Chapter 35
NATE
Iwoke to my phone practically vibrating itself off the nightstand. My head felt heavy, thick with sleep and the dull weight of everything waiting for me on the other side of consciousness, but then the damn thing buzzed against the hardwood again, insistent to the point of absurdity.
My hand shot out and I grabbed it, answering without checking who it was. I didn’t need to. A caller this persistent, this early, could only be a Westwood. It didn’t really matter which one. They wouldn’t stop until I picked up.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Nate.” That one word woke me up more than the incessant buzzing because Alex sounded like hell and that didn’t happen often. “I need a meeting with you this afternoon. Bring Kate too.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Okay. We’ll be there. What time?”
“One. Executive boardroom.”
Awake enough now that something in his tone gave me pause, I slowly opened my eyes.
“Who’s coming?” I asked finally, suspicion slipping through my gut like a fox sneaking into the hen house. “Is it just us?”
“Nope. It’ll be you, me, Will, Kate.” All of that was standard enough, but then he added, “Oh, and Colin. Colin Thayer. You remember him, right? Jane’s brother.”
That woke me up the rest of the way. Alex didn’t know that Colin and I hung out on occasion, but I also knew it wouldn’t matter in this context. Colin wouldn’t have been invited to this meeting as anyone’s friend. I sat up and scratched the side of my neck.
“Yeah. I remember him. What’s this about?”
“We’ll talk when we get there.”
The line went dead before I could push further and I slowly lowered the phone, trying to piece together what kind of meeting required both Kate and Colin. Kate was obviously part of the Hinds’ acquisition, but the Thayers weren’t.
Unease swept through me before I swung my legs out of bed and stood. Stretching the stiffness out of my shoulders, I headed for the door. The faint scent of coffee wafted through the apartment, which meant Kate was already downstairs.
I found her in the kitchen, barefoot and half awake, with her hair loose and messy down her back. She moved quietly through the space. The morning light spilling through the windows turned her hair a burnt copper.
Without turning around, she reached for a mug and then spoke, obviously already knowing I was there. “Black?”
“Yeah.”
She slid the mug into the coffee machine, operating it expertly and pushing the coffee across the counter when she was done. As she finally lifted her gaze to mine, she picked up her own mug, a slight, almost shy smile ghosting across her lips. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” I replied, watching her move around my space like she’d been here a hundred times before.
It felt strange, knowing that this was Emma. The same girl I’d spent so many years getting to know was now in my kitchen the morning after, very real and very not who I thought she might be.
Kate Vanderhaul. You’ve got to be shitting me.
I’d had almost twenty-four hours to process now and I still wasn’t quite caught up, but at the end of the day, she was still Kate, and she and I had to get to work. “Alex called. He wants to meet with us at one in the executive conference room.”
She glanced up at me. “What about? I don’t recall seeing a Hinds meeting in my calendar today.”
I slowly shook my head. “No idea, but I do know Colin’s going to be there as well, which makes me wonder if it’s got to do with Hinds at all.”
Her eyebrows tugged together. “Colin, as in Colin Thayer?”
I nodded. “The CFO of Thayer Steelworks. A company we’ve already bought out and who has nothing to do with Hinds. Do they?”
“Not as far as I know.” Her head cocked for a moment, like she was mentally running through names she associated with Abram Hinds. Then she shrugged. “I’ve definitely never come across them in my dealings with him, but that’s all I’ve got.”
“Right. Well, I guess we’ll find out later.” That sense of unease didn’t evaporate, though.
It followed me through the day as Kate and I drank the rest of our coffee in relative silence. She popped back across the hall to her own apartment to get ready for the day and we met in the parking garage for her to catch a ride over to the office with me, and it was still there.
The drive itself should’ve been awkward, considering everything we’d been through in the last day, but it wasn’t.
Both of us had sort of retreated back into our own heads for now and I was okay with that.
We’d cleared the air, but it was still going to take time for us to work up to Emma-and-CB level trust as Kate and Nate.
As always, she took a seat at the conference table in my office and opened her laptop, getting to work like nothing had changed. I spent the day alternating between getting lost in work of my own and staring at her, occasionally finding her staring back at me.
At exactly one p.m., we strode into the conference room together, but I slammed to an abrupt halt when I saw my brother. Alex had sounded bad this morning, but he looked worse in person. His tie was slightly crooked, his eyes red-rimmed like he hadn’t slept properly in days.
He still carried himself the same way, straight-backed and confident, but the polish was dimming around the edges. Will noticed it too. I could tell by the way he went still beside me when he walked in just seconds behind us.
Kate took a seat across the table and Colin sat next to her, both of them watching Alex with the same quiet focus. As if only realizing now that we were all present, he seemed to snap back to reality and went to close the door. He talked even as he strode back across the room.
“I’ll keep this brief.” He pulled out his chair and sat, immediately folding his hands on the tabletop like he needed to anchor himself. “I’m going to be taking a step back for about a month.”
