Chapter 18
STERLING
A fter breakfast, I drove Laney home. I had her address, but this was the first time I would be seeing her house. She fidgeted with her hands in her lap, her cheeks growing paler by the mile.
“Are you okay?” I asked for what had to be at least the sixth time this morning. “You were starting to look a little better when we got some food into you, but you’re turning very white again.”
“I don’t know if I’ve told you this,” she muttered, her eyes firmly on the drizzle sliding down her window pane. “My dad and I live together. He wasn’t home when I left this morning, but he’ll probably be back by now.”
“Right.” The news didn’t shake me. Our due diligence had revealed they shared the same address. I hadn’t been sure that she hadn’t simply neglected to change hers when she’d moved out, but she’d never struck me as that kind of person. “Whatever happens, we’ll handle it together, remember?”
Her throat bopped on a hard swallow, but she nodded, still not turning away from the window. When we turned onto her street, I saw row upon row of squat, connected homes, three stories tall with shared walk-ups that branched off to identical front doors.
A rusted bike leaned against the railing outside one. Someone’s potted lavender was dead on arrival. A neighbor’s cat watched us from a windowsill like it was getting paid to act as neighborhood security.
Laney sighed the second she saw the navy Crown Vic parked in the first space outside of their address. “That’s his car. Perfect.”
She’d muttered the words under her breath, but I heard them all the same. Pulling in behind him, I cut the engine and turned to face her. “I can go up with you.”
She already had her hand on her rings, thumb hooking beneath the ruby band. I reached over and gently caught her fingers. “Laney, leave them. That’s where they belong now.”
“He’s not going to take this well.” She looked up at me. “Let me handle it.”
Feeling her hand still underneath mine, I sensed that she’d stopped trying to get rid of the rings and withdrew. We were married, but we weren’t at the casual touching part of our relationship. I didn’t know if we ever would be. “He’s your dad, not a hostage negotiator.”
Those gray eyes stared back at me with a unique mixture of nerves, determination, and vulnerability in them. “You haven’t met him yet.”
I held her gaze firmly. “I’m not afraid of cops.”
Both of her eyebrows arched. “Not even ones with a detective’s nose for bullshit?”
“Especially not those,” I said, my voice low.
She scoffed, annoyed but amused. “Sterling?—”
I cut her off, not interested in arguing the point with her any longer. “We’re married.”
“Technically, we’re in some kind of weird limbo until Monday when the court files the paperwork. Remember?” She reached for the door handle. “Consider this our two-day engagement.”
Before I could say anything else, the front door above us creaked open and Vincent Rhodes stepped out onto the small, rain-slick landing, a coffee mug in one hand, sharp eyes already tracking the unfamiliar car at the curb.
“What the hell is going on?” he barked, his voice gruff and loud enough to penetrate the distance between us.
Laney cursed under her breath. “Oh God. Shit.”
Never one to let grass grow under my feet, I was already out of the car, doing what needed to be done. She reached for the handle, but I’d already circled around the car to open the door for her.
Laney glared up at me like I’d just slapped her right in the pride. “You are not helping, Sterling.”
“That’s debatable,” I said easily, extending a hand toward her. “Come on, Mrs. Westwood. It’s time to face our first challenge.”
She didn’t take my offered hand, so I let it drop and started up the shared walkway, a steep, slick slab of concrete that branched left to their front stoop.
A wobbly, rickety kind of railing snaked up the steps beside me, but when it moved under my palm as soon as I touched it, I decided it was safer to do this without its support.
Vincent watched my every step like he was mentally counting the ways he could kill me with just the mug in his hand. The man was taller than I’d expected, built like a brick house with a thick mop of graying dark hair on his head.
In just one glance, I could see where Laney had gotten her sharp awareness from, that quietly intelligent, alert glimmer in her eyes. Her dad had the exact same thing.
“Good morning, sir,” I said as I took the last step. “I’m Sterling Westwood. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Your daughter is?—”
“You can stop right there,” he said. “Why are you here?”
Laney had caught up, stepping in beside me with rain clinging to the shoulders of her jacket, but her gaze was trained on him like she hadn’t even noticed she was wet all over again. “Dad?—”
“Is she in trouble?” Vincent cut in, eyes narrowing. “Is this some kind of scam? She was out before I even got in this morning and she wasn’t at the store. I checked, and now you show up in a suit?—”
“Sir, we?—”
“Sterling.” Laney’s tone was sharp, exasperation shimmering in her eyes as she cut a glance my way. “Back off.”
