Chapter 19
SECRETS, SECRETS, SECRETS
Margot
We’ve just slid into Rhys’s truck to head home, my hormones buzzing and my adrenaline crashing at the same time after having gotten through tonight without slipping in front of the triplets’ parents, when my phone vibrates with an incoming call.
Rhys and I both glance down at it.
“My sister,” I say to him.
“I thought your sister was Daphne.”
I smile. “I changed her name to Jessica D in my phone just in case she called when I was with someone. Everyone knows seven million Jessicas. The D is for Daphne. Do you mind if I take this? She doesn’t call often when I’m free and vice versa. Especially with us in different time zones right now.”
“Might lose signal somewhere.”
I slide my hand back to his thigh. “Yep. Exactly when we pull up to the cabin.”
He starts the engine, then tucks his hand over mine while I answer the phone. “Hey. Everything okay?”
“Yes! It’s great. Are you alone?”
“As good as alone.”
“So you’re with Cyril?”
“No, my roommate.”
That gets a squeal that’s loud enough that Rhys gives me the so you’ve been talking about me to your sister look.
“We just left Lucky’s house,” I tell her. “He had a cookout.”
“I am almost insanely jealous right now.”
It’s so easy to smile at her voice. “Almost? Not all the way? You must’ve had a good day.”
“Oh my god, Margot, I stopped by Bea’s burger bus on my way home from work today, and people had launched a reverse protest to support her.
It was so freaking beautiful. Simon’s out in LA—he left for his movie shoot—so Oliver stepped in and did that thing Simon was doing with helping serve burgers shirtless, and Bea kept calling Ryker to run to the store for more ground beef, and I convinced her to make donuts for her secret menu item one day next week to celebrate having such a great day today. ”
I smile and sink deeper into the seat, idly stroking Rhys’s thigh while I get the updates from Daphne on her best friend, Bea, and everything in Athena’s Rest. “I thought Oliver already had a job and no plans to overachieve by doing something like getting two jobs.”
She laughs.
“Today was charity work,” he calls in the background. “Very different from a job.”
“And do you remember the Camilles?” Daphne says.
“As in Bea’s ex’s family?” I ask. Bea had basically the worst breakup in history several months ago, so the fact that she’s dating one of the world’s current most popular actors now—her ex’s favorite actor, in fact—is the kind of karmic justice that I’m here for.
Bonus that Simon’s an incredibly nice guy and appreciates what he has in her.
“Yes,” Daphne squeals. “Oliver ran into Damon Camille—he’s the dad, Bea’s almost father-in-law, the ambulance chaser attorney who’s sued like half the town—and Damon was like if you ever need legal representation and Oliver looked him dead in the eye and said I can afford every lawyer in Manhattan and then some, and I protect the people I love, and I hear you’ve been a dick to some of them, and I am so serious, the next day, Damon announced he’s retiring.
Retiring. Bea thinks Simon might’ve had a talk with him too, but there are two new big dogs in Athena’s Rest, and the guard is changing, and it’s beautiful. ”
“So Bea doesn’t have to worry about him suing her for calling her bus Best Burger Bus anymore?”
“Margot, you’re so far behind. She told the whole world about how Jake dumped her after stealing her restaurant, and that that’s why she opened the burger bus.
She rebranded it as Spite Burgers and started new socials and I think she’s going to be the first billionaire burger bus owner in existence. ”
I crack up at that. “It’s a long way from one burger bus to billionaire.”
“She has a tip jar,” Oliver says. “I can help her get there.”
These two.
They’re hilarious together.
“I’ve spent enough time with Bea that I suspect she’d be more than a little irritated if you did for her what you did on your road trip last month,” I say to both of them.
“Huh. That’s an idea,” Oliver replies.
Daphne giggles. “Oh, she’d kill you.”
“Good thing we’re working on getting a dog so I’ll know she’s coming.”
I sigh even as I’m smiling.
I miss my sister.
When I get back to New York, I need to make more time to see her. I don’t want to be one of those CEOs who works sunrise to sunset. I want to be one who has the right team in place—a team who all have healthy work-life balances, which I personally believe is the key to maximum productivity.
I’m almost there too.
My staff is nearly large enough to support me when we move into the chief executive’s suite.
