Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tristan
The alarm on my phone went off and I reached across the bed, just like I had every morning in Mexico. Except this morning, my hands didn’t find Parker. I opened my eyes to find the other half of the bed empty.
We’d gotten home last night and she’d fallen asleep on the sofa in front of the TV. I’d carried her upstairs to bed.
“Parker?” I called out, but there was no reply.
I staggered out of bed and into the hallway, where I saw her bedroom door ajar. I pushed the door open to find Parker fast asleep.
What was she doing?
I scooped her up and, as I was laying her down back in my bed, she opened her eyes. “You’re always carrying me places,” she said, her voice full of sleep.
“It’s because you’re so tiny—it’s easy and quick.” I slipped back under the sheets, lying on my side next to her. I propped my head up on my hand. “Why did you go back to the guest room?”
She dragged her hands down her face and groaned. “I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t want you to wake up and wish I wasn’t next to you.”
Now it was my time to groan. “Why would you think that?”
She propped herself up onto her elbows. “If this was my house, I might feel that way if you woke up in my bed. You know I like my space.”
I chuckled. “Oh how I love your truth bombs, Parker. But for the record, I didn’t want to wake up to an empty bed.”
“You sure?” she asked. “I’m a grabby sleeper. I like to starfish.”
“I noticed. I might have to invest in an Alaskan king.” My phone buzzed on the nightstand. “It’s Gabriel,” I explained. “He wants to catch up for dinner. Are you free tonight?”
“He’s inviting me?”
“He’s inviting us.”
Parker sighed. “Tristan, he knows we’re not a real couple.
He’ll be inviting you, not us.” She sat up properly this time and looked me right in the eye.
“We’ve been thrown off course a little. Maybe it was the sunshine or the margaritas.
Whatever it was, we’re back to real life now.
And in real life, we’re not a real couple. ”
She was starting to piss me off. If she was trying to dismiss what had happened between us as a holiday romance, I was going to get irritated.
I knew how good Mexico had been.
I knew how close we’d gotten.
I knew she felt it too.
I swung her legs around and shifted her onto my lap so she was facing me. “Stop freaking out, Parker.”
“I’m not freaking out. I’m being practical.”
“No, you’re freaking out. We’re not going back to how things were before Mexico. Even if we wanted to—which neither of us do—it would be impossible. Too much has happened.”
“You’re telling me what I want and don’t want?” she asked.
My jaw was tight and my heartbeat thundered in my chest like horses’ hooves. I wanted her and I knew she wanted me too, but something inside her was trying to sabotage us before we’d even got going. “Actually I am. And I’m right, too. But I want to understand why you’re pulling away.”
“It’s just so complicated. What do we do, file for divorce in ninety days and then start dating? It’s too weird.”
“We’ll figure out ninety days in ninety days. Between now and then, we’re going to enjoy being with each other. Waking up together. Going to bed together. Eating together and socializing with each other’s friends.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I don’t have a good track record with boyfriends,” she said, glancing up at me sheepishly.
I wanted to tell her I was already president of the Bad at Relationships Club, but something told me there was more she had to say.
“I told you that I was engaged once. A while ago.”
I held my breath. I wanted to hear more about it but I hadn’t wanted to ask.
“It didn’t last long.” She let out a bitter laugh. It was a tone I’d never heard from her before. “Right around the time he found out I didn’t have access to any money of my own, he . . . left me.”
“What happened?” I didn’t need to know. I could guess the rest, and it made me want to punch the guy’s lights out. What a weak dickhead. Couldn’t make his own money so wanted to live off someone else’s.
“It took him a while to realize I had no money of my own, and it took me more than a while to figure out who he was.” She sighed and tucked her hair behind her ears again, though it was already there.
“I lived in a bigger flat then. A place in Mayfair. I ran in a different circle. I suppose he thought I was rich—after all, I’m Arthur Frazer’s daughter, aren’t I?
But I wasn’t rich. Dad gave me money if I asked, but I didn’t ask very often.
Day-to-day, I lived off what I earned. My bank account was in the black but it wasn’t overflowing.
