Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
L ucy coming to find him because she wanted to discuss staying married was like Christmas, his birthday, and their honeymoon all rolled into one. He just couldn’t show it.
With Lucy, he’d made so many mistakes. A mountain of complicated history stood between them. So many kinks needed to be worked out. He wanted to address the issues so they could move forward, at the very least.
Filled with resolve, he held out his arm, inviting her up the steep staircase to his apartment.
At the top of the stairs, he motioned her right. “This one is mine.”
Her brow furrowed slightly as she scanned the sparse hallway with only one other door across from his. He understood her confusion. It wasn’t like any of the places he owned in San Francisco.
He swung the door open and stood aside, letting her precede him into the apartment.
As she did, a whiff of her perfume brought an onslaught of memories. Waking up with her back pressed against his chest, her mass of hair sticking to his cheek where he’d slept on it. The sound of her laugh, loud and joyous as she stirred a delicious smelling sauce in a pot on the stove. The way she pretended to be annoyed when he pulled her away from the sauce to dance with her in the kitchen. How she’d come home from work smelling of sawdust and talking excitedly about the latest Barone & Sons project. The habit she’d formed of walking around with her hand resting on her still flat belly, humming quietly, before everything changed.
Their life together came back on one whiff of vanilla spice. So much for being careful with his heart. He was fucked, and he knew it.
Leaning against the wall, he shoved his hands into his pockets and watched her take in his space. It was night and day from what she’d experienced with him in San Francisco where his décor was sleek and modern. Grays and whites, cool accents, and marble countertops.
Here, Hope had mostly done the decorating. A long L-shaped couch, filled with throw pillows he would have never bought. An oak table large enough to fit his whole family in the dining room. She’d hung some family photos, too. It came across as very domestic.
Lucy would recognize the woman’s touch, and he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.
“My sister decorated.”
“Hmm.” Lucy nodded. “Makes sense. It’s very homely, permanent.” She tilted her head. “Are you putting down roots in Portland, Joel?”
“I have no roots to put down.” She should know that better than anyone. “But I’ll be here long enough that Hope told me staying at The Heathman would be pretentious, even for a Morgan. So she set me up here. ”
Lucy continued to walk around, taking in the surroundings.
In the silence, he felt compelled to go on. “Her husband, Gabe, used to live here. And Hope lived across the hall with her friend, Ivy.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the door, even though Lucy wasn’t looking at him. “Hope and Gabe moved out when they married.”
“Does Ivy still live there?”
“Yes. She lives with her fiancé, Sean. Who moved in here after Gabe moved out.”
Lucy finally stopped and stared at him, eyebrows knit together. “So Gabe lived here and then got together with Hope, who lived across the hall. Then Sean lived here and got together with the girl who lives across the hall? Am I getting it right?”
He chuckled, running his hand through his hair. “That’s exactly right.”
“Matchmaking apartments,” Lucy murmured as she crossed to a wall of photos.
“Yeah.” He huffed out a laugh. “Never thought of it like that.”
Lucy pointed to a photo and glanced at him with a raised eyebrow.
“That, uh, that’s Ruby. My niece,” he explained, hesitant to bring up children around Lucy, not knowing where she stood in her grief. “Hope and Gabe’s daughter. Hope’s in the process of officially adopting her. She just turned seven.”
“She’s adorable.”
Her smile was genuine and filled him with relief because there was no hiding his pride when he spoke about his niece. “She’s the best.” Almost instantly, Ruby felt like family. Her joyful light was a balm to his bruised soul. He’d do anything for the little girl, no questions asked. “She has a keen business sense already. You’d be impressed.”
Lucy finished her perusal of the apartment with a slow spin. “You look settled here. Are you happy?”
Happy was a distant memory. Although it was starting to feel closer with every passing minute in Lucy’s presence. “I work too hard to be anything but busy.”
She nodded, like she knew exactly what he was talking about, and something about her understanding bothered him. They’d both lost so much four years ago. He’d hoped that the sacrifice would have at least resulted in one of them finding contentment.
