Chapter 6
KATIE
Tristan’s outside when I duck out of my apartment before dawn the next morning.
He’s wearing a green hoodie and white running shorts that display an alarming amount of thigh.
There’s a pulse inside me as I take him in.
Laughing eyes under heavy lashes, soft mouth tilted up at the side, sharp jaw shadowed with stubble.
His gaze is warm and friendly, like it always is.
“Hi.” His voice is soft, and his grin is a white slash in the dim light.
“Hi,” I whisper back. “Surprised you’re here. Don’t you have dates to prepare for? Potential spouses to woo?”
He gives me a dirty look. “Nothing is changing. Knock it off.”
“Whatever you say, sunshine.”
“Come on,” he grumbles. “Maybe I’ll beat you today.”
“Seems unlikely.” I bump him into the railing so I can get ahead of him down the steps. “I like the attitude, though.”
We jog toward the path that will take us through the trees, then down to the water.
By unspoken agreement, we always end at the ocean when the sun is rising, and we always beg Alexis for coffee from catering on the way back.
Tristan always tries to grab a pastry from the oven, and she always yells at him, and he always promises bigger and bigger raises.
Our feet slap the path, our breaths even and steady. Birds chirp to each other in the cool May air. It smells like wet growing things under the tree cover. Grass cuttings and mulch and the beginnings of summer flowers. Rain from last night and damp earth.
Something eases in my chest. A morning like this is proof that the weird things I felt last night don’t need to rule me.
Tristan tips up his head to take in a lungful of air.
“You miss it?” I ask quietly.
“Yeah.” He exhales. “I’m glad to be back. Learning about the distilleries was great, but this is where I belong.”
“And you might be meeting Mrs. Tristan Prince later.” I can’t help but needle him. He has a date tonight with Shilpi Sharma, the bombshell investor who flew here from Berlin.
He makes a face. “We’ll see.”
“You nervous?”
He snorts, like him being nervous is an impossibility. “I’m the prize, Bailey. I don’t need to be nervous.”
“Or modest,” I shoot back.
“I have no reason to be modest,” he says, grinning. “I made a woman drop her coffee yesterday morning when I winked at her.”
“She was probably just surprised that eyebrows could move like that. Frankly, it’s impressive.”
He chuckles. “I’ll show you impressive.”
I give him a startled look, but he’s just smirking as we exit the trees into the soft dawn light. He reaches over and yanks at the ponytail under my ball cap.
“What’s with the outfit today?” He glances me over. “You look like a camp counselor.”
My lips flatten. “You know, you don’t have to be an asshole all the time.
” My words are mild, because Tristan doesn’t know this is my button.
He’s immeasurably confident. It’s why he badgers me about my clothes and how I prefer to stay out of the limelight.
He can’t imagine that someone wouldn’t want to be in front of a ballroom of strangers who call them a servant when they’re not looking.
I’m the one with hang-ups, not him, but still, discomfort wriggles inside me.
I exhale slowly, shoving it down, biting my tongue.
“I’m an asshole most of the time,” he teases. “I hope this woman is into it.”
She will be, I don’t say. Of course she will be. Half the people in the world seem to want him.
There’s a tightening in my belly that won’t stop. It ratchets up every time he looks at me.
It’s the same type of nerves that I felt last night when I spent way too long looking at Tristan’s potential matches. In the name of security, of course.
My due diligence quickly turned to jealousy when I read their resumes.
Not because they’re going to be with Tristan, but because they have everything I’ve ever wanted.
Today’s heiress went to the London School of Economics and is the CIO of her family company.
I’d give my left kidney to finish college. I’d give both to have a family.
“She’s smart,” I say. “She has an MBA.”
“But is she hot?” He leers at me, and I roll my eyes.
“You don’t care about that.”
“I have the emotional depth of a teaspoon, Bailey. Of course I care about that.”
His words are standard Tristan, but they make something twist in my chest.
“Is that the main criteria?”
He shrugs. “I just want someone normal. Someone I can get along with. I’ll fund their charitable work, and they’ll go to the occasional event with me and make the family look good. A business arrangement.”
I frown at him.
“What?”
My pace slows. “That’s incredibly depressing.”
“Not you too,” he groans. “Aiden was on about this last week. Marriage is great, love is wonderful. I practically had to pop all the little hearts floating above his head.”
“So no love?”
He shudders and shakes his shoulders. “No love. You know my motto.”
“Which one? There are too many to count.”
“I can’t help being a very wise man.”
I scoop up an acorn from one of the many oaks on the property and wing it at his head. He dodges nimbly, grinning.
“Always be in control,” he says, and I roll my eyes.
“Not this again,” I mutter.
“Never take by force what you can win by cunning.”
“You’re like a bad book of sayings.”
“Ah, but it works for me.” He picks up the pace and gives me a teasing grin. “Let’s go.”
“You know, I don’t need to beat you. This is work for me, rich boy.”
His eyes crinkle at the edges. “You’re scared.”
I speed up, my legs still feeling fresh. “I bet you didn’t run at all while you were away. You probably spent all your time drinking and puttering around in the distilleries.”
He smirks and picks up his own pace. “The muscle I’ve put on says otherwise.”
I give him a flat stare. “I didn’t notice.
” We round the corner and I pick up speed again, leaning into the turn, letting myself loose for the sheer joy of it.
Tristan excels at pacing himself, at saving something for the final stretch, and I don’t.
I’m like a dog let off the leash when I run.
I want to go out in a blaze of glory—pumping arms, pounding heart, burning lungs.
I want to feel bigger than myself for those few precious seconds.
“Let’s go,” he shouts from behind me as we run into the wind.
“Getting slow, old man,” I call back. The wind rips my words away, and then we’re both breathing too hard to talk. First one to slap the rock wins, another unspoken agreement.
My feet are barely touching the ground. Tristan can’t catch me. No one can.
I slap the rock before he does and collapse into the grass. It’s covered in dew that soaks into my shorts. Tristan lands next to me. We grin stupidly at each other. His chest is rising and falling in sharp pants.
“Damn, killer.” His eyes spark. He passes a hand over his face, starts laughing, and then falls backward into the grass. I sink into it next to him. His arms starfish out as we stare up at the lightening sky. “God damn.”
“I’ll miss this,” I say softly. “And don’t say things won’t change, because they will.”
He makes a considering sound in his throat. I watch two birds chase each other across the sky.
“I have an idea,” he says.
I snort, because half his ideas are bad and half are dangerous. “Leave me out of it.”
He barks a laugh.
“What? You think that’s funny?” I turn my head to see him with an arm draped over his face.
“No.” He laughs again. “No, I was going to ask you to marry me.”