Chapter 12
TWELVE
I HAVE NEVER SAID THAT OUT LOUD
Mathilda
I reached to grab the restaurant’s door handle but a manicured hand landed over mine, preventing me from exiting. Dominic spun me around.
“Hold up, Mathilda. I need a moment with you to discuss wedding planning. For starters, telling your parents we’re dating. I intend to do it today, if you are in agreement?”
“What? No, I need to find Scarlet.” I twisted away from his grip, but he didn’t release the door. As I huffed in surprise, Dominic raised his dark eyebrows.
“Please. Your sister will be fine, and a few minutes is all I need. Over the next month, it would be prudent to start people talking about us before we announce the wedding. We should be seen together.” He gestured to the restaurant as if to demonstrate why he was there.
“I have a holiday booked with Abigail, but other than that single week, I’ll make myself available. ”
“Dominic, not now. Didn’t you see what just happened?” Had she gone left or right? I craned my neck, peering through the door glass. Weekend crowds filled the London street. Knowing my sister, she wouldn’t hang around.
“She’s a teenager, what do you expect?” He rolled his eyes, looking bored, then he shifted to a casual pose with his elbow holding the door closed.
It would look to anyone watching like we were having a cosy conversation.
I didn’t want Dad coming over, so I lifted my chin and levelled my gaze at Dominic.
I was about to say something about expecting Scarlet to be cared for, when something stopped me.
“I have a holiday booked with Abigail.”
Dominic’s words repeated in my mind, and realisation dawned.
He was still having the affair? My stomach dropped in disgust, and I reared back.
Until that second, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask.
I’d assumed he was out of it. That the politician—Abigail—had put her family first following the humiliation they must have endured.
But no. They were going on holiday together.
How could they?
I hadn’t thought through Dominic’s proposal, not with any real rigour beyond how it would benefit my sister. But it was easy to decide on it now.
“You’re still seeing her,” I said dully.
Dominic tilted his head, regarding me quizzically. “Yes. Why wouldn’t I be? Is that a problem?”
Only a huge moral conflict of which I had no intention of getting in the middle.
I needed to find Scarlet. Dominic didn’t deserve a second more of my time. I was done with him.
“I need to help my sister,” I hissed. “I’m leaving. Please release the door.”
“One question, before I let you go. That man, that Callum McRae, is his name familiar to you? I think it might be.”
I stared at him. That sounded like a threat. “What business is that of yours?”
“It’s very much my business. He’s suing me.” Dominic leaned closer, his features in a careful, flirtatious smile, but his tone dark. “If he’s going to be your fuck buddy, I have something to say about that.”
Seriously? “No, you really don’t. Leave me alone, Dominic.”
Dislodging his hand from the door, I twisted the handle and slipped outside, my sister the only thing on my mind.
“Look out for my email,” Dominic called into the street. “This little display from your sister is all the more reason to get ahead of the game, don’t you think?”
Following a fruitless search along Marylebone High Street, I headed in the direction of Regent’s Park, trying Scarlet’s number again and again. Nothing. After I crossed the busy roads leading to the York Bridge entrance, my phone rang in my hand, Callum’s name bright on the screen.
I dragged in a breath. In my hunt for my sister, I’d cooled down over Callum’s legal action against Dad. He had every right to go after his money; in fact, if it had been anyone else, I would have encouraged him to take the case to court.
But the reason I’d taken it so hard was because it wiped out any chance of Callum and me being a thing.
Dad would never allow Scarlet to live with me if I became serious with someone he didn’t approve of.
Her behaviour had worsened, and I worried so much for her emotional health, let alone her petty thieving habits, so she needed my help.
Now I’d discounted Dominic, my options were even more limited.
If I went to Scotland, I’d like Callum all too much. I’d want to be his, and it would make things ten times harder with Dad. I’d be choosing Callum over Scarlet, and my sister needed to come first to someone.
That could only be me.
It was better that I didn’t go at all and let the feelings I had for him die.
