Chapter 41
SYLVIE
Istood on the lodge steps looking at Kent. The nervous energy radiating from him made my stomach twist with sudden dread. He walked toward me like a man walking toward the gallows.
Something was wrong.
I couldn’t say how I knew it, but I could just tell. I supposed spending twenty-four hours straight with a man, with a great deal of those hours naked, had a way of putting you on the same wavelength as a person.
“What is it?” I asked. “I really need to get to lunch with Dad.”
Kent took a breath. I watched something shift in his expression, from uncertain to resigned, like he’d just made a difficult decision. The man was fighting some kind of war. I didn’t know what was going on, but he had me worried.
Oh God, please don’t tell me he really is married or engaged or has a serious girlfriend.
I couldn’t explain it, but my insides were shaking. It felt like I was in a speeding car heading for a broken bridge. Whatever he was about to say was going to ruin me. I knew it as well as I knew snow was white.
“Before you talk to your father, you need to understand what the Bancroft offer actually means,” he said carefully.
I nodded. “Of course. But what do you mean? What’s wrong, Kent? You’re freaking me out.”
“Signing it would mean your family doesn’t own any of this anymore. Not the lodge, not the tree farm, not the land. It would all become Bancroft property.”
I frowned with confusion. “Well, yes, that’s how investments work. You’d own a stake in the business.”
“No, Sylvie. Not a stake. All of it. Your family would have to relocate when we bring in the rigs. The land would be drilled for oil. No one will live here. Not you. Not your family. None of your employees. The area will be cleared. No trees. No homes.”
Each word hit me like a physical blow. Relocate. Rigs. Oil.
He was punctuating every word like I was a child. I supposed that was necessary because it wasn’t making sense.
“But you said…” I couldn’t seem to form complete thoughts. “You said your family wanted to invest in the lodge. I thought that meant to restore it. Make us profitable again. Maybe some marketing and upgrades.”
“I know what I said.” His voice was quiet, almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. “But the offer is for acquisition of the land and mineral rights. There’s oil under this property, Sylvie. A lot of it. Enough to justify paying your family handsomely to relocate and start fresh somewhere else.”
My heart was pounding so hard I could barely hear over the rush of blood in my ears. “Start fresh? This is our home, Kent. This is everything my family has built for generations. Hundreds of years”
“I know. But it would give everyone here a second chance. You could rebuild somewhere else, create something just as special as what Northwood already is.”
“When did you find this out?” I interrupted, my voice shaking. “About the oil, about what your family really wanted?”
He hesitated, and in that pause I saw the answer written all over his face.
“Since you got back from New York?” I asked, already knowing it was worse than that. “You told them about the property, and they changed their minds?”
He shook his head. “I’ve known the entire time, Sylvie. That’s why I came here. My father sent me to convince your family to sell the land and everything under it.”
The world around me started to spin. My vision blurred at the edges as my brain tried to process what he was saying. I heard the words, but they couldn’t be right. There was a disconnect between reality and what I wanted to believe.
All of this had been bullshit? A con? Some elaborate scheme to manipulate my family into signing away everything we had? Taking me to bed? That was part of his persuasion methods.
I felt sick. I took a step back. I couldn’t be near him.
“So this whole time,” I said slowly, my voice barely above a whisper. “You were lying to me. About everything.”
“Not everything.”
“You let me believe you were here to help us!” My voice was rising now, anger and humiliation burning through the shock.
“You let me think that paperwork was our salvation when you knew—you knew—it would destroy everything! I told you how much I loved this place. I told you the history and how it was the only thing I wanted. You have everything! Everything! And now you want what’s mine.
You don’t need this. You don’t need the oil or the money! ”
I felt so stupid. So unbearably naive. How could I have been so blind?
Emmy had warned me. Stacy had warned me. Even my own instincts had tried to tell me that Kent Bancroft was too good to be true. But I ignored all of it because I had wanted so desperately to believe that someone could save us. That he could save us.
Kent reached for my hand. I yanked it back like he might burn me.
He did burn me. He incinerated my entire world. The family business was done. It was a double loss.
“Don’t touch me,” I said, wrapping my arms tightly around myself. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
“Sylvie, please. Just let me explain.”
“Explain what? How you came here specifically to screw my family over? How you slept with me while planning to take everything we have?” My voice cracked on the last word. I hated that I was about to cry in front of him. “God, why didn’t I listen to everyone who tried to warn me about you?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He actually had the audacity to look like he meant it. “I never meant for things to get this complicated. I never meant to hurt you.”
