7. Declan #2
I don’t have many friends. That’s been on purpose.
When you’re building an empire that requires high-level business deals that need to support the people you love, you have to be at least a little suspicious of the other people at your level and avoid emotional decisions.
I focus on the people I’m doing it for—my family, their friends and loved ones.
I don’t need to be emotionally involved with anyone else.
And it doesn’t take a doctorate in psychology to understand that leaving home—everything I knew, the entire plan for my life for eighteen years, all of my friends, family, everything familiar—did a number on me emotionally.
I believed in why I did it and still do.
I don’t regret it. The reasons I did it were solid and have all come to fruition.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few scars, and not getting close to people again is a protective instinct.
Iris Lee is one of the few exceptions. She didn’t really care about emotional boundaries.
She’s not an overly warm-and-fuzzy person herself, but she understood that I needed someone I could trust and confide in.
Someone who would be brutally honest with me, and she made it her mission to be that person.
She has succeeded over and over again.
She knows me as well as anyone alive. Alfred Olsen knew me better than anyone, but he’s been gone nearly three years now. I feel his absence every day.
“She kissed you?”
“To shut me up. But it was still a kiss.”
“To shut you up? It’s not like you’re prone to going on and on, Declan.”
“Anyway,” I say. “I told her that I don’t want the annulment. And that I’m staying here until we’re expected in Cara.”
“Oh…that’s really good, Declan,” Iris says. “It’s about damned time you told her how you feel.”
Iris is the only person who knows that I’m in love with my wife.
“Well, she’s determined to make me also want the annulment by then.”
Iris is quiet for a moment. “You deserve to be happy too, Declan,” Iris says, her tone soft in a way it very rarely is.
“At the expense of her happiness?”
Iris snorts. “There is no way in hell you will let Astrid be anything less than deliriously happy.”
That is true. Which is why, no matter what I said, I am considering her request to let the annulment happen. “But what if she’s not happy married to me?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake. This is all your own fault.”
“Iris—” I start. She’s the only one who talks to me like this.
Well, other than Astrid.
“You know how I feel about this,” Iris says. “But I’ll say it again. You have not given this a fair chance. You’ve been leaving her alone.”
“Because that’s what she wants.”
“You didn’t even stay for Christmas at your family’s home! You came home to work!”
“I made that up.”
“I knew it! Why?” Iris asks.
“Because she snuck out and slept somewhere else!” I push back. “I wanted her to have a nice Christmas with her family. I’ve spent so many without mine, it wasn’t fair to ruin hers.”
“Oh my God,” Iris mutters.
“I was trying to be nice!”
“There are a lot of ways you could have been nice and made her comfortable in your bedroom, Declan.”
My mind immediately starts flipping through ideas, and my body responds. But I shut it down a second later, scowling. “Knock it off. Our first fucking kiss was yesterday.”
“That’s entirely your own fault,” Iris says.
“It’s not like you’re a virgin or have never dated.
You’ve had gorgeous girlfriends from all over the Northwest US, not to mention the two from Europe and the three from Asia,” Iris says.
“No one would believe that you don’t know how to make a woman want to share your bed if you wanted to. ”
I grit my teeth. I’ve been doing everything I can to respect my clearly skittish wife. She’s ten years younger than me and, if the media is to be trusted, has had far fewer romantic partners than I have. I’ve held back because… fuck, I don’t want to scare her.
“We didn’t get married because we’re in love or wildly attracted to each other,” I remind Iris.
She snorts. “You got married because you decided to use your grandfather’s wacko marriage pact as an excuse to get the woman of your dreams. Maybe the ‘in love’ and ‘attracted’ thing seems one-sided, but it’s not like you’re a troll. I really think she could get on board with fucking you, Declan.”
“Jesus Christ, Iris,” I mutter.
She laughs.
Iris is the only person who knows that I think my grandfather’s insistence on the arranged marriage between our family and the Olsens is nuts.
Of course, I could have said no. I could have put a stop to the whole thing for both families.
But for years, my brother and Astrid’s sister seemed fine with the idea.
Not that I’d asked them. But it had been the plan, and everyone had been going along with it.