A fire inside me had gone out, and I answered the call, trudging through the ashes of might-have-beens.
In contrast, Callum’s greeting was ember-warm. “I made up about six different reasons to call, but I’m nae good at that. I’ve been working my backside off all morning, and all I wanted, lass, was to hear your voice.”
God darn it. “Tell me one of the reasons. Or two.” I couldn’t help myself. My heart hurt at his impossibly familiar voice.
“To remind you to bring something fancy to wear when you visit. For the party, ye ken.”
“I hadn’t forgotten. I went shopping,” I replied as I scanned the park’s expanse of green fields for Scarlet. The narrow neck of the boating lake wound its way to my left under the bridge, so I navigated past the tourists and headed for the footpath.
Callum made a sound of approval. “I’d ask you to describe your choice, but I want to be surprised.”
I’d picked out a couple of options, but a liquid satin maxi dress in a silvery blue was my forerunner.
It had a single shoulder strap of tiny silver flowers, and I’d fallen in love with it the moment I’d stepped into the store.
Paired with a long, gauzy wrap and the sort of heels I could only wear with Callum, I couldn’t wait to wow him.
Between sorting through my wardrobe options and working up the wedding proposal for his land and castle, I’d done little else but plan for seeing the man. I’d booked in to have my hair done, then a waxing. All to have him look at me with that intense stare. The one that made me feel beautiful.
The anticipation of kissing him again had the power to derail me from any coherent thought. I didn’t want to cancel my weekend.
A sucker for punishment, I clutched the phone tighter and said, “Give me another reason.”
“You can have my every thought, but…is something wrong?”
“I’ve just had lunch with my family.” I stopped, unsure of how to proceed.
Callum huffed. “Did my name come up by any chance?”
“It did.” At intervals along the edge of the path, benches perched in shaded positions, giving views to the Regency-style Georgian mansions on the other side of the water. Houses designed to be imposing—they had no effect on me, having been raised in the penthouse apartment of one.
Finding a vacant seat, I dropped into it. I could keep an eye on the open park at the same time as having a mini heartbreak for a man I was only just getting to know.
“Did it cause you a problem? I should have told you. I’m ready to cancel the paperwork if you say the word.”
Of course he would. My stomach flipped. “Don’t.
Storm Enterprises owes you the money. I don’t want you to change anything, but…
” I picked at a thread on my tartan skirt.
Strange that I’d picked Scottish tartan this morning.
I hadn’t even consciously noticed until now.
I blew out a breath, trying to be brave despite my insides quaking.
“Do you remember I said I needed my father on side for a reason? That reason is Scarlet, my sister. Dad upset her over lunch, and she ran off. I’m trying to find her so we can talk about her coming to live with me. ”
“And you need your father to agree to you taking custody? Is that why you thought to get married? Would your mother agree to let her go?”
How effortlessly he accepted that.
“Under the right conditions, they’d release her. I hadn’t thought about custody, just her living somewhere else so she wasn’t under Dad’s nose.”
“They dinna get along,” he stated. Then his tone changed. “Are you worried for the girl’s safety?”
“No! It’s not like that. Dad isn’t a bad person.” I hastened. To anyone else, he’d be an ogre, but not to me.
“Then she’s not his, aye?”
“Jesus, Callum.” My heart thundered. In our family, the subject had never, ever been raised.
I’d heard gossip, of course, but I only knew the truth because Mom’s best friend told me the full story several years ago.
Her revelation had changed my childhood.
It had made me realise just how not-normal we were.
“I looked you up, too. I saw there was a scandal and put two and two together. Ah, Mathilda, it’s killing me here, knowing you’re unhappy. I’m nae trying to tear open wounds. I want to help. I didnae mean to upset you.”
The scandal had been an old modelling colleague of Mom’s who’d written a memoir.
In it, she’d made sensationalist claims against a number of other celebrities, including allegations about my mother’s affair.
