5. Killian
KILLIAN
I’m fucking exhausted.
The meeting ran two hours longer than it should have and the entire back half of it was Evelyn.
Not visibly. She’s too controlled for that.
She sits at the end of the table in whatever she’s wearing this season, says the precise minimum required to redirect an entire conversation, and then watches everyone else adjust around her like she’s done nothing at all.
Twenty years of marriage and however many years since and I still can’t decide if I admire the skill or find it exhausting. Both, probably. Mostly the latter.
The board voted to delay the east wing expansion pending another review cycle, which is Evelyn’s language for I’d like to continue having leverage over this decision and I’m not ready to release it yet.
There’s no productive argument to make in that room when she’s decided something.
I’ve learned to pick the battles that matter and absorb the rest, which is also how I survived the marriage.
I could have her removed. I’ve thought about it.
The practical reality is that Evelyn spent years working this vineyard during a period when I was building the international side of the business and she didn’t have to, and the board knows it.
Cutting her out purely because she’s become professionally inconvenient would be bad business dressed up as something personal, and I don’t make personal decisions inside a boardroom.
She stays. I put up with it. Sophia, who has no idea how often her mother and I are in the same room professionally, is better off not knowing.
I loosen my tie in the hallway outside the conference room and check my watch. Dinner was an hour ago.
My phone buzzes. Asher.
Asher: Pool. Sophia, Lorenzo, Raphael, and Harper are outside if you want to come find us.
I know Lorenzo. Lorenzo has been running customer operations here for five years and has the quiet competence I look for in people I intend to keep. Raphael I know well enough, good at what he does, easy with people, reliable for the events rotation.
Harper.
I scroll back up to the group photo Sophia sent before takeoff. I’d looked at it briefly when it came through, registered that everyone was accounted for, and moved on. I open it again now and zoom in.
She’s standing between Asher and Raphael with Maddox behind her. Raphael is on her other side with his arm around her shoulders and she’s laughing at something, head slightly turned. I’d clocked it as a couple when it first came through. Raphael with someone. Not my business.
I look at the photo longer than I need to before I put my phone away.
Maybe I shouldn’t make assumptions.
The pool terrace wraps around the south side of the main house and catches the last of the evening light until well after nine in summer.
I can hear them before I round the corner.
Sophia’s laugh first, bright and immediate, the sound I’ve been hearing my whole adult life and still haven’t gotten used to being away from.
She sees me and she’s out of the pool before I’ve fully stepped onto the terrace, wet feet on the stone, and she hits me somewhere around the ribs the way she’s been doing since she was tall enough to reach them.
I wrap both arms around her and hold on for a moment longer than is strictly necessary.
She’s been in Florida for three years. Before that, four years in New York for university. Seven years of Sophia existing primarily at a distance and I have not adapted to it the way I told myself I would.
“Dad.” She pulls back and looks up at me. “You look like your meeting tried to kill you.”
“It made a reasonable attempt.” I smooth her wet hair back from her face out of reflex. “How was the flight?”
She waves a hand. “So frustrating. The flight attendants were practically throwing themselves at Uncle Asher and Maddox the entire time.”
My nostrils flare before I can stop them.
Sophia’s face splits into a grin. “Kidding. I’m kidding. It was great.” She pats my chest twice. “Although I did pass out for basically the entire flight and left Harper alone in the cabin, so.”
“Who’s Harper?”
She gives me the look she reserves for questions she considers beneath me. “Remember my college roommate? First year. The one who actually sat me down and taught me what balancing a checkbook was?”
“Yes.”
“That’s her.”
“So she’s the one who convinced my daughter that shopping wasn’t a credited course.”
Sophia scoffs. “Oh, that’s very funny, Dad.” She turns toward the pool. “Harper!”
I’m looking at the water when she surfaces.
My brain does something it hasn’t done in a long time. Not a thought, exactly. More like a full system interruption, where for approximately two seconds nothing is processing correctly and I’m simply standing on my own terrace like a man who has forgotten where he is.
She pushes her hair back from her face and the water travels down her shoulders, her collarbones, the curve of her throat as she moves toward the pool steps.