Looking back, he was always disappointed when I gave him handmade gifts at Christmas or his birthday.
I missed all the hints he’d drop about expensive watches or gadgets.
None of it means anything to me, so I just .
. . didn’t pick up the signals. And then one day he straight-out asked for a camera for Christmas and pointed out the model.
I laughed and told him I couldn’t afford it.
It was something like five thousand pounds.
Would have been a drop in the bucket if I had the Frazer money he thought I did. ”
She looked up at me.
“Five thousand pounds is a lot of money on a Christmas gift, regardless of how wealthy you are.” I wanted to buy Parker a bath full of diamonds and it still wouldn’t be enough, but everything was relative.
“Right,” she replied. “And I didn’t have it.”
“Your father doesn’t strike me as a man who would keep you short,” I said.
“Of course not. He’s more than generous, but I never expected him to supplement my income.
He bought me a house. I left university without any debt.
It wasn’t like I didn’t get help; I just didn’t get an allowance.
Because I was a grown woman. He would offer from time to time, and he talked about setting up a trust fund, but I wasn’t interested.
I always said I would go to him if I needed anything, but I was comfortable with what I had.
And you know me well enough to understand that paying my own way felt .
. . important, somehow. Anyway, Mike got really upset with me when I said no to the camera.
I tried to talk to him about it and suggested something cheaper, but he just got more irate.
He told me I should speak to my father and that I was being selfish. ”
It took everything I had not to ask for this guy’s surname and cause him some serious problems online.
I could have his bank account drained within ten minutes.
Give me a day and I could have his passport cancelled.
A colorful criminal record is a lovely gift at any time of year, and priceless, too.
“So you dumped him?”
She hung her head. “No. I bought him the camera.”
My stomach plummeted into the floor.
“I put it on my credit card. Looking back, I realize what an idiot I was, but at the time I just wanted to make him happy. Before then everything had seemed so perfect. I just wanted to go back to that. I thought the camera would do it. A few months later, he suggested a trip—he said it would help us relax before the wedding preparations got underway. We hadn’t landed on a venue or anything, in part because we wanted really different things.
He wanted a destination wedding where everyone was flown out to the Maldives and put up in a resort.
I wanted something more . . . intimate.”
“Something more you,” I said.
She shrugged. “Anyway, for this pre-wedding trip, he wanted to go to Dubai. He’d planned out luxury accommodations and a private plane to get there.
But I had work and we were short staffed, and I told him I couldn’t make it.
So he said he could make it a boys’ trip.
I wasn’t thrilled because it was meant to be our pre-wedding trip, but I accepted it.
And then he asked for my credit card.” She gave a half laugh. “What an idiot.”
“You gave it to him?”
She shook her head. “No. It was maxed out from the camera. I told him that. So he told me to go ask my dad. I refused. And then over the next few weeks, he started to question me about whether or not I had a trust fund and if I was the beneficiary of my dad’s will.
Finally I told him that my father was leaving everything to charity and that he didn’t believe in handing wealth down through the generations. ”
“What did Mike have to say about that?”
“He didn’t even try to pretend. He just looked me in the eye and told me he wanted my engagement ring back.”
I cupped her face in my hand, trying to erase the expression of sadness she wore.
“I’d been lied to and manipulated. I’d fallen for his charm and compliments and . . .” She shook her head. “I was such a fool.”
“No,” I said. “He was the fool.”
“Anyway, apparently he’s in Monaco now. No doubt trying to land a rich wife.”
“Something tells me you didn’t bounce back quite so easily.” Perhaps she still hadn’t, given I’d found her sleeping in the spare room this morning.
“You were the first date I’d had since it all happened.”
I frowned but she answered my question before it had fully formed in my brain. “It was six years ago.”
Things started to slot into place. Arthur happy to have me take her to dinner. Gifting us the honeymoon. He wanted his daughter to trust someone again.
I sat and pulled her onto my lap. “He’s the one to blame in all this.”
“I know. But now I never know if someone likes me because of who I am or because of what they think I can give them.”
I sighed. “Everyone wants something.”
“Exactly. It’s impossible to know who to trust.”