Chapter 20
Alexander
“Hey, do you have a minute?”
Lando checks his watch, then looks back up at me standing in the door to his study and nods. “Actually, I can give you between ten and twenty.”
“Why, Your Grace, I’m honored,” I say, with a dramatic clasp to my chest, and plop down into one of the big leather wingback chairs opposite his desk, next to Hamish stretched out on the rug.
They’re deep maroon leather, with brass studs lining the edges and, along the curves where everyone’s rested or rubbed their hands over the years, a little worn and could probably do with being repaired.
But these chairs were my father’s, and every time I sit in them, it takes me back to my childhood, when I’d come into his study and lounge in them with a book while he worked.
Sometimes I’d fall asleep, only to wake up with a blanket over me.
“So what’s up?” my brother asks, pulling me away from my trip down memory lane.
“What’s happening in ten or twenty minutes?”
“I’m leaving for London.”
“What’s in London?”
“Holiday’s on Graham Norton. We’re going for dinner afterward with some of her friends.”
I smirk. “Movie friends?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
Lando shrugs it off, though it sounds fucking cool.
But it’s a testament to how much he loves Holiday, because usually getting Lando into London outside of his monthly meetings would be done on pain of death.
He hates going to London, and he hates schmoozing, but he hates being apart from Holiday even more.
Ironically, it bodes well for me, and it’s exactly what I want to talk about.
“Well—”
Hendricks pops his head around the door. “Lan, ready to go?”
“Yeah, in ten minutes.”
I frown, I don’t normally get FOMO, but I have it now. “You’re going out with the movie stars too? I want to come.”
He shakes his head, his curls flopping over enough that he pushes them away. “No, I’m taking Max to see Father Christmas.”
“Oh, I don’t want to do that.”
“You weren’t invited.”
I return his grin. “Touché.”
“See you outside in fifteen?” He taps the doorframe, waiting for Lando’s nod of confirmation. He’s about to leave, but his eyes fall onto a red envelope on Lando’s desk. “Is that Miles’s Christmas card?”
Lando’s mouth twitches. He’s torn between laughing his balls off and trying not to find it remotely amusing. I know, because that was my reaction when I saw it.
“Yeah. The dickhead has a death wish.”
Clementine is the unwitting subject of Miles’s card this year.
I never saw him take it because I was laughing too hard, but it was earlier in the summer during a movie night. It had been Clementine’s turn to pick, and her choice was some chick flick. I don’t remember the salient details.
It was fine. I probably checked my emails through it.
But Clementine started crying two-thirds of the way through, while demolishing a tub of popcorn, and by the credits, she was nothing but blotchy, tear-streaked, and red-faced, covered in all the popcorn that missed her mouth. Extreme even for her.
The movie wasn’t that good. But for some insane reason, Miles decided that was the picture for his card.
“She’s on the warpath.”
I shake my head because I have sympathy, but we’ve also all been there. “Last year’s card was me drunk out of my mind, soaking wet, having fallen in the fountain after the summer fair.”
There’s a moment of silence, no doubt all of us contemplating our Christmas card fate.
“Well, anyway.” Hendricks thumbs back toward the corridor. “Ten minutes, Lan.”
“I’ll be there.”
He takes off, and I hear him calling Max’s name as he walks away.
“Did you know Story’s back?” I add absentmindedly, not expecting Lando to sit forward with speed and lean across his desk.
“Story MacIntosh?”
“One and the same.”
He peers at the open door. “Does he know?”
“He does. And according to Haven, he went to the tree stall and yelled at her.”
A low whistle passes through Lando’s lips. Hamish’s ears prick, but he quickly loses interest. “How does Haven know?”
“She was at the tree stand when Hendricks popped by.”
“Has he ever told you what happened between them?”
I shake my head. “Nope. You?”
“No.”
We stare at each other, through the silence, both trying to come up with theories as to why Hendricks and a girl he used to spend almost as much time with as Miles haven’t spoken in six years.
It’s one thing he’s never talked about. It’s rarely mentioned, and truthfully I’d forgotten all about it until the other week, but now I’m wondering if we’ll finally get to the bottom of what happened.
“Al, you’ve got eight minutes . . .”
I sit up a little straighter. “Shit, right. Okay. I need advice. And I need to talk about Everly.”
Lando’s dark brows knit together. “I’ll try.”
“I have Arthur working up a new offer for Wylder Ranch—”
“I thought Haven didn’t want to sell it.”
