Chapter 11
ZACH
Saturday mornings had been simple for me for a long time. Golfing with Colin was a tradition that was only about a year old, but before that, I’d often hit the course with one of my brothers or I’d gone on long runs, sometimes driving out to the trails outside of the city.
Today, however, I was standing on the third tee wishing I was twenty miles into a run. God knew, golf just didn’t have the same ability to clear my head. I lined up my shot, adjusted my grip on my club, then swung much harder than I actually had to.
The crack of the club against the ball echoed sharply across the quiet green and Colin frowned. “Well, that felt aggressive. Does that ball owe you money?”
I watched the ball soar through the air and land far, far away from where I’d been aiming. “I was compensating for the wind.”
Colin glanced around like he was double-checking himself, pointedly jerking his head toward the dead-still trees. “There is no wind.”
“Yeah, okay. I miscalculated.”
“Mm,” he hummed, clearly knowing I was being cagey. We gathered our things and started down the fairway. He finally glanced at me about a full minute later. “What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
He pointed vaguely in the direction of where my ball had disappeared. “That was not nothing.”
I’d spent the whole week ruminating on the entire asinine situation. For just a moment, I considered brushing him off, but instead, I told him everything. Fucking everything.
“Dad and Clark Morris, Sr. have decided that putting me and Adeline together will solve several problems for the both of them.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Adeline. As in—”
“Yes.”
“Your Adeline?”
“She’s not my anything, but yes. The one and only.”
He let out a low whistle, his eyes wide as they held mine. “That’s bold. Given your history—”
“Exactly. Our history, which they’re now using as some kind of selling point, and I hate it. I hate that they’re trying to use our past relationship as if it’s sweetening the deal, but I also hate that they’re right. This match will solve all those problems they think it will.”
Colin hesitated for a beat. “Okay, it sounds like there’s a lot of hating going on, which is understandable, but just don’t hate me for this. It kind of sounds like a win-win situation for everyone involved.”
I stopped walking and turned to look at him properly. “Do you think she wants this? They think it makes things easier because we used to be together, but all they’re doing is putting her right back into the same position she just got out of.”
“That’s not necessarily true.”
I scoffed. “She doesn’t want this, Colin, but she’ll go along with it because it’s what she’s being told to do.”
Just like the first time.
He was quiet for so long that we had reached the next hole by the time he spoke again. “Is it bothering you that she has kids?”
“What?” I asked, but the question came out of me as sharp as a needle. “Why would you even ask me that?”
“It’s a fair question,” he said. “It changes things.”
“No,” I said roughly. “That has nothing to do with it.”
I dropped another ball and didn’t even bother resetting it properly before I swung. The impact of it cracked through the air so violently this time that Colin flinched.
“Okay,” he said after a second. “So it’s not that, then. Glad we cleared that up.”
I sighed. “It’s really not that. It’s just… everything else.”
He let me rant at times as we finished our game, and he put up with my silence at others.
Back at home later, I was huddled away in one of the rooms in my wing of the house, staring at a tumbler of whiskey that I hadn’t taken a sip of just yet, and wondering if I would ever really be able to put words to everything I was feeling.
A sharp knock at the door snapped my attention back to the present, to Bear lying at my feet, and the sun setting over the lake outside. “Come in!”
I was fully expecting it to be Theo, but then the door opened and my dad walked in instead. Without really meaning to do it, I sat up a little straighter, my jaw hardening and my insides bracing for a fight.
Dad came in slowly, though. Almost like he was waiting for me to tell him to get out.
He’d changed into loungewear after spending the week back in suits, now wearing terrible, orange sweats with blue stripes down the sides and a white hoodie that read Maldives across his chest in navy blue lettering.
He was tanned these days too, his hair whiter than ever, but his gaze had lost that edge that had been back during that meeting. Despite the fact that he looked like the relaxed guy we’d all been getting to know recently, I knew that my bachelor days were limited with him back in residence.
I didn’t know yet how long he planned on staying, but even though I’d thought—again—about biting the bullet and getting my own place now that he was back, I hadn’t done it. More than ever actually, I wanted to be here.
