47. When a Man Loves a Woman
When a Man Loves a Woman
Arden
C harlotte laughs and holds on as I carry her over the threshold and into the primary stateroom of The Legacy . The younger adult members of her family are still partying hard. There’s a good chance they’ll continue until the sun comes up, but we settled the kids in for the night in a suite with Charlotte’s parents babysitting. The blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea shimmer under moonlight.
And I finally have my wife to myself.
I slide her to stand and rub my thumb over her bottom lip. “I have something I want to give you.”
She wiggles her eyebrows. “I bet you do.”
I laugh. “That too. But”—I look at my watch—“I want to give this to you while it’s still technically our wedding day. I planned to do it this morning before the ceremony, but things got a little hectic.”
She wrinkles her nose with a smile. “You already gave me a wedding gift.”
“Technically, this gift is for Bronnie, but she’s a little young to understand. The boys have trust funds, and my father and I set a few up for her, as well.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Trust funds? This is a thing people do . . . for four-year-old children?”
“I’m not allowing her to feel like she doesn’t belong in this family because her brothers have more than she does.”
Charlotte’s brow furrows, but she nods.
“My father created the largest portion of the trust for her, just as he did the boys.”
“That’s very kind.” She shakes her head. “It’s not what I expected.”
I remove the heavy cream-colored envelope from the bedside drawer and pass it to her. “I included a little something from me too. I named you as trustee until Bronnie is twenty-five.”
She flicks it open, pulls out the papers, and reads, her expression transitioning from confusion to open-mouthed disbelief. “What is this? Did you buy RealFreedom for Bronwyn?”
I shake my head. “I already owned it.” I give her an admittedly nervous smile. Surprise.
She props her hands on her hips. “You own it? Was it yours all along?”
I watch her put two and two together in front of my eyes. “Yes.”
“Did you give me someone else’s scholarship?”
“No. I created a unique one for you.”
“You paid for me to go to college? All of it?” She doesn’t sound pleased.
Over time, she’s lost her prickliness surrounding my gifts completely. Recently, we began sharing bank accounts and credit cards. I’d hoped this would go better. “You more than deserved it. I never regretted it for an instant.”
I hesitate. “You’re carrying around a credit card with no limit on it. The diamond ring on your finger cost as much as your three years of college at BSU. If you look at it from that perspective, providing for your education isn’t a big deal.”
She gives me a flat glare. “You should have told me the truth.”
“I wanted you to have the opportunities you deserved. And I didn’t want you to feel you had to keep talking to me or risk losing your scholarship. It seemed better to wait to tell you, but I misjudged the timeline. You have to admit from the moment you graduated until now, we’ve been busy with more important things.”
Her mouth drops open and her hand flies to shield her eyes. “Oh my God, I sent you an email telling you we were going to sabotage your company.”
I press my lips together hard, keep my brow stern, and dip my chin.
“Stop laughing at me.” There’s humor behind her own voice, no matter how much she’s working to pretend there isn’t.
“I’m trying not to. Look at me.” I gesture to my face. “I’m frowning.”
“You’re still laughing.”
I press my lips together harder, and my left eye twitches.
Tossing the envelope to the side table, she huffs and drops her arms.
I slide my hands down to take hers in mine. “When I showed up, I planned to send every one of your friends a warning via certified letter to scare them straight and continue with the original plans for the property. But you were so sweet and passionate. I fell in love with you that day.”
Her eyes soften, then she firms her mouth. “You’re turning this into something romantic, but you lied to me.”
“I withheld information, true. But it was an anonymous donation, not a body in a basement.”
She snatches her hands away and lifts a finger. “If you bring that up every time we get into a fight for the next fifty years, you and I are going to have a problem, sir.”
The corner of my mouth lifts, and she glares.
“That was sarcasm, not flirtation,” she says.
“I apologize,” I say immediately. “For everything.”
“I don’t believe you. You don’t think you did anything wrong.”
“Then demand restitution.”
She rolls her eyes. “Right. Because you haven’t given me enough. I’m supposed to ask for more?”
“It doesn’t have to be a financial request.”
She slides her lower jaw to the side. “Community service.”
“It would be my pleasure to service you, Mrs. McRae.”
“Don’t be cute right now. It’s an unfair advantage.” She shakes her head and appears to be thinking. “No. You don’t get to choose your own restitution. Let the punishment fit the crime.”
“Now, you’re scaring me.” There is a minuscule part of me that isn’t joking.
“Next summer. Shakespeare Under the Stars. You’re a gifted orator, you’ll look great in a codpiece, and the ticket sales they’ll make and free advertising from having you perform will be enough to cover a new sound system.”
I watch her face, looking for the smallest hint of weakness. “What if I pay for a new sound system, apologize again, and this time, I try harder to sound like I mean it?”
“I’ve passed sentencing.”
“I won’t be able to attend regular rehearsals. It would be a disservice to my fellow thespians,” I reason.
“You can perform some sonnets or monologues to warm up the audience,” she says. “You’ll make a great emcee.”
“You’re the only one allowed to fit me for a codpiece.”
“I’ll make sure your costume is extremely dignified,” she says.
“Please do.”
The humor slowly leaves her expression, and she shakes her head. “I wish you’d told me about the money.”
“After graduation, we had so many important things to deal with that it slipped my mind.”
“How do you forget giving someone that kind of money?”
“I—” I close my eyes.
“What?” She sounds wary.
I tilt my head to the side. “On a scale of one to I-Want-an-Annulment, how ”—I stretch the word out in a blatant attempt at procrastination—“would you rate finding out that I gave you a lump sum of $250,000 and called it a life insurance policy?”
Color leaching from her skin, she drops to the bed as though her legs have given out.
“Honey?” I sit beside her and brush her hair from her forehead.
“That money was part of Steve’s employment. He wanted to take care of us.” Her voice sounds small and lost.
“He wanted to,” I agree. “But he wasn’t here.”
“So you did.”
I thought she might be angry. Not once did it occur to me that she’d be hurt if she knew. “I’m sorry.”
“I thought it was him.” She covers her eyes. “The good things that happened in those first couple of years after he passed. I thought—But it was you.” Face crumpling, Charlotte twists her fingers together and looks at her hands. “Why, Arden? You didn’t even know me.”
“Because the world had kicked you in the teeth, and you didn’t deserve it. Because I looked at you holding yourself together at that funeral with nothing but your pride and the determination to take care of your child, and I remembered what that felt like. Because”—I lift one hand helplessly—“one day Steve Hunsic told me about an amazing girl with a contagious smile and showed me her photo, and I needed to know that girl was going to be okay.”
She buries her face in my shoulder. “Arden.”
“Causing you pain was the last thing I wanted.”
She nods her head and leans into me harder. “I know.”
When I lift her onto my lap, wedding gown fluffing around us, she curls into me, her tears soaking my shirt.
I made her cry on our wedding night. “I’m such an ass.”
She cups my jaw and shakes her head. “No, you aren’t, you beautiful man.”
“You’re crying, Charlotte.”
She smooths her fingers across my jaw and shakes her head. “When I saw the papers for RealFreedom, I didn’t assign you positive intent, but you were giving with no expectation of receiving anything in return, not even gratitude. I don’t need to be defensive with you.”
I hold her against me, utterly grateful for this woman. “Never.”
She lifts her head, her pale blue eyes holding mine. “It wasn’t luck or a ghost from my past telling me to keep going. It was never the universe teaching me to believe in happy endings. It was always you.”