have to see his handsome face, feel the warmth of his toned body, when I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to let him touch me again. We’ll have to keep living together in our marital home . . . when I’m feeling anything but wifely.
Dad interrupts my dour thoughts by getting the ball rolling. “Noah filled me in on the phone about what’s happened the past couple days,” he begins.
Oh, great. Even though this is what we’ve come here to discuss, I hope Noah didn’t provide too much detail. Tight-lipped, I nod at Dad to continue. “And your thoughts are?”
His bushy, graying eyebrows fly up. “I’m appalled, of course! I’m so sorry things ended up like this. Neither Bill nor I ever meant to deceive you.”
“Then how did this happen?” I ask. “Why was this weird pregnancy stuff even in his will in the first place? How did it end up in the inheritance contract?”
Dad clasps his hands tightly together where they rest on the table, and gazes at me with an earnest, almost pleading look. “We added the heir clause into our wills on a whim. We both wanted grandchildren . . . it was our fondest wish to see you two kids together, and the family you’d build for yourselves one day. We figured you’d fight us on that point and we’d just cross out the whole thing. It was wishful thinking.”
“But Bill Tate died sooner than anyone expected,” Prescott explains, “so the heir clause slipped into his will unseen and unchallenged. And after that point, it had to be included in the inheritance contract.”
“Jesus, this thing got passed around like a bad penny,” Noah murmurs.
I make a point of ignoring him. “But surely we could have done something. Asked a judge if he could rule that clause unenforceable and declare a partial revocation . . .” Or at least find some loophole or tricky way of fulfilling it that didn’t involve me actually getting pregnant.
“Yes, we could have looked for other options,” Prescott says. “I would have worked with you to find an alternative solution if either of you had objected.”
Dad leans forward. “But when you didn’t, I was a little surprised but I figured you must be okay with it since you’d signed the contract.”
That was Noah’s argument too. I groan internally at the reminder that I signed without reading every last word.
“And I thought, heck, maybe they’ll have fun trying to get pregnant. It would keep both your minds off the failing company.” Dad sighs heavily, the lines of age and fatigue and regret etched deep into his face. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I meant this inheritance to bring you together and make you happy, not tear you apart and make you miserable. I feel terrible, like Bill and I both failed our children.”
I swallow around the sudden lump in my throat. “But how did you know? How were you so certain that pairing us off like this was the right thing to do?”
“Because it’s always been obvious that you two were meant for each other. You’ve been in love all along. Ever since you first met, when you were three years old and he was five.” Dad’s expression lifts into a slight, fond smile. “And your mothers agreed. All four of us knew our children . . . we could read the signs.”
“Mom? She thought this was a good idea too?” I blurt.
“If I remember correctly, she might have even been the one to suggest it.”
Stunned, I blink. All along I assumed that this arranged marriage was only concocted by our fathers. Are our entire families just fucking nuts? Or . . . were they on to something? Four people, two of whom ran a multibillion-dollar international company, couldn’t all be wrong . . .
Prescott looks almost as uncomfortable as I feel. He probably didn’t come here prepared to be drop-kicked into the middle of an emotional battleground.
“Even as toddlers, you two were inseparable,” Dad continues. “Literally, on some occasions. You fought like cats and dogs, yet somehow ended up laughing and playing happily five minutes later. You always wanted to sit together whenever we sat down for a meal or a movie or anything like that. And if we tried to move you . . .” Dad chuckles. “Oh, the tantrums we’d get! When we went to the water park for your fourth birthday, Olivia, Bill tried to take Noah to the men’s room and you both nearly had a conniption. Your mothers had to take you together to the women’s and you held hands under the wall between stalls.”
What? How have I never heard this story before?
And more importantly, how is this relevant?
“That was over twenty years ago,” I protest. “I hardly see what it has to do with us now.”
From the pinched expression on Prescott’s face, he agrees with me. Neither of us expected a trip down memory lane.
But once Dad gets started rambling, he can’t be stopped. “Oh, but I’ve got dozens of great stories
about you two. The first time our families vacationed at the beach together—all the summers before then, you were still too young to travel far from home—Noah accidentally sat on your sand castle and you started crying, so he built you a new one and found a starfish to decorate it.”
