Chapter 13
NATE
Iwalked back into the conference room to find a wall of expectant faces waiting for me. Alex stood at the head of the table, his hands braced against the polished surface like he was conducting a boardroom orchestra.
Our father sat to his right, composed and watchful. Pete Vanderhaul leaned slightly forward, fingers steepled and his expression contemplative. Courtney sat beside him, her smile strained enough that anyone paying attention would notice.
Every eye landed on me when I crashed through the door. Alex’s gaze met mine and he cleared his throat. “Did you make Kate aware of the situation?”
A dark chuckle slid out of me before I could stop it and I dragged a hand over my jaw, trying to scrub the image of her armor cracking out of my mind, but it didn’t work.
Her eyes had been so fucking wide, her breaths coming out in sharp, pained-sounding pants, and her shoulders trembling as she’d fled my office.
“Yeah,” I said roughly, my disdain palpable. “I told her about the situation.”
Relief so intense that it was visible registered on my brother’s face. He exhaled a long, slow breath and turned back to the table. “Alright. That’s good news. Then we can move forward with the details.”
My molars ground together, but he just kept going on. That was Alex, though. Always already thinking about the next step. It wasn’t because he didn’t care. For all his faults, that wasn’t one of them. If anything, he cared a little too deeply.
Especially about our family and doing whatever it took to keep building. To keep expanding. To keep doing bigger things. Better things.
“Dad and I were thinking that we keep the prenup airtight, but generous. Obviously.” He glanced at Pete and Courtney as he said it. “We’ll have it drafted to protect both companies, but we should also discuss the timeline.”
He looked at me, and although he’d been informed of this before I had, I knew he understood what I was going through right now, which meant he didn’t expect me to speak, knowing I was still very much digesting all this. If he piled anything else on me, I might run for the hills like Kate had.
“If Hinds wants confirmation quickly,” he said. “We’ll need to consider engagement announcements, possible wedding dates, and think about how we’re going to manage public optics.”
Public optics.
My hands curled into fists at my sides. I’d spoken to my cousins when they had gone through similar situations. I’d been right there next to Alex when we’d been going through these very same motions with him and Jane.
None of it was new to me. It was just a hell of a lot more infuriating now that we were talking about me.
About my fucking wedding and what the damn public would think about it.
Worse than all that, I had never expected my future wife to look so upset at the prospect of marrying me.
The security footage of her fleeing the building in horror would not be going into the wedding video.
Our father nodded thoughtfully. “A summer wedding would give us enough time to align the legal and financial transitions. Plus the weather is nicer.”
Pete hummed in agreement. “That might also stabilize market perception.”
Courtney shifted in her chair, her smile thinning further, but she didn’t interject. Meanwhile, the more they kept planning, the more I felt like someone had poured concrete into my ribs.
“She hasn’t agreed yet,” I said suddenly, the words cutting clean across the room.
Alex glanced up at me like he was surprised, but also like I’d simply mentioned an irrelevant little detail. “She will.”
Something inside me snapped taut and my voice dropped into a tone that was edged with steel. “That’s up to Kate. She needs to be a part of this conversation.”
Alex straightened slowly. “It’s her choice, and we’ve already established—”
“No,” I interrupted, louder this time. “You’ve established. You, Dad, Abram, and Pete, but Kate hasn’t actually said yes to jack shit.”
A heavy silence slammed down around the table and Alex’s chest rose on a deep breath before he nodded. “This acquisition doesn’t survive if she says no.”
My pulse thundered, but my voice was frighteningly calm. “Then it doesn’t survive. I won’t pressure her into this.”
Pete’s brows mashed together, his spine stiffening and his head jerking like he’d been slapped. “Let’s not be dramatic.”
I turned toward him, letting the restraint I was clinging to with absolutely fucking everything I had harden me. “Let’s get one thing straight. If she agrees, you hand over the account to her. Fully. She runs it herself.”
Pete bristled. “That’s not how our firm operates.”
“Maybe it should be,” I said coolly. “If she’s expected to stake her entire life on this deal, she deserves full authority over the work she’s already been doing for years.”
Courtney’s gaze flickered between us, discomfort flashing openly in her eyes. Good. Someone in this room should look uneasy because this is fucking insane.
Pete’s jaw tightened. “Kate is already positioned to inherit—”
“I’m not talking about someday,” I cut in. “I’m talking about now. She’s a person with feelings. Nothing happens without her complete agreement.” I glanced around at everyone again, eyes narrowed. “Why am I the only person in the room trying to protect Kate?”
“Because you’ll make a fine husband,” Pete said, nodding.
I growled in frustration. “Only if she wants me.”
My father leaned back in his chair, studying me like he was recalculating an equation that should’ve been familiar but had suddenly changed variables. Alex exhaled slowly through his nose.
When I started toward the door, he finally spoke. “We have a lot more to discuss.”
“I’m done discussing it for now. Not without Kate.” I was already turning away.
Alex’s chair scraped behind me as he stood. “Nate, you don’t get to walk out when this involves both companies and—”
I paused at the door, glancing back at them all over my shoulder. “Either we do this the right way or we don’t do it at all.”
Before anyone could respond, I strode out without looking back again. When I reached the street, the wind had picked up, whipping between the skyscrapers cold enough to bite through my suit jacket, but it barely cooled the heat under my skin.
My head was buzzing too loudly, every thought crashing into the next. Kate’s face when I told her. The betrayal in her eyes when she’d realized her father had approved Hinds’ idea. The way she’d looked at me like I was the executioner instead of the guy chained to the same damn chopping block.
