Scott
“Hot damn! That one was fast.” Grandpa swiveled to face Elias, his personal assistant. “Did you get a clock on that?”
Elias looked at the screen of his speed gun. “One-eighty-seven.”
Grandpa made a face that managed to look both impressed and pissed off all at once. “That’s going to be hard to beat. We should have bet on that one.”
I chuckled, then took a swig of my beer—the only beverage allowed when watching boat races, according to Grandpa.
We’d been out on the water all day now, having parked early to get a premium viewing spot.
Now that the competition had actually started, I couldn’t decide what was more entertaining, the high speed racing or my grandfather’s reactions as he watched.
“Would you really bet against your own team?” I asked him after a beat.
He shrugged. “If the boat I sponsor isn’t going to win, I might as well make money somewhere.”
This time, I full-out laughed. “Like you need more money.”
He opened his mouth, and I could already guess what was going to follow. A quip about how you can’t keep money with that attitude or something to that effect. But then he shut his trap and just smiled. “Not gonna lie,” he said after a swig of his own beer. “I like money.”
“At least you know yourself.”
“At ninety-five, I sure hope so.”
The next boat prepared to run the course, and we fell into an easy silence.
It was a nice day for lounging. A cool breeze swept across the harbor, alleviating the otherwise oppressive eighty-nine-degree day.
Hot for October but welcome after the cold front that had landed in New York before we’d left.
Still, as pleasant as the afternoon was on the yacht, I had other things on my mind. Not the least of which was the email I’d woken up to.
“Clean,” Tess had said proudly when she’d opened up her own health report. She’d waved it in my face to prove it, so I’d waved mine back.
“Clean.”
We were minutes from celebrating in the only appropriate way—my cock bare in her pussy—when Elias had knocked on our bedroom door to inform us that the boat was leaving in ten minutes.
Celebrating would have to wait until we returned.
Which was probably best since I didn’t want to rush the experience.
I wanted to take my time. I planned to enjoy every single second of the experience, planned to make her enjoy it as well.
I’d been suffering with a semi all day just thinking about it.
My gaze drifted to the lower deck where Tess lay in the sun, reading a book she’d found on one of the many bookshelves in Grandpa’s house.
She’d removed her cover-up at some point and was now just in her tiny, black bikini.
Fuck, that swimsuit was killing me. I was already anticipating what I’d do to her when I finally got to pull those tempting little strings and watch that flimsy piece of cloth fall off.
Subtly, I adjusted myself and pulled my attention back to Grandpa, only to find he was staring in the same direction, an appreciative expression on his face that I imagined rivaled my own. “Hey, now! Watch where you put your eyes, old man.”
He gave me a guilty smile. “I’m old; I’m not blind. No reason I can’t look.”
“Not at my girlfriend. Look all you want at other women. Keep that leer away from her.”
“Girlfriend,” he repeated, conveniently steering the topic in another direction. “Is that what she’s going to stay?”
I shuddered at the thought of losing Tess. “I’m not planning on ending things, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“No, no. Quite the opposite. Wondered if you were going to make her permanent.”
Oh. That’s what he was getting at.
I relaxed, which was strange because this was the kind of subject that I would have expected to make me nervous. Instead, I felt oddly excited. “We haven’t been dating that long, Grandpa. I shouldn’t be thinking in those terms yet.”
“But…”
“But, yeah. A permanent arrangement...I could see that happening.” Saying it out loud was a relief.
Thoughts of a future with Tess had certainly entered my mind, but this was the first time I’d formulated those thoughts into anything concrete.
The idea had been knocking, though, wanting out.
Last night, when I’d pressed her to name what she wanted from me, I’d really been asking for permission to say what I wanted from her. To say I wanted all of her, for always.
Now that I’d allowed myself to say it, it was like a floodgate had been opened. I could see it all: her finger wearing the ring I’d pick for her, her eyes as I lifted the veil from her face, her belly swollen with my child. A whole, perfect, wonderful lifetime ahead of me with her at my side.
“That’s what I guessed from the way you look at her. Just wondering how you plan to do that when you’re engaged to someone else.”
My head snapped in his direction. “Dad told you.” I didn’t know why I was surprised. My father boasted whenever he could, and he thought my engagement to a woman with Kendra’s social status made him look good.