Dad had managed to pay off the publisher to keep certain details out of the press—mainly around the dates, but the story had the gutter press’s interest. In school, at my ladies’ college, I had suffered whispers, and I hated that my sister had heard them, too.
“You didn’t. But you’re right. Scarlet isn’t Dad’s biological daughter, and I have never said that out loud.”
“It’s bad for a family to have secrets.”
“Doesn’t yours?” I asked gently. “Do you talk about your father with your brothers?” I could only imagine the difficulty of rehashing those memories.
“Are ye kidding? For six months, it was all we spoke about. Ally and Wasp were eight years old and would sleep in my bed some nights, or in with Gordain. They’d have nightmares over imagining his death, sometimes in anger, wanting Da to suffer, and sometimes in sheer pain because they remembered the evenings when he’d be drunk and going after them in a rage.
Their mother hated it, but we made her talk about him.
It was the only thing that kept us sane.
Someone that overbearing doesn’t deserve to keep their control once they’ve gone.
Secrets hold power. Talking about them stops that. ”
A long pause drew out as I processed his words.
Down the path, an octogenarian man pushed an equally elderly woman in a wheelchair.
She reached a hand back, and he stopped, squeezed her fingers, leaned forward, and kissed her hair.
Then they carried along as if their tiny display of connection and affection hadn’t broken something inside me.
Hot tears pricked my eyes.
I hadn’t cried over anything in the longest time.
“Am I holding you up in your search? Because I have something to say before you go.” Callum’s words were careful, but his tone contained a new urgency. Like he could tell I was about to cancel our plans and retreat like I’d done before.
I didn’t want to do that. It hurt to think about it, but what other choice did I have?
“I’m responsible for part of your worry, so I’m taking that on. I caused it, and it’s my problem now, and I’m going to come up with a solution.”
“No, you don’t have to.”
“I do. You should let me. Will you give me a chance to fix this?”
“I like you,” I uttered. “So much. My family’s troubles are nothing to do with you.”
“But you are, and I’ve made life harder for you.
Mathilda, I have not stopped thinking about you from the moment we met.
Remembering your lips on mine has tormented me, and I want, nae, I need to see you again.
Do ye want to know how many times I look at the pictures of your face?
Dinna make me beg, lass. It’ll dent my pride, and that’s already as thick as my house’s walls. ”
Torment was a good word. Since he’d walked into Storm Enterprise’s event like he’d owned the place, I’d felt his pull like a magnet. Unwavering and strong and impossible to ignore. “I want to see you, too.”
Over the water, a flash of red caught my eye. Scarlet! I jumped to my feet and waved. My sister hesitated on the opposite path, then waved back and pointed in the direction of the bridge. “I’ve spotted Scarlet.”
“Go, get the lass, but I have the worst sense you’re planning to call things off with me. So, let me say my piece before you do. Mathilda, you are extraordinary. There’s a force about you that has laid me flat on my back, and I can’t sleep for wanting you.”
My heart sang as my feet flew. “How can you say things like that?”
“Because I am hanging out here trying to make you see how good we’d be together. At least we can try, aye? Give me the opportunity to fix the issue with your dad. We’ll look at it together, plan for your sister, too. This is what I’m good at—making my clan strong. Let me.”
At the end of the footpath, where it joined onto York Bridge, Scarlet darted around the corner. Her face lit up, and in a second, she was in my arms, squeezing the life out of me.
“Who are you talking to?” she whispered.
“A friend.”
Though I wanted him to be so much more. He was throwing offers of help at me, but I hardly knew how to accept them. Too long, I’d made plans on my own, any occasional and desperate requests for help from my parents batted back. Like Mom, when I’d needed to find my sister.
Callum cared for so many people, his broad shoulders taking their strain. I’d planned to help him with my professional expertise—ease his burden, not add to it, though I got the distinct feeling he wouldn’t see it that way.
“Friends who shared the best kiss of my life,” Callum murmured in my ear. “Goodbye, and please to God let me see your face at the airport on Friday.”