“I think I actually remember that,” Noah muses. “And you gave me your ice cream when I dropped mine.”
“Here’s one you might have been old enough to remember. Olivia, on your first day of elementary school, some boy was hassling you on the playground, and Noah punched him right in the kisser. Bought himself a one-way ticket straight to the principal’s office. And he marched the whole way there with a smile on his face, happy to take whatever punishment he was given. For you.”
Now that Dad mentions it, I do remember this story. I guess some things never change. That exact same scenario—Noah rushing to my defense—has played out with Brad not once, but twice recently. And he’d do just about anything for Rosita too. Noah still has the same strong sense of justice, the same streak of protective compassion.
He just cares so much about people. And he approaches life from his gut, not his head. That hot-blooded quality is something that I’ve come to appreciate, as a fresh perspective in the workplace, charm in an unconventional romance, and a sexy rush in bed. It’s not that I don’t care about people; it’s just easier for me to set aside my emotions in order to think clearly, whereas Noah feels so fiercely that he can never escape their pull.
From the way he talked about our duty to Tate & Cane, it was clear that the thought of laying off our employees ate him up inside. Bad enough, I guess, to paralyze him, to bar him from telling me the truth until desperation broke him free.
But that doesn’t change anything. Doesn’t erase his lies or heal my wounded trust. His general depth of feeling or capacity for caring isn’t the issue on the table here. If he really cared about me specifically, he wouldn’t have hidden the truth for so long and then scared the hell out of me that night. He could be the best man in the world to run this company and still be the wrong man for me.
“Don’t forget what happened the next day,” Noah says, unaware of my racing thoughts. “That same kid made fun of me for getting in trouble—when he got off scot-free, the little shit—so Olivia kicked him in the giblets and went to the principal’s office too.”
Dad bursts out laughing. “Really? I never heard that one. I guess Susie kept a few secrets from me after all.” He inclines his head at me. “But that only proves my point. At the first hint of someone messing with him, you came running, ready to teach them a lesson.”
How weird. I must have cooled down with age . . . because the only other explanation is that I’m more similar to Noah than I thought.
“That’s hardly the only time she’s saved me.” Noah turns his affectionate smile to me, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners, and I just can’t look away. “I’d wait until the last minute to start school projects, then panic and beg you for help, and you’d roll your eyes and scold me, but you always gave me advice and checked my work. I don’t even know how many times—”
“I can give you an estimate,” I remark dryly. “It was about fifteen, maybe twenty.”
“I admit, I had my head up my ass until after I graduated from high school,” Noah says with a sigh.
“Only until then? That’s not how it seemed to me.”
Noah turns up his palms with a shrug. “Okay, fine, after college. But who doesn’t?”
Dad interjects, “You had your silly moments too, sweetheart. When Noah first started dating—you were twelve, I think—you were so irritable for months. Out of nowhere, you would start ranting about how ‘I don’t care about that stupid jerk, he can do whatever he wants’ when no one in the room had suggested otherwise. Or even brought up the subject at all, for that matter.”
My cheeks flame red as Noah starts laughing. “D-dad . . .” I squawk.
“Oh my God, that’s perfect.” Noah chuckles. “I can just picture it. It’s exactly what you would do.”
I glare at him, still blushing. “Shut up.”
“But he made up for it,” Dad says. “For your fifteenth birthday, he gave you a framed picture of the first hundred digits of pi, written in binary.”
Now it’s Noah’s turn to go a little pink. “Jesus, that was so dumb. I just figured, hey, she likes numbers and math and stuff, right?”
I shake my head. “No, I loved it. It’s still hanging in my room upstairs.”
He blinks. “Really? You kept that stupid present? I’m surprised you even remember it.”
“It wasn’t stupid. And of course I remember.” Realizing how mushy that sounds, I hurriedly add, “That was the night you totaled your first car on our way to the country club, and I offered to walk with you so you wouldn’t feel weird. But then we ended up waiting for a bus because I didn’t realize how hard it would be to walk five miles in high heels. I was an hour and a half late for my own birthday party.”
“But do you regret spending that time?” Noah asks, his eyebrows raised playfully.