It was all about him. It was always about him.
Grandpa looked at me sternly. “I’d hoped you’d tell me.”
“I’m not marrying Kendra,” I assured him.
“Good. I hoped that was the mix-up.” He nodded toward Tess. “She doesn’t deserve to be a sidepiece.”
I cringed at the idea that any woman deserved to be a sidepiece, but there was a good chance Grandpa Irving had affairs of his own, and I didn’t want to get into that fight. “I wouldn’t do that to her.”
“I didn’t think that you would. Though, if you’re technically engaged right now—”
“I’m working on not being engaged. It’s not…” I sighed. “It’s not as easy as I wish it was.”
He considered. I could feel him restraining himself, and I couldn’t decide if I was grateful that he wasn’t letting me have it or if I was disappointed. Eventually, he asked, “Does she know?”
“Tess? Yes. She’s fully aware of the situation.” That was a lie. “Okay, not fully.” I thought about saying more. If I explained it to him, would he have a solution? Would I feel that sense of relief I’d felt admitting that I wanted a life with Tess?
I probably would have told him no problem if it hadn’t been what she’d said to him at the conservatory.
Up until that point, I’d been comfortable with the very likely chance that the DRF would lose their sponsorship.
I’d known it was an important organization to Tess, but I hadn’t realized quite how important it was until she’d told Grandpa it was the most important thing to her.
I didn’t want to assume that I was anything near that on her priority list. Still, I felt pretty sure that she wouldn’t support me marrying Kendra for it. Or it would be a pretty tough choice for her anyway. Which was why I still hadn’t gotten around to telling her about it.
And why I was having a hard time making myself tell Grandpa.
He made the decision easier by nailing down the root of the issue. “Let me guess, that son of mine doesn’t approve.”
That was the long and short of it because it was bigger than just his threat to pull the DRF, whether I wanted to admit that or not. “You know the kind of profile Dad expects from his board members. He’d never let me advance. I’d be at a dead end.”
He made a spitting sound. “Henry’s an ass. Always has been. Was entitled and snotty even as a kid. It kills me that he’s brought that attitude into the company. Into my company. That’s not the kind of environment I built. That is not what I stood for.”
I wasn’t surprised by this outburst. For the most part, he tried to refrain from commenting on how my father ran SIC, but the few times he slipped, he’d always given a similar impression of frustration.
He muttered some more under his breath, and I caught a curse word or two before he settled himself down. “Want me to talk to him?”
“Thanks, but no.” It was a nice offer, but we both knew it would do more harm than good. My father was stubborn to a fault. Whenever he was challenged, he dug his heels in, even if the right move was to let up. Especially when it came to his father.
And Grandpa could complain all he wanted about how SIC was run, and nothing would change. He’d handed the position of leadership over to his sons decades earlier, and legally, he no longer had any say.
“Thought it was at least right to offer.”
“I appreciate it.”
The next boat had started its way through the course and was now headed our way.
We quieted while it sped past us until Elias announced it had only clocked at one-seventy-three, and Grandpa lost interest in the race and turned his attention back to me.
“Did I ever tell you what your grandmother did with her inheritance?”
Generally, Grandpa seemed just as sharp in his nineties as he’d ever been when I was growing up, so I didn’t question his out-of-the-blue tangent and just went with it. “Not that I remember. What did she do?”
“Well, more important is what she didn’t do.
See, we were penniless when we got married.
Adeline’s father had some money, but he had no interest in parting with any of it, so we lived in a little shack of a place while I tried to cultivate the relationships needed to build an empire.
I was obsessed with that, with building something that would be worthy of her.
She, on the other hand, would have been happy just to have a house with wall-to-wall carpet.
“We were still struggling when her daddy died. He left her a nice little sum, just enough to buy a nice place in the suburbs and put some in savings. I could stick with my bookkeeping job, and we’d have been fine.
Or she would have been fine. She would have been ecstatic, actually. I would have been miserable.”
“You didn’t buy her the house she wanted?” I asked, guessing where the story was going. That didn’t seem like him. Whether or not he’d stayed faithful, he’d definitely loved Grandma. She’d been his world, and he’d doted on her constantly.