Brown eyes catching the warm glow of the terrace lights, soft and bright at the same time.
She moves with the unhurried ease of someone who doesn’t know she’s being watched, or doesn’t mind, and I can’t determine which is worse for me right now.
This is my daughter’s friend.
Not that my dick is listening right now.
Lorenzo and Raphael pull themselves out of the pool behind her, dripping, and cross to me with handshakes and easy greetings.
I shake both their hands and ask Lorenzo how the first day of setup briefings went and I’m listening to his answer, I am, but some portion of my attention has stayed on the terrace a few feet away where Harper is wrapping a towel around herself and Sophia is talking at her with the velocity of someone who’s been saving up sentences for weeks.
I bring my attention back to where it belongs.
Then Raphael drifts back in her direction and his hand finds the small of her back.
It’s light. Casual. The kind of touch that could mean nothing.
I look at it.
I look at it for one moment and then I look at Raphael.
“Raphael.” My voice is even. “The morning setup briefing with the events coordinator is at seven. Tardiness would reflect poorly on the recommendation I put in for you to get the summer residency. You should rest up.”
Raphael nods. “Absolutely. I’ll be there regardless.”
A beat.
He turns to Harper. “Hey, did you want to check out the hot tub? I think Soph said it’s—”
“The hot tub will be available all summer,” I say. “Lorenzo, you and Raphael should head back to your suites. Harper and Sophia don’t have early meetings to be fresh for.”
Raphael opens his mouth.
Lorenzo, who has worked for me long enough to understand the difference between a suggestion and a sentence, puts a hand on Raphael’s arm.
He kisses Sophia on the cheek, says something quiet to her that makes her smile, and starts steering his best friend toward the terrace doors.
Raphael turns back toward Harper to say goodnight and reaches for her and Lorenzo smoothly redirects him by the elbow before the hug fully lands.
The door closes behind them.
Sophia turns and looks at me with her hands on her hips and the precise expression her mother makes when she’s decided someone has overstepped. The resemblance is inconvenient.
“What the hell, Dad.”
I straighten my cuffs. “He has an early morning.”
“We were just—”
“Good night, Sophia.”
She makes a sound that is almost certainly a word I taught her not to say and retreats inside, which means she’s not actually angry, just making her position known. I know my daughter.
I turn to Harper.
She’s been watching this entire exchange with the careful expression of someone who witnessed something and is deciding whether she understood it correctly.
She understood it correctly.
I keep my face where it belongs. “It’s been a pleasure, Harper. I hope you’ll find everything you need at the estate. If there’s anything that falls short of your comfort, Asher or any of the house staff can help.”
She holds my gaze for just a beat longer than she has to. “Thank you. Everything’s been wonderful.”
I nod once. Turn. Walk back toward the house.
I keep my pace measured and I do not look back and I am fifty-one years old and I have been in rooms with extraordinarily beautiful women for the better part of three decades and I have never in my professional life walked away from a terrace in this condition.
I walk faster.
The bar in the main sitting room is where I go when I need to stand somewhere quiet and process something without anyone asking me what I’m thinking.
I’ve made a number of decisions in front of this window.
Tonight I’m not making decisions. I’m just standing here with two fingers of scotch and the north vineyard rows going dark in the distance and the full weight of what just happened settling across my shoulders.
The door opens. Maddox first, then Asher.
They come in without invitation because they’ve never needed one, pour their own drinks without asking, and take up their usual positions at the bar the way they always have, the way men do when they’ve been in the same rooms long enough to stop narrating their movements.
Nobody says anything for a moment.
I breathe out. “Fuck.”
Maddox raises his glass. “Yup.”
He throws it back.
Asher refills his glass. Sets the bottle down. Looks at neither of us.
Outside, through the wall, I can hear Sophia somewhere in the house. A door. Her voice on the phone, warm and certain, the way she talks to people she loves.
I finish my scotch.
None of us say anything else, because there’s nothing else to say tonight. We all already know what the problem is. We just don’t have a single reasonable thing to do about it.
I pour another.