Say You Will (Trust & Tequila Book 3)

32. Franki

thirty-two

Henry throws on a pair of gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt, while I dig through my dresser for clean clothes. When my stomach growls, he nuzzles my neck. “I meant to feed us two hours ago.”

“We were distracted.” I lift the back of my hand to my forehead. “But now I may faint from hunger.”

He turns me to face him, his worried expression clearing when he sees that I’m teasing him. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, love, but you’ll have to trek through the forest and hunt down your dinner first. That was your childhood dream, if I recall.”

“I didn’t want to hunt; I wanted to fish and forage for nuts and berries. At the moment, I’d rather eat a peanut butter sandwich.”

“I’ll teach you to fish another time if you want. I think you’d like it. For now, I can do better than a sandwich. Any requests?”

I smile and stretch up to kiss the divot on his chin. “Surprise me.”

He runs his knuckles lightly over my cheekbone and searches my eyes. “I l—”

I frown in confusion. “You?”

He huffs. “I . . . left Oliver . . . in the kitchen. I’d better get him his dinner.”

Henry drops a kiss to my lips, then he’s gone. I sink to the edge of the bed with a smile and pull on loose cotton pants and a black cable-knit sweater. I’ve got one foot in a thick sock and am reaching for the other when the jacket I was wearing earlier chimes a text tone where it lays on the dresser.

My personal phone is on the shelf in the closet, and I never turned it back on, anyway. My business phone is on the coffee table in the living room.

I lift the jacket to find I’d covered Henry’s phone with it when we returned from our earlier walk. I pick it up, intending to take it to Henry in the kitchen. Instead, I stand, arrested, as my name flashes on the screen.

Spencer: I’m attaching the updated file we discussed regarding methods to secure Ms. Lennox’s cooperation. I would be remiss if I didn’t . . .

I can’t see the rest without entering Henry’s passcode. I do it without a second thought.

Spencer: . . .caution you against allowing her to delay much longer. Her father’s public announcement of your engagement has gone some way toward mollifying your grandmother. Well done. I must admit, initially, I felt your decision to convince her to fall in love was misplaced. I hadn’t fully taken her preexisting feelings for you into consideration. If you haven’t managed to secure her as your wife by the end of the week, we have a report indicating your sister’s former housemate, Sydney Walsh, is experiencing financial difficulties and may welcome a business relationship that better suits your needs. Your time is nearly up.

A stab of agony arrows through me, as every bit of heat exits my body. Then rage pours over me like kerosene tossed on a grill, a conflagration obliterating everything in its path.

I scroll up through previous texts.

Spencer: Your cousin Lawrence reportedly threw a public tantrum when Mr. Lennox posted the engagement announcement. Your grandmother won’t be happy with him when she hears of it. You may be able to leverage his lack of control to your advantage. The photo of you and Ms. Lennox from your teenage years was a brilliant touch.

I sink to the bed and open a file with my name on it that Spencer sent Henry two weeks ago. It’s a list of suggestions ranging from cooking my favorite meals to “sharing a vulnerable moment from our shared past” to taking me to an isolated location where we can “bond” without outside influences. There’s an asterisk with a note indicating the location should have “only one bed,” and it should be no larger than a full-size mattress.

Everything in this cabin is well-used. The leather on the living room furniture is comfortably worn in. I’d been surprised by that fact. I’d also been surprised by the size of the bed because it was smaller than I would have imagined Henry would use.

I rip the comforter back, then drag off the sheets and electric heated mattress pad. Further down, I find the mattress. The bed frame and headboard show no wear, whatsoever, and don’t appear to match any of the other furniture in the cabin. The mattress looks brand new.

I have no way of knowing for certain. Like a crazy person, I shove my face into the mattress to see if it smells new, but it’s impossible to tell. We’ve been here for a week already.

The list is insane, ranging from telling Henry exactly how many seconds to hold eye contact with me, to when and how long to hold my hand. Henry told me he’d chosen his terms of endearment deliberately, and I’d thought it was sweet. But this puts things in an entirely different light. This was manipulation.

I thought I knew what a master at work looked like. I thought I was someone who couldn’t be tricked by love bombing and gaslighting ever again. I thought Henry wasn’t the kind of person who would do something like that.

I press my palm to my mouth hard, holding in the sob that wants to break free.

I should march out there and tell him to kiss my ass and that I want to leave. I should be nice and tell him he can forget marrying me, and he’d better scurry off and ask Sydney to be his wife so he doesn’t miss his deadline for gaining control of his precious company.

I don’t feel like being nice. I feel like ruining all his fucking plans.

