Chapter 47
NATE
Kate didn’t wait for anyone. Hell, she didn’t look back, just marched straight up to the front door like a woman on a mission. When she reached it, she started pounding on the wood with the flat of her hand, definitely not a polite knock.
“Kate,” her mother called weakly from behind us, but Kate didn’t even flinch.
The door swung open a few seconds later and the poor maid on the other side barely had time to register what was happening before Kate swept past her in a blur of righteous fury and dogged determination.
“I need to speak to Mr. Hinds,” she announced, already halfway down the entry hall. “We have a meeting.”
The maid looked startled, maybe even a little alarmed. Honestly, same.
Pete came up beside me, and together, we watched Kate disappear into the house like a small but extremely determined hurricane. He exhaled slowly. “Well, there she goes.”
I glanced at him, figuring that we might as well use the opportunity to clear the air between us. It certainly hadn’t looked like she needed or expected immediate backup. “I’m sorry.”
He looked over at me, a slight crease marring his brow. “For what?”
“For all of this,” I said, gesturing vaguely around us. “I can’t imagine this has been easy on you.”
Pete studied me for a moment, then shook his head. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, son.”
Son. Being called that by him again did something strange to my chest.
Over the weekend, he’d been so enthusiastic that I’d just been a little overwhelmed and amused by it, but now, it was more meaningful. More real. We’d gotten through something massive and yet, we were back here, with him accepting me into his family.
“If anything, I’m the one who’s going to be making this up to both my daughter and my wife for the next twenty years,” he said mildly. “Maybe twenty-five. I suspect those extra five years depends on how Abram receives what she’s about to tell him.”
I followed him inside. “Twenty years? That sounds extensive.”
He snorted. “You don’t know Vanderhaul women yet. They don’t ever let things go.”
I thought about Kate. About the look on her face in the car and the way she’d planted her finger in the air before telling a grown man, her own father, no less, that he wasn’t to say another word.
“Yeah, I think I’m starting to see that,” I said. “She really let you have it, huh?”
Pete nodded gravely. “If you dare try to fight a battle for them, they’ll never let you live it down.”
We followed the distant echo of Kate’s voice down the hall, growing louder with every step, until Pete slowed near a set of closed double doors. Her voice drifted through it. Her tone was sharp and furious but very much in control.
Pete leaned slightly toward me and muttered under his breath, “See that?”
I glanced at him. “The door?”
“No, what’s on the other side,” he said quietly. “That’s the Vanderhaul Chihuahua.”
I frowned. “I’m sorry?”
“That’s what they call her in New York,” he explained. “She got the nickname because she’s small, loud, and terrifying, and she doesn’t back down.”
I couldn’t help the smile that spread on my lips. “That sounds accurate.”
Pete reached for the door and pushed it open, but even as he walked in, I hung back for a minute because Kate already had Hinds cornered behind his desk—and not metaphorically. Literally cornered.
He looked deeply confused and mildly alarmed—just like both myself and the poor maid—like he’d expected a quiet conversation and had instead found himself in the middle of a courtroom drama he hadn’t agreed to participate in.
“How dare you assume I would allow any man to go behind my back?” Kate was saying, pacing in front of his desk. “Especially my husband. The husband you forced me to marry if my dad wanted to keep his job.”
Hinds blinked rapidly at her, then glanced at me, then at Pete, a pleading expression in his eyes as he made eye contact.
Kate looked up, saw us, and shook her head. “Finally. It took you guys long enough to get in here.”
“I—” Hinds had finally turned back to her, but his eyes narrowed in confusion and he cut himself off.
“You what?” she demanded, her body practically vibrating with rage and tension.
I moved forward before this escalated into something legally complicated, gently touching her shoulder as I stepped up to her side. “Kate, may I?”
She didn’t stop pacing, so I reached out and lightly took her arm, guiding her back until she was by my side. She resisted for approximately half a second before allowing it, but I could practically feel the indignation radiating off her in waves.
Pete’s warning echoed through my mind. If he’d been right, she was never going to forgive me for this, but I’d deal with that when we got there. For now, I met Hinds’ eyes and did my best to remain calm.
“There’s been a misunderstanding,” I said. “Someone overheard something they weren’t supposed to and they jumped to incorrect conclusions.”
