4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
Hayden
By the time Hayden ended the lender call, three people were waiting for decisions and another six had sent urgent messages. That was ordinary. He liked ordinary.
He stood at the end of the conference table while the development team explained another missed construction deadline. Beyond the glass wall, employees crossed the polished floor with folders and phones.
“Move the site review to Friday,” he said. “I want the new cost report before the lender sees anything. Give me the worst number, not the hopeful one.”
The project director nodded. “We’ll have it.”
“Good.”
Questions followed. A leasing problem, a permit delay. People brought him facts, he made choices, and the work moved forward. This was the part of his life he understood.
When the meeting ended, he returned to his office and found Paulie sitting in his chair. His brother had tipped it back and planted his feet on the desk. His dark hair was a mess, as usual.
Hayden stopped inside the doorway.
“Get your feet off my desk.”
“Good morning to you too.” Paulie lowered his feet but didn’t move. “You look terrible.”
“You look unemployed.”
Hayden would usually have enjoyed the exchange. Today, he wanted his chair and some quiet. He’d left Caroline asleep that morning, her hair spread across the pillow. After the tears, argument, and tenderness of the night before, he’d kissed her shoulder and let her rest.
Now Southampton felt much farther from Manhattan than it was.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Family unity.” Paulie smiled. “Perhaps lunch.”
Their father entered behind Hayden.
“He wants to avoid saying why we’re here,” he said.
Hayden looked from his father to his brother. His father wore a dark suit, a silver tie, and the expression he brought into meetings when he’d already decided how they should end.
“If this is about the postnup, you can both leave,” Hayden said.
His father closed the door. “Sit down.”
The order reduced Hayden to Adam Lynch’s son in two words.
He stayed where he was. “This is my office.”
“In my company.”
“I’m the CEO of this company.”
“And I’m still the chairman.” His father walked to the windows, then faced him. “Your title doesn’t prevent you from making a disastrous personal decision.”
Paulie rose from Hayden’s chair at last.
“For the record, I think Caroline’s delightful,” he said, not in the least helpful.
“Then get out,” Hayden said.
“I said she’s delightful. I didn’t say the two of you make sense.”
Hayden stared at him. “What exactly would make sense to you?”
“Nothing. That’s why I’m so happy.” Paulie’s smile faded when Hayden didn’t answer it. “Come on. You met her in a bar, married her after a weekend, and now every family dinner feels like someone lit a fuse under the table. She’s twenty-five. You’re nearly forty. She’s funny. Your ties aren’t.”
Their father made an impatient sound. “This isn’t a joke.”
Paulie leaned against the edge of the desk.
“No, it isn’t. Caroline looks miserable half the time, and Hayden spends the other half pretending everyone else is the problem. You’re plainly mismatched. I’m asking what you think you’re doing.”
Anger moved through Hayden, hot and clean. “You’re her friend when you’re eating my food and making her laugh. Then you come here to question our marriage?”
Paulie’s mouth tightened. “Both things can be true.”
“Enough,” their father said. “Your brother is trying to reach you before this becomes worse.”
“By agreeing with you?”
“By recognizing what everyone else can see. You behaved irresponsibly. You knew nothing about this woman, refused every sensible protection, and tied her to this family for the rest of your life.”
“I married her. She isn’t tied to anything.”
His father’s gaze hardened. “If she weren’t pregnant, I’d tell you to divorce her outright.”
“Don’t speak about my wife that way.”
“Your wife made certain that divorce would be as difficult and ugly as possible. She baby-trapped a man she knew was too decent to abandon a pregnant woman.”
Hayden stepped toward him. “I proposed to Caroline. The pregnancy was not planned. Those are the facts.”
“Those are the facts she gave you.”
“I was there.” Hayden pinched the bridge of his nose.
Paulie pushed away from the desk. “Dad, maybe leave the baby out of it.”
“The baby is the reason we’re having this conversation.” Their father didn’t look away from Hayden. “Put your foot down. Have the agreement prepared and insist that she sign it.”
“No.”
“You haven’t even asked what terms I propose.”