I tap out of his phone and put it back under my jacket on the dresser. Then I go in the bathroom to wash my face and figure out what comes next. I’m in here for only a few seconds when Henry taps on the door. “Love? Have you seen my phone? I have some things I need to deal with.”

I turn off the water and take a fortifying breath. “Yep. It’s on the dresser under my jacket. ”

“Thanks. My watch is blowing up with texts from my PA.”

A nasty suspicion niggles at me, but surely he wouldn’t contrive a dangerous situation to make me feel like I needed his protection. There were other innocent people on the road who could have been hurt. He wouldn’t.

But not a single bullet from our attackers hit our car.

“What’s going on with the bed?” he calls.

“I was trying to figure out how to use the mattress pad.”

“I think the instructions are in the drawer next to it. I ordered it for you, so I haven’t used it either. I thought it might help if your joints were bothering you.”

I huff silently. “That’s very sweet of you.”

“Dinner is chicken piccata. I have the moscato you like too.”

“My favorite,” I say flatly. “I’m not drinking tonight, though. I can’t have alcohol in the twenty-four hours before or after my injection.”

“All right. Love, are you okay? You sound upset.”

I scrub my hands over my face.

“Franki?” When I don’t respond, he rattles the doorknob.

I know what my mother would do. She’d string him along until it was too late, and he was out of time. Then when he’d lost the stupid shares that mean so much to him, she’d laugh in his face in revenge.

But I wasn’t made for lies and manipulation, no matter how many years I lived with it. I’m not my mother, and I never want to be. I’m done playing other people’s games.

I rip open the door and stand there, panting and staring him down. His brows furrow in concern, as he places his beautiful hands on my biceps. “You were crying?”

When he starts to pull me close, I resist. “Stop.”

He steps back and drops his hands. “Tell me what’s happening.”

“I read your texts. And your list.”

He frowns. “I see. If you’ll forgive me, I haven’t read them fully yet. Would you like to tell me what the problem is, and why you’re angry?”

I laugh bitterly. “Classic. Gaslighting 101. Up your game and throw in an accusation about me invading your privacy. You’re still in amateur territory.”

A muscle flexes in his jaw. “I gave you my passcode. I can hardly complain when you use it.”

“I know you’re enacting some master plan to trick me into marrying you so you can get those shares. I know none of it was real.”

He steps closer, crowding me. “It wasn’t real?”

He props both of his hands flat against the wall on either side of my head and leans closer. “All of it was real.”

“Stop. Lying,” I scream and shove him away. Oliver runs in the room and stands at my feet. “Everything. The way you held my hand. The eye contact. The compliments, and pretending I was important.” My voice cracks, and I shove the hurt down. He doesn’t get to see me break down over this. “Cooking my favorite food. Our date to the pumpkin farm wasn’t some fun whim. You didn’t introduce me to your grandparents as a coincidence.”

“You are important. You’re everything. Just because I felt more comfortable with a game plan in place doesn’t mean what I was doing wasn’t real. It sure as fuck wasn’t all planned. I’ve gone off-script with you so often that the script is pointless. I didn’t count how long I maintained eye contact with you because I wouldn’t have been able to remember to do it. I was too busy being distracted by your eyes.”

“I’m not marrying you. Go find Sydney and ask her. She’s way more practical than I am. You won’t have to work so hard. She’ll take your money in a heartbeat.”

His chest rises and falls, as he glares back at me with fury to match my own. “I don’t want anyone but you.”

“You can’t have me.”

He shakes his head. “It’s you or no one.”

A crack forms in my rage, and I work to shore it back up. When my anger is gone, the only thing left will be pain. “Then I guess it’s no one.”

He wraps his hands around the back of his neck and paces. “What do you need from me that I’m not giving you? Tell me, and I’ll do it.”

“I need you to tell your grandmother you don’t want those shares. And I need you to sit there like a good boy when she gives them to your cousin.”

He stops walking and faces me with a frustrated frown. “You have no idea what you’re asking for. MPD is my grandfather’s legacy. This family can’t afford to walk away from that company. Even if we could, Lawrence likes to buy up properties he doesn’t even have plans to use. He’ll artificially inflate the market until people who have lived in communities for generations will no longer be able to afford even the taxes on their own homes. I’ve seen his track record. He buys up every small, independently-owned hotel he can in a community. Then he shuts them down and sells them off for parts to eliminate the competition.”

His words arrest me, and I frown, blinking rapidly. Because . . . surely not. It’s a coincidence. It has to be. And yet, it makes perfect sense.

I cover my lower face with my hands before I drop them. “Lawrence owns hotels?”

Henry shakes his head slightly. “Yes.”

“What’s your cousin’s last name? What does he look like?”