“Yes, Kate was saying,” he said faintly, looking smaller than I had ever seen him.
Kate made a noise behind me that suggested she did not agree with this approach, but I kept a light hold on her hand and explained. “Emma was real but we never met in person. We only talked online.”
Hinds frowned slightly, looking more confused than ever. “Is that supposed to make it better? Because it still sounds like—”
“Give me a minute,” I said. “I know it doesn’t make sense yet, but it will. So let me explain or I’ll let Kate do it.”
Hinds held his hands up. “No, no, go ahead.”
I nodded. “Emma and I met online and we talked for years, but even though we’d never met in person, she mattered to me. A lot.”
Behind me, Kate had suddenly stopped moving.
She just sort of leaned into me a little and I took a breath, tightening my grip on her arm.
“After Kate agreed to marry me, Emma and I set a meeting. To see each other in person and say goodbye. When we arrived, we realized that we already knew each other.”
“What?” Hinds asked, his head tilting. “What do you mean?”
“Emma was a fake name Kate was using online, and I had been using an anonymous name as well. So the person who arrived, Abram, was Kate. There is no other woman.”
Hinds fell back against his chair, blinking rapidly. He jammed one hand through his hair and dragged the other down his face. “I’m sorry. Emma and Kate are the same person?”
“Yes.”
She squeezed my hand and I pulled her just a fraction of an inch closer. “I’ve been in love with Kate for years.”
Hinds stared at me for a long moment after I said it, like he wasn’t sure if he believed me, but before he could question it, I gave him the shortened version of everything that had happened, keeping it simple with no unnecessary detail.
“When this marriage was first proposed,” I said, “I didn’t know Kate was Emma yet, so I went to talk to my brother about it all.
He suggested that I meet with Emma and tell her in person that I was marrying someone else.
I was going to break it off with her before the papers were signed, but obviously, that didn’t happen because she was the person I was marrying. ”
Hinds frowned. “So the affair?”
“Never happened,” I said. “Not at all and certainly not in the way the papers are suggesting. My brother and I must’ve been overheard one night when we were discussing it and whoever was eavesdropping obviously didn’t have the whole story, but that didn’t matter. They’ll publish anything for clicks.”
“So you haven’t been having an affair?” he asked again, looking like he was either clarifying or still trying to understand. “Or rather, there was one, but it was with your wife.”
“Exactly,” I said. “There was an emotional relationship between me and a woman. A very real relationship, but it never existed outside of a screen, and once I knew I was marrying Kate, I was ending it. Obviously.”
Hinds looked between the two of us. “And the timing of all this?”
“Well, that was unfortunate,” I admitted.
“Our marriage was obviously big news, but I kept my relationship with Emma to myself for a long time. Until after I got engaged, to be honest. In that context, the timing makes sense. Our engagement leaked to the press, which made them interested in our story, and after we got married, someone overheard me clearing things up to my brother. Probably figured they could make some money since we’d been in the news. ”
Kate snorted softly, but I wasn’t blind to what this might look like to him.
“Had it not been for the eavesdropper, I’d like to think that Kate and I would’ve eventually come out with the fact that our relationship existed before the arrangement came up, but honestly, we’re still trying to process everything ourselves. ”
Hinds exhaled through his nose, long and slow, like a man who had aged five years in the last fifteen minutes. “This is the truth?”
“Yes.”
“The complete and total truth?” he pressed. “There is nothing else?”
“No,” I said, but then I realized that wasn’t all of it. There was something else that not even Kate knew about yet. “Actually, there is one more thing.”
Hinds’ eyebrows swept up. “There is?”
“Yes.”
Kate shifted, looking up at me with worry flickering behind those gorgeous eyes. “Nate?”
“When the idea of a Westwood marrying Kate to seal the deal was first being discussed, the plan wasn’t for her to marry me,” I said carefully.
Her eyes widened to the point of what looked like pain, her face draining of color and her lips parting.
Hinds frowned. “It wasn’t?”
“No. Alex and my father proposed that Will should marry her. In the past, I had been rather outspoken about my views regarding arranged marriages, and although that was always going to be my future, they were trying to give me time to come around. Obviously, they didn’t know about Emma.”
“What?” Kate said quietly, so quietly that I barely even heard her and she was only inches away. “I was going to have to marry Will?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “It made more sense on paper.”