And they’re hella good too.
“If you do what you’re inevitably going to do to Bea, leave my name out of it,” I say to them.
“Tell me about the cookout,” Daph replies.
My eyes nearly cross, and I blow out a breath of relief.
Running a hotel empire isn’t as exhausting as lying to the triplets’ parents.
“Their parents showed up. It was so awkward, because they don’t know who I really am—like the related part, because the triplets haven’t told their parents that they know that their dad isn’t their biological dad, and it’s this whole big secret—and I kept thinking I was going to slip and blow it the whole time. ”
“Oh my god.”
“Right? And then their mom started dropping hints that Lucky should try to date me.”
Daphne cackles.
“That was fucked up,” Rhys mutters.
“I think I’m going to have nightmares,” I tell him.
He squeezes my hand.
“Are they going to tell their parents?” Daphne asks.
“I don’t know. Secrets and families—they don’t go together, you know? But this one isn’t my call.”
“Margot.”
“Don’t start. I’m not keeping secrets. I’m being strategic. And speaking of strategic, my roommate saved me from Jonas Rutherford today.”
“No.”
“Yes.” I tell her the soap story, and she reacts even better than the Sullivans did.
“I got pictures,” Rhys says to me.
“You didn’t.” I didn’t think he was anywhere near the laundry room.
He grins, and my heart melts a little more. “Video too. I was stealthy. You never knew I was there.”
“I’ll send you proof,” I tell Daphne. “But you can’t share it. Not even with Bea.”
“Ever or yet?”
“Yet.”
“How much longer will you be?”
I cringe.
The right answer is I’ll be home next week.
I shouldn’t keep dragging this out with Lucky, Decker, and Jack.
I need to tell them who I am and what I want.
The timing’s right, even if I’m lying to myself about wanting to see Oliver’s family’s company’s shareholder meeting go the right way next week first.
My father’s been buying shares of Miles2Go in a bid for a hostile takeover—he’s always wanted to expand beyond hotels, therefore Oliver was an approved option of a boyfriend for me—and Oliver’s about to distribute his quarter of the company’s total shares to franchise owners after his choice of new CEO is approved by shareholders early next week.
There’s no telling if the franchise owners will hold on to their new shares or sell them, which could put my father in a position to buy more, so I’ve convinced Oliver to wait a few weeks so that I can do what I need to do to ruin my father’s reputation and make him undesirable for any other company he might want to take over too.
And make him not want to put himself in a public position about it either.
Which means next week is when I need to act.
Next week is when I need to tell the triplets who I am and what I want. Ask for their help and keep the ball rolling on my plans.
But I don’t want to.
I want to have more time with them where they see me as a normal person with normal stresses and normal needs. When they don’t think I’m pressuring them to tell their parents what they know.
I’ve been contemplating how I can accomplish my goal of showing my father and the board that the triplets exist while simultaneously keeping them out of the public eye if this works the way I want it to.
And I think I’ve figured out the best way to play this for everyone’s advantage.
If they’ll agree to it.
“Three weeks,” I say to Daphne. “I’ll be three more weeks.”
“Because you need that long, or because you want that long?” she asks softly.
My eyes get hot. “Both.”
I’m lying.
I don’t need this long.
But between the fun with the triplets and getting to know Rhys—yeah.
I want longer.
I swallow hard. “Oliver?”
“Yep?” he answers.
“Still working on that thing I asked you about?”
“Yep.”
“Thank you.”
“You owe me the full story behind the request one day.”
I smile. “Can’t fully escape business life?”
“I can admire it from a distance.”
“Wow. You two take background checks seriously,” Daphne says.
We’re not talking about the background check I asked Oliver to run on Rhys’s old company, but Oliver doesn’t correct her.
I don’t either.
The fewer people who know what I’m planning, the better, and Oliver only knows I asked him to stall on distributing his shares to franchise owners, but not why.
He’s probably making a few assumptions, but since he left the CEO life behind, he’s taking the only tell me what I need to know tactic.
I appreciate that.
“They should be taken seriously,” I say to Daphne, but my phone makes an odd noise, and a moment later, beeps with the dropped call notification.
I text her that I lost signal—it’ll likely send when we round another corner or two—and sink even deeper into the truck seat.