“But you did it anyway.” The anger was draining away now, leaving only a hollow ache in my chest. “You knew it would hurt me, and you did it anyway.”
“Sylvie, I swear, if there was another way…”
He didn’t finish his statement because it was a lie. We both knew there was another way. He chose not to take it.
“Why?” The word came out broken, barely audible. “Why did you have to get close to me? Why couldn’t you just make your offer and leave? What did I ever do to you to deserve this?”
I watched his face fall, and for a moment he looked genuinely tortured. But I couldn’t trust anything about him anymore. Every expression and word that had come out of his mouth had all been a performance.
“You didn’t do anything,” he said quietly. “Sylvie, you have to believe me, getting close to you wasn’t part of the plan. What happened between us, that was real.”
I laughed, but it came out harsh and bitter. “Real? You think any of this was real? You came here to destroy my family, Kent. You slept with me while planning to take everything we have. How is that real?”
“Because I fell for you!” The words exploded out of him, raw and desperate. “I wasn’t supposed to, but I did. Everything I feel for you is real, Sylvie. None of that was fake.”
“Stop.” I held up a hand, unable to listen to any more lies. “Just stop. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to make this about your feelings when you’ve been manipulating me from day one.”
“I know how this looks.”
“How it looks?” I stared at him in disbelief. “Kent, this isn’t about how it looks. This is about what you did. You let me fall for you while knowing you were going to destroy everything I love. You held me last night and let me talk about our future together when you knew there wouldn’t be one.”
The memory of lying in his arms just hours ago made me feel physically sick. I had been so naive, so trusting. I had handed him my heart on a silver platter while he was sharpening the knife to carve it up.
“I wanted there to be a future,” he said, taking a step toward me. “I still want that. We could figure this out together.”
“Figure what out?” I backed away from him, my voice rising again. “How to rebuild my life after you wreck it? How to start over somewhere else while your family gets rich off our land? There’s nothing to figure out, Kent. You made your choice the moment you decided to lie to me.”
I could see the desperation in his eyes, the way he was scrambling for something to say that might fix this. But there was nothing. No explanation that could undo the betrayal, no apology that could heal the wound he’d carved into my chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. I could hear the helplessness in his voice. “I’m so fucking sorry, Sylvie. I never wanted to hurt you like this.”
“But you did it anyway.”
I needed to get away from him. Needed to talk to my father and figure out what the hell we were going to do now.
I turned and marched up the stairs, my arms still wrapped around myself like I could hold all the broken pieces together through sheer force of will.
“Sylvie, wait.”
“I have to talk to my father,” I said without looking back. “Leave, Kent. Get the hell out of here and never talk to me or touch me again!”
I pushed through the lodge doors. I was barely keeping it together. Stacy was working behind the check-in counter. She looked up at my entrance and her expression immediately shifted from pleasant to concerned.
“Sylvie? Are you okay?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak without completely falling apart. I just needed to get somewhere private. I needed somewhere I could break down without an audience of lodge guests witnessing my humiliation.
I rushed toward the back hallway that led to the private family areas. I heard Stacy calling after me. A moment later, she caught up with me in one of the storage rooms, closing the door behind her to give us privacy.
“What happened?” she asked. “Was it Kent? I saw you talking to him outside.”
That was all it took. The concern in her voice and being in the presence of someone who actually cared about me broke through whatever fragile control I’d been maintaining. I dissolved into tears, great heaving sobs that shook my entire body.
“You were right,” I choked out between sobs. “You and Emmy were both right about him. He’s been lying to me this entire time.”
Stacy pulled me into a fierce hug. I clung to her like a drowning person.
“The offer,” I managed to say. “It’s not an investment. It’s an acquisition. They want to buy all of our land so they can drill for oil. We’d have to relocate. Everything would be destroyed.”
“Oh, honey,” Stacy said softly, her hand rubbing soothing circles on my back. “I’m so sorry.”
“And he knew,” I continued, the words tumbling out now that I’d started. “From the very beginning, he knew what his family was planning. He came here specifically to trick us into selling. God, I was so stupid. I slept with him. I trusted him. I thought he was going to save us.”
The humiliation of it was almost worse than the heartbreak. I’d been so desperate for hope, so eager to believe in a miracle, that I’d ignored every red flag and walked right into this disaster.
“You’re not stupid,” Stacy said firmly. “You’re a good person who wanted to believe the best in someone. That’s not a character flaw, Sylvie. That’s who you are.”
Being a good person who believed the best in people felt like the worst kind of weakness. And the worst part? Some foolish part of me still couldn’t quite believe that everything between us had been a lie.