“Let’s sit down.” He headed for the couch, with her following him. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee or water? Wine?”
Lucy laughed. “It’s not even ten. I haven’t become dependent on a morning drink since you left me, Joel.”
Her words pierced like a knife to the gut. He stopped abruptly, turning as she stumbled into his back. He caught her arms to keep her balanced and held her against his chest. She was so close her breath fanned against his lips.
“Leaving you isn’t how I remember it, Luciana.”
Her eyes widened. Two dark moons. She inhaled a stuttering breath, and he released her. Here was the hurt that stretched between them. She thought he left her, but he remembered she’d given him no choice.
He sat down on the couch, nodding at her to do the same. She chose the farthest opposite corner.
“So.” This is what it had come to. The most important person in his life, sitting across from him like a stranger. “Luciano is still dead set on selling his business to a third party when he retires? ”
Lucy threw her hands in the air, then let them drop in her lap. “Either that or he’ll leave it to my cousin, Nico. The one you met at the wedding.”
“That was your cousin?” The bastard had his hands all over her. No cousin he’d ever known cozied up like that on a dance floor.
“Second cousin,” she clarified, as if it made a difference. “Nico is here from Italy to show his interest in Barone & Sons and convince my father he’s the best one to take over.”
“No way in hell that’s happening. You have my word on that.” If that was what she was worried about, he could take care of it before nightfall. Second cousin or not, he’d have this Nico character back on a plane to the motherland before dinner.
She stared at him with an odd expression. One he couldn’t place until she said, “Nico thinks he’s going to marry me.”
“Fuck. No.” His curse slipped out before he could stop it. He’d made it good practice never to swear in her presence…unless they were in bed. His legendary control wavered like a string being plucked. “You’re married to me.”
“Yes. But no one knows that.” She fiddled this time with the hem of her shirt. “But they do think we’re engaged.” She peeked up at him. “Because of you.”
She was trying to get at something, but he couldn’t think past the horror of Lucy married to another man. No matter what had passed between them, she was his, and he had the paperwork to prove it.
She doesn’t belong to anyone, you idiot. That’s why you let her go, remember? His one still functioning brain cell reminded him.
“So, what do you want me to do?” he asked, trying to keep the maelstrom of emotion out of his voice .
Lose control of your emotions, and you lose control of the situation. His father taught him that. The motto had served him well in life and business. But with Lucy, he notoriously lost his grip on his control and emotions.
Seconds, that felt like minutes, passed before she spoke again. “I want us to pretend to be engaged long enough to get Nico off my back and convince my father that I’m the right person for Barone & Sons.” She blew out a breath.
While he tried his damnedest not to show a single reaction.
“I know it sounds stupid. My hard work and dedication alone should make him proud. I thought it would! But he’s old school and in the weirdest ways. I can’t figure out why he’d rather I be a CEO of literally any other company than his. But there it is. He’s stubborn.” Lucy turned to him, edging closer up the couch, until their knees almost touched. “But so am I, Joel.”
And didn’t he know it?
“Will you please say something.” She looked at him with big, guarded eyes, her brows pinching above them.
His mind reeled with all the things he wanted to say. The questions in his heart were too raw, too scattered to be coherent, so he started with the most logical. “Have you talked to your father about this?”
“Of course I have! So many times, in so many different ways. He brushes it off, deflects, or changes the subject. A couple of times he flat out said no, but never with any concrete reasons. Just things like ‘oh you don’t want that’, or ‘we’ll see Luciana, we’ll see.’”
The way she mimicked her father’s voice was spot-on and Joel would have chuckled if it weren’t so heartbreaking. Her humiliation rolled off her, hitting him like a rogue wave. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to ask someone you loved for something so important, and not be taken seriously.
“So I gave up asking and started doing,” she went on. “I took on more than just the books. I got us more clients, worked on rebranding and upgrading our marketing.” Her defeated sigh was heart-wrenching. “I don’t think he even noticed.”
If Luciano didn’t notice all of that, then he didn’t deserve his daughter working for him.