We’re almost to the cabin.
“You lied well tonight,” Rhys says quietly.
“Do you think they’ll appreciate why I lied to them about who I am when they’ve also asked me to lie to their parents about who I am?”
He blinks slowly. Then snorts and shakes his head. “No.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s always different when you want someone to lie for you than it is when they lie for themselves.”
“Lies are lies.”
“Agreed. But human beings in general have a but it’s different for me mentality. It’s different for them to ask you to lie so they don’t have to tell their parents a secret than it is for you to lie to them to protect your own secrets.”
“You have a fascinating understanding of humanity.”
He lifts a shoulder. “Mom taught me to watch. So I watched.”
And he’s good at it.
The thing that’s separated the people who stay on my security team from the people who don’t make it through their probationary period is the exact thing Rhys has.
The clear, keen intellect required to both watch what’s going on around him and then read between the lines and understand what’s not said as much as what is.
Cyril’s been with me as long as he has because he knows when to make up a situation requiring my attention to get me out of awkward moments with my family. He’s as much personal assistant sometimes as he is protection agent, and I’m positive he has an idea of what I’m planning for my father.
Just like I strongly suspect Rhys has been connecting those dots since the other hints I dropped on the lift.
“Do you think they’ll be mad?” I ask him. “When I tell them?”
“Decker will be mad because he’s ready to be mad. Lucky will be hurt because he likes to see the best in people and he expects the same level of trust that he puts in them returned to him. Jack will be hurt too, but he’ll also understand why you did it, so he’ll logic his way into it hurting less.”
I think he’s spot-on. “Do you have any insights on if the triplets disagree about telling their parents they know about their dad?”
“Lucky’s wanted to tell them from the beginning. Decker’s wanted to keep it from them. Jack’s been—well, he’s been fucking Switzerland. But you heard what they said about the curse. They’re all in together. On everything.”
I stare out the window at the trees and brush illuminated by Rhys’s headlights as he turns into the driveway. “Daphne doesn’t know I’ve been on her side this whole time. Since she was disinherited.”
“Doesn’t she?”
“She might now. I hope she does now. But she definitely didn’t at first. I thought—for a while, I thought she was replacing me with her best friend.
And as much as I was grateful that she had Bea to lean on, it hurt to think I could be replaceable in her life when she could never be replaceable in mine.
And that’s when I knew I couldn’t play the middle anymore.
I couldn’t be the CEO in training under my father and also be Daphne’s big sister. ”
He doesn’t say anything, but he’s said enough that I can guess what he’s thinking.
You have been though. You’ve been doing both.
“My life is about to change drastically,” I whisper.
“And you’re gonna fucking own it,” he murmurs back.
Warmth spreads from my chest down to my arms.
The past four years, I’ve felt very, very alone.
And also like I deserved to be alone.
I didn’t stand up enough for my sister, so I didn’t deserve her.
I stayed at Aurora Gardens instead of taking an immediate stand that I didn’t work with people who were unnecessarily cruel, that I didn’t want to be related to people who were unnecessarily cruel, therefore, I participated in the unnecessary cruelty.
And I questioned myself—was I playing the long game, or was I staying where it was safe out of fear of how it would look or how it would feel to do the same thing Daph did and walk away entirely with her head held high?
She bloomed and thrived in her new life, and she started it with nothing.
They even turned off her phone without giving her a chance to salvage her number.
She owned it.
She owned her new life while I set myself on a course of action that I knew would take a long time, that I couldn’t tell anyone about, and that I’ve been fucking determined to succeed at, but where I’ve been the only person who could tell me that I was doing a good job and that my plans would work.
So having Rhys believe in me?
Having him tell me I’ll rock the next chapter of my life?
It’s an unexpected boost that I didn’t realize I wanted—needed—and it’s doing funny things to my insides.
He pulls the truck to a stop in front of the cabin, shifts into park, kills the engine, and unbuckles his seatbelt.
I unbuckle too, but when he reaches for his door, I reach for him.
Because this man?
This giant of a man with a steady heart and a sharp mind and a steely determination to embrace justice for his own reasons?
I need to kiss him.
I need to kiss him until I can’t breathe.
And I need it right now.