He tilts his head slightly to the side in confusion. “Lawrence Kingston. He’s thirty-four. Blond.”

I drop my head into my hands briefly, then lift it, and search the room for Henry’s iPad. Finding it on the bedside table, I do a Google search, typing “Leo Kingston” into the search bar.

Henry looks over my shoulder at the screen.

No one who looks anything like the man I met shows up in the results. So I type “Lawrence Kingston.” And there he is, smiling back at me in a publicity photo taken in the lobby of one of his hotels. I could read the articles about him and his hotels, but I don’t need or want to.

“I didn’t know his last name. I assumed the man your father wanted you to date was older and someone in the fashion industry,” Henry says.

A bitter laugh punches out of me. “Your cousin saw our photos online, realized you were closing in on your goal, and tried to insert himself between us.”

“He’s a prick,” Henry says.

I nod. “He absolutely is. Only a prick would pretend to want to date me so he could get his hands on a company. What kind of asshole would do something like that?” Sarcasm drips from my tone.

Henry narrows his eyes. “I didn’t pretend anything. If all I’d wanted was the company, I’d have left your hotel room, gone back to the wedding reception, and found one of the other fifteen names on Spencer’s list that I refused to even consider because they weren’t you. Don’t pretend I’m anything like him.”

His answer doesn’t soothe me. It infuriates me. “When I wouldn’t date Lawrence, he offered me a job. Did I tell you that?”

Henry shakes his head, but never loses eye contact with me.

“It’s interesting, isn’t it? The way when he failed to get me away from you one way, he turned to a job he coincidentally needed someone like me for. Even at the time, it sounded ludicrous.”

Henry’s eyes flare.

“It makes me wonder,” I say.

Henry shakes his head slowly. “Don’t.”

I toss the iPad to the bed. “The job you offered me felt out of nowhere too. You have other departments, but somehow I’m miraculously working from your penthouse and your office?”

He looks away.

I pull my own hair in frustration. “You created a job to keep me close. Nothing has been real.”

“Have you been working? Have you assisted me in expanding my businesses into new markets? The answer is ‘yes.’ So, your job is real. What difference does it make what inspired me to tackle those markets?”

“I’m such an idiot. I thought I was proving my mother wrong. That I didn’t need her help or anyone else’s. I let you step right into her shoes. Now, it’s not my mother who controls my health insurance and finances. It’s you.”

He scowls. “If I’d wanted to do that, I have far more effective ways at my disposal. I’ve never held your employment over your head in any way, and I never would. If you stop working for me, your company will send you out on another job somewhere else. I wasn’t controlling you. I was giving you the tools to become independent, not holding you back. I gave you a ladder, not a cage.”

“This is you acting the part of savior? It’s not about what you can get from it, at all?” I ask sarcastically.

He runs his hands through his hair and squeezes his temples. “I didn’t lie to you,” he snaps. “My cards were on the table on the very first night. A person can want more than one thing at the same time.”

“Did you put Jonny up to making the engagement announcement to buy yourself time with your grandmother or pressure me?”

“No.” One clear, concise, furious syllable.

“Where did Jonny get the picture of us?”

His eyebrows lift. “I don’t know. Not from me. If I had to guess, he called my mother sometime after breakfast that morning and made her year when he told her we were getting married.”

He looks so sincere.

“Did you orchestrate having someone shoot at us to manipulate me?”

He stares at me for five long, cold seconds as every ounce of emotion and warmth bleeds out of his expression, until the man who stands before me looks like an utter stranger. This is the face his enemies see.

His eyelids drop to half-mast, and he rakes his gaze from the top of my head to my feet, and back up again. “This is what you think of me? Who you think I am?”

I look away, inexplicable shame flooding through me, as if I’m the one who’s hurting him. “I want you to take me—” I falter. I’d almost said “home.” But I don’t have one of those and never have. “Back to New York. I’ll go to a hotel.”

He straightens. “A hotel isn’t an option. If you have an alternate solution that doesn’t put your life at risk, I’m open to discussion.”

My mother. It’s what I’ve done every other time I got into trouble in the past five years. She’s on the other side of the country and has plenty of security, but I won’t go back there. Never again. “Whoever shot at us wasn’t after me. They were after you. You can stay here and have someone pick me up. No one will follow or remember me.”

“You don’t know that.”

I narrow my eyes. “Of the two of us, which one is most likely to inspire someone to commit murder?”

“You’re associated with me now. They’d consider you a pinch point, even if I were the target.”

“I won’t marry you, and your deadline is almost up. You’re wasting time with me.”

His coldness hasn’t lifted an iota. “Not a single moment with you is wasted time.”