I didn’t. Not yet.
“She’s not in trouble, sir,” I said. “You’ve raised a wonderful, responsible daughter and I’m here because I wanted to meet my father-in-law and to let you know that I am going to take impeccable care of her.”
Vincent’s face went hard, the color draining from his cheeks just as surely as hers had earlier. “ What did you just say?”
She stepped forward, lifting her hand to lay it on his arm. “Let me explain, Daddy.”
As her hand moved toward him, his eyes dropped to it, settling immediately on the rings that were catching what little light there was, and that was it. A click of recognition flashed in his gaze. The anger that followed came low and fast, like a cloudburst.
“You’re Harlan’s son,” Vincent said slowly, and then louder, more to her than to me. “What are you doing getting mixed up with the Westwoods, Laney?”
“It’s not like that?—”
“It’s exactly like that.” He turned to me, jaw locked and eyes hard. “Go home and don’t come back.”
I didn’t move. I didn’t flinch.
“Sterling,” Laney said, her voice low and tired. She turned back to her dad, but Vincent was already turning on his heels. He marched inside, the screen door rattling as he slammed it shut behind him. She looked back at me like she wanted to punch something. Probably me. “I’ll handle this myself.”
“I’m sure you will.”
Those gray eyes caught on mine for just a beat, and a quiet, unspoken understanding passed between us. It wasn’t comfortable or familiar, but it was there and I nodded, taking a step back and lifting my hands to show her I wouldn’t interfere.
If she wanted to do this alone, then I would let her. I could give her a few minutes with her father, but once she was gone, disappearing into their house and shutting the door behind her, I didn’t leave.
A neighbor’s curtain twitched as I looked around the shared walkway, but we hadn’t said anything out here about the marriage being arranged, so I didn’t bother going over there to find out what they knew. Rain kept falling, fine and misty, and I sat down on the top step, just out of the wet.
My spine was straight, my hands gripping the concrete on either side of my legs. I might not be welcome in there, but she was my wife now and I wasn’t going anywhere.
This genuinely wasn’t how I hoped it would go this morning, but I’d remembered that my father had mentioned knowing the Rhodes family. He hadn’t elaborated, but whatever had happened was now biting me in the ass. I was sure that was part of why Laney’s father had taken the news as badly as he had.
Meanwhile, I could hear them arguing behind the closed front door, their voices drifting out, muffled, but I was close enough that I could make out what they were saying. It helped that Laney kept raising her voice to meet her father’s, then he would raise his again, and so on.
I smiled to myself a few times as she let her father have it without backing down, laying out the facts and reminding him that this was her life—her decision. However, at his response, I felt a pinch of something I couldn’t really describe.
“Yes, I suppose it is your decision, but I really thought I raised you better than this, Lane.”
I frowned. Wow. Tell her how you really feel on her wedding day, why don’t you?
An exasperated huff came from the other side of the door, and I realized then that as much as his statement had felt like a punch in the gut to me, she hadn’t gone down. She was still swinging, just as powerfully and vehemently as before.
“I had a chance to have a family, a baby, and to keep the business, and I took it. This is what I’ve always wanted, Daddy. I know it looks different than we thought it might, but the end result is the same.”
He scoffed. “You have no idea?—”
“No, Daddy. You have no idea,” she shot back. “Mom would understand. She’d be happy for me. I know what I’m doing and I’ll be fine. Don’t judge me, okay? I love you, but I’m not going to talk to you while you’re refusing to listen to me.”
I felt the air shift behind me and twisted just in time to see Vincent ripping open the door. Laney stormed out, waving me off when I stood to go after her and not even sparing me a glance. She just flew down the stairs, arms crossed tightly over her chest and her chin tucked against the cool air.
“Where is she going?” I asked, glancing back at her father.
“If you hurt my daughter in any way, shape, or form, I’ll make you disappear,” he said sharply instead of answering my question. “Just ask your father if you don’t think I’m serious.”
With a final glower at me and not a hint of a lie on his features, he slammed the door and I felt myself pale. Something had definitely happened between my dad and hers, and I intended on finding out exactly what that was.
Just as soon as I tracked down my bride and got her out of the rain.
I jogged down the stairs, grabbing the rickety railing to avoid breaking a leg if I slipped, but by the time I made it to street level, she was gone.
I groaned. It seemed all marriages, even the neatly arranged ones, were hard work. I just hadn’t quite anticipated how hard.