By the time I reached the St. Regis, my jaw ached from clenching it so hard. I rode the elevator up and slowed when I reached her door. The urge hit me to knock and make sure she wasn’t spiraling alone.
Surely, I could come up with something to say that might soften the blow I’d just delivered to both our lives.
My hand twitched at my side to do just that, but instead, I just exhaled a harsh breath and went to my own door instead.
I didn’t even know how to soften the fucking blow on myself, let alone a woman who didn’t even like me and had been told she’d be spending the rest of her life with me anyhow.
Once I was in my apartment, I tugged off my tie, letting it fall wherever it landed, and shed my jacket in its wake.
After I’d opened at least half my buttons, I finally felt like I could breathe again, but I still braced both hands against the kitchen counter.
My head dropped between my shoulders as everything I’d been holding back slammed into me at once.
They’re planning my wedding. A marriage. Our families are deciding our futures like it’s just another clause in just another contract.
And Kate, fierce, impossible Kate, was standing in the center of it all with me whether she wanted to or not. My chest felt like it was on the verge of collapse, guilt clawing deeper with every breath, yet one thought cut through the chaos in my mind.
Emma.
I pushed upright.
I have to talk to Emma.
I’d only heard her voice a handful of times over the years. Most of our relationship lived in emails—long, rambling messages sent at odd hours, stitched together with confessions and half-finished thoughts neither of us would have ever said out loud or to anyone else.
Texts were for quick check-ins, but phone calls were rare.
She almost never answered and I’d never pushed it.
Tonight, I didn’t have the luxury of patience, but I also didn’t want to risk her not picking up if she was at work, so I settled for middle ground, grabbing my phone and typing the most important text I would ever send.
Me: I know I’ve already asked but I need to see you. I’ll fly to NYC right now if you can meet with me. It’s important.
I hit send, my pulse drumming in my ears. The message felt reckless. Desperate. Completely unlike me and yet, right then, reckless and desperate sounded about right.
I’d barely set the phone on the counter before it buzzed.
Emma: I’m actually not there at the moment. I’m in Chicago.
I stared at the screen like the words might rearrange themselves into a phrase that was less shocking. She’s here?
Another message popped up before I could even begin to get my head wrapped around the fact that she was here, in my city. In all the time we’d been talking, she hadn’t been here once as far as I knew. On the other hand, I hadn’t known she was here now either.
Emma: I’m really busy, but I agree. We need to meet. We need to talk. When are you free?
I lowered myself slowly into one of the kitchen stools, the polished marble cold beneath my forearms as I leaned forward with my phone dangling loosely in my grip. She’s here. Fuck. Emma is in the same city I am right now.
The timing should have felt like fate. Instead, it felt like the universe had decided to wrap both hands around my throat and squeeze. I scrubbed a palm over my face, exhaling hard.
A mental image of Kate’s face flashed behind my eyes again—her expression the moment her composure had shattered. The stunned disbelief. The way she’d pinched herself like she thought she was trapped in some surreal nightmare she could wake up from if she tried hard enough.
Guilt churned low in my stomach once more. This is wrong. For Emma. For Kate. For me.
I stared at the blank reply box, my thumbs hovering uselessly above the screen while my mind tangled itself into knots. I didn’t like Kate. Kate infuriated me.
Doesn’t she?
“Yes,” I muttered to the empty apartment, like I needed to hear it out loud to believe it. “She’s a maddening woman with great hair and grit. That’s all. And a decent caboose. But that’s it.”
I shifted in the stool, tension coiling tighter in my shoulders. I respected her tenacity. Her intelligence. The way she bulldozed through conversations with zero regard for anyone’s ego.
And apparently, I appreciate the fullness of her lips too. The sharp curve of her smile. The swell of her ripe peach of an ass.
I shoved upright so fast, the legs of the stool screeched across the floor. Dragging both hands through my hair, I shook my head at myself and cursed under my breath. “No. Fuck no.”
This was too confusing. Too muddy. I didn’t let lines blur. I didn’t spiral into emotional quicksand because a woman glared at me with fire in her eyes and refused to back down from a fight. I paced the length of the kitchen as I tried to wrestle control back into place where it belonged.
My brain. Not my dick.
I respected Kate. I was also somewhat afraid of her, and while the realization sat heavy and unfamiliar in my chest, it was suddenly clear that it was true.
Kate pushed buttons in me I hadn’t known existed.
She challenged me in ways that scraped too close to something I preferred to keep locked down behind professionalism and routine.
But seeing her broken, seeing that crack split through all that armor, had sent me into a tailspin I still hadn’t recovered from.
I stopped pacing, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the gray Chicago skyline. Knowing Kate, she was going to eventually agree to this arranged marriage.
She’d agree because her father’s company depended on it. Because her career depended on it. Because she was loyal to a fault and stubborn enough to carry their entire new, still fragile empire on her own shoulders if it meant protecting the people she loved.
I glanced down at my phone again. Emma’s message still glowed on the screen, patient and expectant.
She deserved honesty. She deserved clarity.
She deserved a fucking man who hadn’t agreed to a marriage negotiated over breakfast and baseball tickets, but before I could have that conversation, I needed to face the disaster sitting across the hallway.
Kate.
Energy crackled under my skin though, looking for somewhere to go before it burned straight through me. I went to change and grabbed my running shoes from beside the door, already knowing I wasn’t going to outrun any of this but needing the illusion of control anyway.
I yanked the laces tight, knowing I needed to release some of this energy before I went to talk to her. She and I were explosive enough together as it was, and now, we were practically engaged.
If I went to her in the state I was in and with her probably still feeling the way she had been when she’d left the office, it was likely we’d murder each other long before we’d ever walk down the aisle.