My heart gave one hard, shocked thump and my extremities went cold. We’d talked about this, of course, at the hospital the other night in New York, but I wasn’t sure he’d actually do it.
“I’ll still be around,” he said. “If you need me, I’m available and I can be actively involved when I need to be, but Jane is my first and absolute priority right now.”
No one argued. No one even shifted because what the hell were we supposed to say to that? I did feel a burst of pride shoot through me, though. He was actually taking my advice and doing it. That was great.
For him, anyway. Not so great for me.
Especially not when he turned toward Colin and me. “In the meantime, the two of you will be stepping up.”
My stomach tightened.
“Nate, you’ll handle anything that would normally come through me,” he said. “Major decisions. Oversight. Coordination. Colin, the same goes for you. Just over at Thayer Steelworks. Jane and I both trust you to keep things moving.”
I nodded automatically, even as something heavy settled into my chest. Across the table, Colin gave a short, professional nod of his own.
“Of course,” he said. “Anything you need. For as long as you need. We’ll figure out the details as we go along.”
Alex leaned back slightly, like just hearing the words had taken something out of him, but he also seemed relieved. “Thanks. We don’t expect this to last for the duration of the pregnancy, but it’s necessary for now.”
Necessary.
I understood that, but understanding didn’t mean I liked it or that I felt ready for it. I would just never tell him that right now.
Still turning over the weight of it in my mind, the responsibility, I almost missed it when Alex turned toward Kate. “I know you’re not officially part of the family just yet, but you’ll be covering some of Nate’s duties as CFO while he’s acting as the interim CEO.”
Kate blinked, slow enough and hard enough that I could tell how surprised she was even though no one else had probably picked up on it. Finally, after a few quiet seconds, she nodded.
“Of course,” she said curtly. “I agree with Colin. Anything you and Jane need right now, we’re here for you.”
“Thank you,” Alex replied simply, definitely relieved now as he turned to Will. “Obviously, you’ll be continuing in your role as COO, but I’m also going to need you to have Nate and Kate’s backs. That means taking on some additional duties yourself.”
Will nodded swiftly, a sparkle in his eyes as he winked at me. “Don’t worry about Natey and Katey, big bro. I’ve got ‘em.”
I scoffed, opening my mouth to argue, but pretty much immediately closing it again. There wasn’t really an argument to make. If I was stepping up, someone had to absorb what I couldn’t carry, and if there was anyone I trusted to do that, it was Kate and Will.
This was a lot. For all of us, but we’d manage because we had to. Besides, one look at Alex was enough to know that he desperately just needed us to get our asses in gear and do it.
“That’s all for now. Keep me updated. Kate, Nate, could you two hang back for a minute please?”
Effectively dismissed, Colin and Will left, leaving the two of us alone with Alex, who didn’t speak until the door shut behind Colin. Then he exhaled, long and slow, like he’d been holding it the entire meeting.
“The Hinds acquisition is moving fast,” he said. “The paperwork is ready and we could be signing at the end of the week.”
The end of the week? Fuck. That’s fast. Too fast.
My first instinct was to glance over at Kate, but she obviously hadn’t known we were this close either. She looked just as thrown as I felt.
Alex looked between us, and the hard resignation creeping across his features made my insides tighten. “I’ve already spoken to Pete. We agreed to gather in New York to make it official, but Hinds expects more than just an engagement by the time the pens hit the paper.”
I saw Kate shift slightly in her chair and my heart started hammering again, my eyes sliding shut. I bent my head, folding my hands together in my lap as I pulled in a deep breath. I already knew exactly what he meant, but he went ahead and said it anyway.
“You’ll need to get married immediately.”
He wasn’t joking. There wasn’t even a hint of humor in his tone. Just exhaustion and quiet certainty, like this was just one more item on a long list of things that were necessary to seal this deal.
When I turned to Kate, she was already looking at me. For a second, we just stared at each other, the reality of what we had to do settling between us.
Like we didn’t have enough on our plates already and the last couple days hadn’t turned both our lives completely upside down, we now had a wedding to plan—and actually attend.
No. Shit. We need more time. Time to think. Time to breathe. Time to figure out what the hell we’re even doing.
But time wasn’t something this world handed out freely. Not even to people like us.
Alex rubbed a hand over his face, and for a moment, he looked older than I’d ever seen him. “I know this is a lot, but it needs to happen. Quickly and cleanly. Hinds wants stability and he’s not signing those papers without it.”
I nodded, managing to force my head into completing the movement even though it felt like I’d gone numb. “He’s made his expectations quite clear.”
Across from me, Kate’s lips twisted into something I suspected was supposed to have been a smile, but she didn’t even make it halfway there. “Of course.”
And that was it.
We’d be married by the end of the week. As it turned out, time was a luxury even billionaires couldn’t afford and she and I had officially run out of it.