I hold my hand up to stop his interruption because I only have eight minutes.
“She doesn’t. She wants to keep it for Everly.
” I raise my brows, and Lando nods in agreement, because if anyone’s going to understand the importance of generational inheritance, it’s us.
Everly should have that ranch. “However, I also want to give Haven a secure future, and I know she won’t take money directly from me, so .
. . I’ve come up with a plan to offer the asking price, and if she accepts, the ranch will be put into a trust for Everly, and they can stay living there.
And there’s a clause against development. ”
“That’s generous of you, Al.”
I know he means it as a compliment but I don’t think it’s particularly generous. I’m doing what I can to provide for my daughter’s future. It’s nothing less than what he would do. His firstborn will inherit the dukedom and Burlington, just like he did.
“And Haven. What about her?”
I lean forward, elbows resting on my knees. My mind flits and, like it always does whenever I think of her, a surge of emotion builds in my chest. Most days, I walk about in awe of her, what she’s overcome, how much she went through by herself, and what an incredible mother she is.
“You know, over this year, there were so many times when I wondered if I’d imagined our connection.
Even when she arrived, I thought ‘what if it was just sex between us?’” I drop my head, run my hands through my hair, and try to unjumble my thoughts.
“But it’s not . . . it’s . . . when did you know you’d fallen in love with Holiday?
” I glance up to find my brother looking at me intently. “How did you know, Lan?”
He doesn’t even take a beat before he replies, “When I couldn’t stand the idea of her leaving.”
“Yeah.” I pause. Take stock. Think about what I’m going to ask.
Burlington is my home, it’s all I’ve ever known, it’s where I’m closest to my dad, and it’s somewhere I never thought I’d leave.
But becoming a father myself has put things into perspective, and I know my dad would have moved heaven and earth to do what he thought was right for me.
“I want to open a North American division of Burlington Estates, and I’d head up international operations from there.
We’ve been talking about it for ages. This is the perfect opportunity. ”
“In Colorado?”
“There’s a lot of land,” I reason.
“Have you talked to Haven about it?”
“Not yet. I needed to figure out logistics first. But I will this week.”
Hendricks’s voice echoes down the corridor, telling Lando to hurry up. But Lando doesn’t look like he’s in the mood to hurry. He’s staring at me, contemplating, scratching his fingers through his beard.
“Have a look into it,” he says eventually and stands to leave as we hear Hendricks’s heavy footsteps get closer. “Run the numbers again.”
“Thanks, Lan.” Getting up myself, I pull him into a big hug. “Enjoy the movie stars.”
“I’d rather see Father Christmas,” he grunts.
I walk through the front door of the cottage with a pep in my step and follow the smell of sugar and the sound of Christmas music to the kitchen.
It’s usually a noise that shrivels my balls to raisins.
But this December is not the same as previous years, and the reason is standing with her back to me, arse jiggling in a pair of tight black leggings while she waves a spatula around and sings along to Michael Bublé.
The sight fills me with immense pleasure, not least because Haven feels at home enough here to cover every surface of the kitchen in things I wasn’t aware I even had in the first place.
Outside of losing my dad, I always thought my life was pretty great, fulfilled in a way I never questioned. But since I met her, and even more so in the brief time after Everly entered my life, I know how wrong I was. How much color it was missing.
How much of them it was missing.
Despite my brothers taking the piss, there are reasons I never lived with anyone before, never had anyone in my space beyond sleepovers, and it’s because I like things the way I like them.
I’m thirty-two years old, and I don’t want to return home to someone else’s shit everywhere.
I don’t want to have to go hunting to find something that wasn’t where I left it.
I assumed I was set in my ways, when really it’s that I’ve never met anyone I wanted to change my ways for.
But coming home to this—to her—is a life I see myself not only living but wanting.
So I stand there, watching her dance her way around the kitchen, measure out ingredients, and pour them into bowls. There’s a freedom to her that I remember from last year. It’s what captured my attention in the first place.
And when she turns around, all loose strands falling over bare shoulders, tits pushed up tight, to find me leaning against the doorway watching her, the smile that stretches across her icing sugar-streaked face hits me straight in my dick.
“Hey!”
“Hey, yourself.” I push off the doorframe and step toward her, wrapping my arms around her so I can drop a kiss on her lips. “Where’s the baby?”
“She’s taking a nap.”