Although he knew the answer to his next question, he asked it anyway. “Have you thought about starting your own company?”
As he expected, she shook her head vigorously. “I don’t want some other company, some other career. I want Barone & Sons. It’s in my blood. It’s my legacy. Please.” Her eyes took on a shine he didn’t like. “Will you help me?”
This was his wife. Boldly determined, stubborn as hell. She wanted something, she got it. He’d been caught on both sides of her will before. The best and worst moments of his life had been with her.
“Why don’t we just tell everyone the truth?” Secrets had almost torn his family apart two years ago. Even with the best intentions, he knew hiding the truth hurt more than it helped.
“The truth?” Her brow furrowed with astonishment that he’d suggest such a thing. “Like the we-got-drunk-in-Vegas-then-hitched-then-made-a-wedding-night-baby-then-lived-together-for-almost-four-months-without-telling-anyone-until-we-lost-the-baby-and-broke-up truth?”
When she said it all in one breath like that… “Yes.”
Their marriage was never meant to be a secret. The plan was to tell everyone at a special dinner with both their families. But the rug had been pulled out from under them before they could, and they’d lost the plot. Nothing had mattered after that.
“You’re kidding, right? They’d never forgive us. Me. I can’t tell my mother, or any relative, that I secretly married into the Morgan family. She’d kill me.”
“That’s a bit of an overdramatization, don’t you think? I’m sure she’d understand if we explained we had every intention to tell her.”
Lucy cocked her head to one side, still frowning at him. She blinked twice, as if she was waiting for him to come to his senses. “You’ve met Maria Barone, right?”
He blew out a breath. “All I’m trying to say is that if we get caught in another web of lies, we’ll complicate things more than they already are.”
Lucy took great interest in her lap, then started nodding to herself in a way he didn’t like the look of. Then she scooted back to her end of the couch. “You’re right.”
“We’ll tell them?”
“No. Never. They won’t understand. Besides, the truth would hurt them, and there’s no reason to do that at this point. It’s over between us.”
He ground his teeth at that statement. Over was such a final word. Like a movie coming to an end, or curtains closing on a show. Even though years of silence had passed between them, nothing about what had played out felt finished to him.
She sighed. “But you’re right. This is complicated. It’s not fair to put you in the middle of what’s between me and my father.” She met his gaze. “Maybe it’s best if we get the divorce and put the past behind us.”
She continued looking him dead in the eye. Like she had when she’d told him that their marriage had been a mistake and she needed space. Back then, he’d understood her unwavering eye contact to mean that she was being fully honest with him, so he’d given her what she asked for because he never wanted be the one who held her back.
But four miserable years later, he wasn’t sure he could count on anything other than how fucking perfect it was to be this close to her again.
When she moved to get up, his hand flew out to take hers. “Wait.”
It came down to one thing: Lucy had a problem, and he could make it better for her. What he was about to agree to might crush his heart, but he’d consider it his penance. Punishment for the time he hadn’t been there for her before. “We’ll do this your way. Barone & Sons belongs to you, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that after Luciano retires, no one runs it but you.”
She raised a single, perfectly shaped, eyebrow. “There’d be nothing in it for you. That’s not fair.”
Redemption was in it for him. His chance to atone for his sin against her. “This is a business deal, and good business benefits me. Being closer to Barone & Sons will give me an opportunity to network and make new connections in the industry.” His words were bullshit, but her hand relaxed in his.
The truth was, he didn’t need more connections. If she’d considered him wealthy and well connected before, she’d be shocked at his status now. Turned out, he responded to heartbreak by submerging into the black hole of sixty-hour work weeks. And while he was under, he’d grown his father’s empire into a galaxy. He’d incorporated Morgan Construction into Morgan Enterprises, which he’d created to accommodate the investment side of the business he’d grown. He’d been smart and relentless, and the payoff had been massive. The Morgan millions had become billions. He didn’t rent private jets anymore—he owned them.
Squeezing her hand, he made her a promise. “Barone & Sons will be yours, Lucy. Whatever it takes. Okay?”
He would keep that promise or die trying. He owed her that much.