Chapter 3
TRISTAN
By midnight, Katie and her staff have shut the party down. I breathe a sigh of relief and slip onto the terrace. It’s warm for the second week of May, and I’m sweating under my tuxedo. I need an escape.
I need just one moment of normalcy before the world ends.
There’s a slight form leaning against the low wall that separates the terrace from the formal garden.
She’s clad in all black and her smartwatch illuminates the faint frown on her face.
My shoulders lower. Katie. I knew she’d be out here, and yet I still feel that relief drip through my veins.
With her, I’m not the spare. I’m just Tristan.
She takes no shit and she always makes me laugh, and right now I could really use some laughter.
I missed her. I think I just realized how much.
My shoe scrapes over the stone and her head jerks up.
“Hey, killer,” I say, my voice husky.
“Hey, sunshine,” she says with a small smile.
She pushes off the wall, and we fall into step over the terrace, then down the stairs into the formal garden.
It’s blessedly silent and cool. The ocean is a steady roar in the distance.
By silent agreement, we head for my house on the property.
All my siblings have houses on the massive estate, but mine is the best one—closest to the ocean, with a perfect view of the sunrise every morning.
“Sunshine, eh? You change the code names while I was gone?”
Katie slides me a look. “Someone kept bitching about being called Alpha Two.”
I chuckle, but my heart is lighter now that we’re treading familiar ground. “Not sure I like sunshine any better.”
“You didn’t like the colors I picked either.”
“You have shitty taste in colors. I wanted to be something fun, like magenta. Not brown.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. Something eases in my chest. When Katie came to Crownhaven, she never smiled. Her eyes were grave and sad and she tugged at my heart.
She looks different now, and part of me is realizing just how much.
Not her clothes or her hair, though I don’t remember her wearing shirts that were this tight two months ago, but her demeanor.
She’s confident. Not twenty-three anymore, but a twenty-six-year-old who has seen way more of the world than most twenty-six-year-olds.
Katie looks innocent, but she can shoot a man with alarming accuracy from fifty yards.
She has full pink lips and an upturned nose scattered with freckles.
She manages to look pouty and annoyed most of the time, from her high cheekbones and the slant of her mouth to the way she considers people from under her lashes.
I can’t stop darting glances at her.
“What?”
“You grow while I was gone?”
She lets out a breathless little laugh. “Fuck off, Tristan.”
I stop her on the steps of my house with a hand on her shoulder. “Bailey, I’m serious. I think you did grow. Come here.”
I’m one step below her, and her annoyed face is level with mine.
“Totally taller.”
She glares, her thickly lashed eyes narrowing on my face, her full lips pursing. The moonlight catches on her bottom lip. I don’t remember it being that…plush. My pulse trips.
I reach around to tug on her braid. “Want to play chess?”
“Did you get any better while I was gone? Winning is getting old.”
I let out a laugh from deep in my chest before I jog up the stairs. Katie trails me into the house, shedding her jacket and her shoes as she does. She curls into her preferred chair and pulls the coffee table with the chessboard closer.
She wrinkles her nose as she stares at the half-finished game from before my trip. “You’re going to lose.”
I drop into the chair across from her. “I am not.”
“Six moves. Maybe even four.” She points. “Queen to c5, then your castle to c7, queen to b6, your king to c8, checkmate.”
My jaw drops. “Fuck off, Bailey,” I grumble.
She laughs, her head tipped back. There’s an odd, breathless sensation in my throat as I watch, before I jerk my gaze to the board. Tonight has been weird.
“You think women are aroused by mediocre chess skills?” I ask as I start resetting the pieces.
“With any luck,” she says cheerfully. “You’re going to need it. You should have just let them arrange a marriage, Tristan. Once these women spend five minutes with you, they’ll run screaming for the hills.”
“Wouldn’t you like to see that?”
“Honestly?” Her gaze meets mine. “I think this whole thing is messed up. Rich people are not normal.”
“Tell me about it.”
She sighs. “I suppose I’ll need to help you.”
Her loyalty makes me smile. “Yeah? You want to find me someone to marry?”
“Want?” She makes a face. “No. Not when I have real responsibilities. Like keeping you from being kidnapped.”
“For the last time, Bailey,” I exclaim, “no one wants to kidnap me.”
She frowns. “Well, you would be my last choice. You’d probably start asking the kidnapper if they’d consider transitioning the van to electric to save the environment.”
I bark a laugh. “They’d have to let me go. I’m far too annoying.”
“Going to have to keep that under wraps while you look for a spouse.”
The thought makes me swallow my humor. “Yeah. Fuck.”
She studies the pieces while I study her, trying to put my finger on what looks different. Her lashes look longer. I’ve never noticed the shadows they cast on her cheeks before.
“This is really what you want?”
“This is what I’m doing,” I say slowly. “I want to run the company. I want to inherit. I want to take some of the burden from Aiden. And I don’t want Grandfather choosing my spouse.
” I toy with one of my pawns while I wait for her to move.
“You know I met every single distillery employee while I was gone?”
“All of them? There have to be at least five hundred.”
I nod. “More. They care so much about the whiskey and the company. I want to help them. I want to be the one at the helm.” The words zip through me, pull my spine straight.
She gives me a small smile as she edges a pawn forward. “Tristan Prince, CEO.”
I tap my own piece down. “One day. And to do that I need marriage. Someone compatible. We’ll reach an understanding. My life won’t change that much.”
Her gaze narrows. “Tristan, this isn’t any way to find happiness.”
“Don’t start with me.” I give her a pointed glance. “Next you’ll tell me to follow my dreams.”
Katie Bailey is all heart. A lioness who growls at her cubs—me and my siblings—and tells us to go for the things that make us cry.
She once told me she wanted to carry the Olympic torch and join the UN Peacekeepers.
She cries at documentaries and she could tell you her list of favorite poems off the top of her head.
She is my polar opposite, and I tease her about her weird dreams and her big heart as much as I can.
She gets all prim and straight spined when I do that.
If I piss her off enough, she’ll put me in a headlock.
Those days are my favorite. Being with her feels like what I imagine birds feel when they catch a good updraft or a football player when he makes an insane catch.
“Dreaming is good for the soul.”
“Not really concerned about my soul.” I move a pawn to the center.
“The heart, then.” Her queen’s knight comes out.
“Don’t have one.”
She throws a chess piece at my head, but I dodge nimbly, and she growls. “You are emotionally deficient.”
“Finally, you start listening to me. Only took you three years and two weeks.” I scoop up the pawn she tossed. “You think women are into that?”
“Fuck, Tristan,” she mutters.
“Besides, I am happy.” I point my knight at her. “I have the company, I have Crownhaven, I have my family, and I have you.”
“We might not always have this.” Her words are quiet.
My heart stutters. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her hand stills on her piece before she meets my gaze. “Things are changing, Tristan. I thought we had a year. We have—months.”
“I don’t want to think about it. I want to play chess with you until I’m eighty, okay?”
“Okay.” She blows out a breath.
We keep playing, but inside, there’s a tendril of doubt. What if I can’t stop things from changing?