“Can we talk?” he asked as he lowered himself into one of the armchairs in my private living room.
I arched an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think I have much of a choice, seeing as I’m being asked to marry an ex-girlfriend who, eight years ago, I was separated from by the same man now pitching the idea. Assuming it came from Mr. Morris, that is.”
“It did,” Dad said slowly. “He came to me with it. You’re right about that.”
“Splendid.” I finally took a small sip of my whiskey before I looked back at my dad, just patiently sitting there in his ridiculous sweats, looking at me like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. “What is it?”
“I tried to stop that marriage, you know,” he said after a brief pause, his gaze suddenly unfocused, like he’d gone someplace far away. “Eight years ago, I mean. I tried to stop Clark from marrying Adeline off to Louis.”
Ice cold shock took hold of me. My lips parted as I stared at him, but every other muscle I had just locked up. “I didn’t know that.”
Dad nodded slowly. “It seemed unnecessary to tell you under the circumstances. I tried, but I failed. Obviously. It wouldn’t have done any good, telling you about it.”
“You failed?” I frowned. “Forgive me, but I find that hard to believe.”
He let his head hang forward and massaged the bridge of his nose.
“I have failed at a great many things in my life, son. Besides, the fact that it’s hard to believe doesn’t make it untrue.
I went to Clark and explained that I realized you were both young, but that I would enter into negotiations regardless. ”
“So what happened?” I sat up all the way now, swinging my legs off the couch I’d been lounging on. “Why didn’t he go for it?”
“The Morris Company was going through a major rift at the time and their stocks were falling fast. Weatherby had offered a lifeline that neither Clark nor Adeline’s father could refuse. Gregory especially wasn’t in a position to wait and Adeline, as his daughter, was part of that.”
Dad fell silent for a beat before he refocused on me, a heavy kind of sadness in his eyes that I wouldn’t have expected. “Things had to happen too fast and the Weatherby deal was already on the table. That’s changed now, though.”
“How so?”
He shrugged. “The Weatherbys put their trust in their only son. They made him president of the brokerage and married him into a family that’s practically royalty, but he proceeded to not only squander their money and business, but also to scandalize their family name by taking off with his mistress, getting her pregnant, and being insanely public about the whole mess. ”
“I’m not sure I feel sorry for them about any of that,” I said before taking another sip of my drink. “Clark Morris doesn’t have my sympathy either.”
“Nor should he,” Dad agreed. “The Morrises have learned from it, though. All they want now is for Adeline to be protected.”
I snorted, but he kept going before I could offer my opinion. “This deal has more to do with Adeline being secure than the fact that Westwood gets to go into business with Morris. This is what she needs, son.”
“What she needs is to be left alone to make her own decisions. She’s not a stock to be traded.”
His expression grew somber again. “She’s going to be left with nothing within a week when this divorce is finally finalized.”
“What?”
He nodded. “There’s nothing left. Her trust fund is gone. Louis has been dragging this on for so long that the legal bills bankrupted her.”
“I didn’t know it was that bad.” Honestly, I’d had no idea she was going through all that.
I’d thought I knew what was happening with the divorce, but nope.
He’d effectively stolen all her money and then made her wait in legal limbo to steal the last bit, and all the while, he’d made her think he was going to fight for her kids if she didn’t willingly give it.
“That’s a whole different level of messed up. ”
Yet all I could think about was what it must be like for her at home. She’d been a housewife and a stay-at-home mom who hadn’t worked for eight years. Now she was back at square one in her old job with nothing to show for her time under Louis’s control.
“It is a whole different level of messed up,” Dad agreed after a brief pause. “Which is why the family wants nothing more than for her to be secure and not to end up destitute. All they’re concerned about is her safety and well-being. You can give her that.”
“It’s up to her,” I said eventually.
Dad nodded. “If she agrees, what will you do?”
“I’ll marry her,” I said without hesitation. I didn’t need to hesitate or to think about it. Even if I felt like I’d already failed her once, I absolutely would not do it again. “If she says yes, it’s a done deal.”