Then, suddenly, they hadn’t.
And when Iris told me Cian and Astrid were considering getting married…I couldn’t let that happen.
So yes, my grandfather’s eccentricity was a way to have Astrid.
I’m not proud of it. I was in an out-of-character, panicked, sleep-deprived, worried-about-my-grandfather, nervous-about-seeing-my-family-again-after-so-long state. I saw Astrid and used the excuse I was most sure would work.
And it did.
But I am crazy about her, and I do want her.
“Anyway,” Iris goes on. “I know you think she wants an annulment, and maybe it’s what she thinks she wants, but neither of you really know.
Because you haven't shown that woman what it’s really like to be married to you.
I don’t think you know what it’s like to be married to you.
You’ve never even thought about being married.
Then suddenly you had a wife. And you panicked.
You had hearts in your eyes while also being afraid she’d bolt, and you started just giving her everything you thought she wanted.
But now…” Iris pauses. “This is great. You’re there on her turf and she can’t run away.
There’s no stupidly enormous penthouse or freaking castle with a million extra rooms for her to hide in.
” Iris sounds positively delighted as she says, “This is the best thing that could’ve happened.
” She pauses, then says firmly, “Be that woman’s husband, Declan.
Show her that she wants to be married to you. ”
My heart kicks hard against my ribs. I take a breath and blow it out. “Do you think I can do that? In a week?”
I am very rarely vulnerable, and I always hate it, even when it is with Iris, whom I trust implicitly.
“Do I think that you could be an amazing husband in general? No,” Iris says in the affectionately blunt way that she has when dealing with me. “But do I think you can be an amazing husband to Astrid Olsen? Absolutely. You’ll do anything for her.”
I feel a hard tug in my chest. She’s right. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a husband in general. But Astrid’s partner, protector, and the man who will move heaven and earth for her? Yeah. I’m that guy.
“But she doesn’t like me,” I still say.
Iris laughs. “I know you think she doesn’t like you.”
“She has been sleeping in the opposite wing of my penthouse! She moved thousands of miles away from me. We have never spent a single night in the same bed!”
“She’s had a lot going on, Declan!” Iris exclaims. “Sorry to break it to you, but you haven’t been on her radar. Now you are. Big time. She can’t avoid you in Rebel. In her house. So be on her radar. Take up space. Make her pay attention. Don’t let her run away from you. And do not divorce her.”
My heart is pounding. I want that. But… “I don’t want her to be unhappy.”
“So, make her happy.”
That sounds so simple. I thought I’d been doing that by letting her do what she wants and have anything she asked for.
She’s living in Louisiana, running a hockey team that seems to be making everyone happier.
She’s got a cat who clearly thinks she hung the moon.
She’s got a backyard full of ducks that are, stupidly, fun to watch and calming at the same time.
She’s got the ugliest house I’ve ever been inside, and yet I find myself smiling as I walk through it.
Maybe she is happy here.
But maybe that just means this is where I’m supposed to be too.
Fuck. I’m a thirty-six-year-old man who’s been making my own way for nearly two decades. I’ve known exactly what I’m doing and why for eighteen years. Now suddenly I’m re-thinking it all. How can one tiny, blond woman who doesn’t even like me that much make me re-examine everything?
Iris can’t actually read my mind, but my eyes widen when she says, “These are called feelings, Declan. Feelings for other people. And yeah, sometimes they suck. They can make us feel a little needy. But it’s normal.”
“I don’t like them,” I say lightly. She and I both know that I’ve actually been driven by my feelings for my family for years. It’s kept me across an ocean from them, building an empire that will keep them secure and safe.
She just laughs.
Before I can respond, the door behind me opens, and I turn quickly.
“So, you’ve met the ducks,” Astrid says. Then she notices that I’m on the phone. “Oh, sorry.”
I shake my head quickly. “No. It’s fine. I’m finished.”
Iris chuckles in my ear. “Oh, we are not finished with this.”
“Goodbye, Iris,” I say.
“Hey, Declan?”
“Yeah?”
“Go seduce your wife.”
I hang up with a single grunt. But when I focus on Astrid, I can’t stop hearing the words seduce your wife in my head.