“I sure as hell regret trying to dance the tango with you afterward. My feet hurt just thinking about it.”
Although I also remember the breezy, full-moon summer night, Noah smiling at me, my friends being jealous that I’d made a dramatic entrance with such a handsome senior who didn’t even go to our school . . .
“Speaking of gifts,” Dad says, “what about the time when you were in third grade and Noah gave you a set of diamond-and-platinum earrings? You didn’t even have pierced ears yet. And then it turned out that Noah had ‘borrowed’ them from his mother’s jewelry box.”
Prescott clears his throat impatiently. “Not to interrupt, but could we get back to discussing the contract?”
Wait, he’s right. What the hell am I doing? We’re here to talk about the heir clause and how to salvage our inheritance. How did I get sucked into family-story hour? I’m reminiscing about my past relationship with Noah when what matters is our company’s future.
I shake my head as if I can dislodge all this silly nostalgia. “I agree with Prescott. Why are we talking about this stuff? We’re not here to sing ‘Kumbaya’ and share cute anecdotes. We’re here to clean up a serious mess . . . a mess that you had a lot to do with, in case you forgot.”
And with that, the slowly lightening mood plunges back into grave silence.
“I wouldn’t have phrased my objection in quite those words,” Prescott says after an awkward second, trying to be delicate.
“You asked how Bill and I knew you two were meant for each other,” Dad says gently.
Abruptly I stand up, pushing out my chair with a squeak of wheels. I can’t do this right now. I wanted to, but I just fucking can’t. My brain won’t work with Dad and Noah looking at me. I have to get out of here if I want any hope of sorting out my own feelings and figuring out what I want to do next . . . assuming I can even do anything at all.
I tamp down my instinct to apologize for making the atmosphere tense, for cutting our meeting short, for everything. I’m not the one who screwed up here—Noah is.
Instead, I just mutter, “Excuse me. I have a lot to think about.”
And with that, I turn and leave Dad’s study, my head buzzing so loudly I can’t hear whether anyone calls after me.
Chapter Four
Noah
“Can you pass me the orange juice?”
Those are the first words Olivia’s spoken to me in days. Ever since the confrontation in her father’s study, she’s been as cold and icy as ever. Not that I can blame her. I did try to conquer and pillage her uterus like it was my own private jungle gym.
“Here you go.” I hand her the carton across the counter. She’s seated at the breakfast bar with her laptop and bagel while I’m at the stove frying an egg.
It’s our first weekend back home together since everything went down, and I still have no idea where we stand or what to do to win her back.
Instead of
brainstorming about how to right this mess, the meeting with her father turned into a sweet reminiscing session, which Olivia promptly shut down.
“The gala’s tonight,” I comment, sliding the lone egg onto a plate. Weeks ago when we RSVP’d, it was assumed that we were attending the charity banquet together—with Olivia as my plus one, my partner in crime. Sure, it was a work event, but there’d be dinner, champagne, and dancing. It was a date, for all intents and purposes.
“Yup,” is all she says, her eyes still on her laptop screen.
“Okay. I have a car coming at seven.”
“I’ll be ready,” she says coolly.
She’ll play the part well—doting wife, professional CEO, happy banquet-goer. Her mask will be firmly in place tonight. My goal will be to break through the facade.
“See you then.”
I grab my keys from the counter and head out. No way I’m sticking around in her deafening silence today. I’ve said my apologies, groveled to her, even included her father in the conversation, and she’s still holding on to anger.
That’s her choice. From this point onward, we’ll either work this out and make it as a couple—or not. The ball’s in her court.
• • •
“So this is how one of Manhattan’s best attorneys lives? Nice place.” I stand in the center of Sterling’s newly renovated studio apartment in the heart of Manhattan, appraising the recent remodel.
“It should be for what I paid, but thank you.”
Sterling purchased the top floor of a historic building that was undergoing renovations more than six months ago. By the time he finished gutting the entire thing, it boasted a modern kitchen, brand-new bathroom, sleek polished wood floors, and cool neutral colors on the walls. It’s decorated well with pieces of art and stacks of coffee-table books and even some patterned throw pillows on the slate-gray sofa, but it’s not feminine. Just well put together, like it’s had a woman’s touch. It makes me miss home.