“I don’t care about the terms.”
“Of course you don’t. You paid her debts at once. You promised to buy her mother a home. You’ve hired a stylist and an etiquette instructor to make her presentable.”
Hayden’s hands curled at his sides. “I’m not embarrassed by her.”
“Then you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Paulie muttered a curse.
Hayden ignored him. If he let himself answer that insult, the conversation would become something they couldn’t take back. He focused instead on the facts, the same way he had in the meeting earlier.
“I paid her student debt because I could,” he said. “I offered to help her mother because I love Caroline, and Caroline loves her. None of that gives you the right to call her a gold digger.”
He remembered telling Caroline the debt was gone. She’d sat still with her laptop open, then asked why he’d done it without waiting for her permission.
“Because it was hurting you,” he’d told her. “Because now it isn’t.”
She’d laughed at herself for crying over a row of zeroes, climbed into his lap, and held him. He’d been proud that love could remove a burden she’d carried through college and restaurant shifts.
He’d made the promise about her mother just as easily. They would find a modest apartment nearby, somewhere Caroline could help choose. Caroline had kissed him and called him an interfering swindler. There had been no greed in her eyes. Only hope.
Now his father was taking those moments and laying them out like charges in a case.
“She accepted quickly enough,” his father said.
“Should she have made a show of refusing until I begged?” Hayden shot back.
“She might have continued earning her own living.”
That landed harder than Hayden wanted it to.
Caroline had tried to keep applying for design work after they came east. Even after they learned about the baby, she’d wanted experience before the birth.
Hayden had told her it made no sense. She wouldn’t work for long, and then she would want to stay home with their child. They could discuss it again later. She’d argued, but he’d asked her to trust him and promised neither she nor their baby would lack anything.
In his memory, it was love. She’d trusted him enough to accept the future he offered. Now he heard his own words through his father’s voice, and something inside them sounded different.
“I asked her not to work,” Hayden said. “You don’t get to use that against her.”
“I’m not using anything. I’m asking you to look at the pattern.”
“You’re building a pattern out of my decisions.”
His father came closer. “And when she told you she was pregnant? Was the nursery your decision too?”
Caroline had looked terrified when she told him she was pregnant. He’d felt nothing but joy. He’d held her face, kissed her, and reverently whispered back to her that they were having a baby until she smiled.
He’d taken charge of the nursery immediately.
Designers, deliveries, furniture. He’d wanted it perfect before Caroline had time to worry, and it was finished within days.
Her astonishment had pleased him. Now he wondered if he’d noticed that she hadn’t chosen much of it.
The thought irritated him because it felt like another accusation.
“Yes,” he said. “It was my decision. I was delighted about my daughter. I still am.”
His father shook his head. “You were delighted to be needed.”
“And you seem delighted to believe the worst of my wife.”
“I believe what her circumstances suggest.”
“You believe money makes everyone without it dishonest.”
“Money makes honesty expensive.”
Hayden looked at Paulie. “Anything else you’d like to add?”
His brother lifted one shoulder. “You rushed into it. Pretending you didn’t won’t help either of you.”
It wasn’t agreement with their father. It wasn’t a defense of Caroline either.
Hayden moved behind his desk and picked up the folder waiting on his blotter.
“I have work,” he said dismissively.
“And the agreement?” his father pressed, not knowing when to stop.
“There won’t be one.”
“You may regret that.”
“Then it’ll be my regret.”
His father studied him for another moment before walking out.
Paulie paused at the door.
“I do like her,” he said.
“That makes this worse.”
Paulie’s face changed, but he followed their father.
Hayden sat down. He didn’t open the folder in front of him.
The plans were squared at the corner of his desk, and the written memos were arranged in order of importance.
Through the broad windows, the city lay under a pale sky.
Usually, his problems felt measurable. A building could be repaired.
A delayed project could be forced back into motion.
He tried to work but read the same page too many times.
He remembered Caroline crying in their bedroom, telling him that everyone else always understood the joke except her.
He’d told her his family didn’t matter and promised she could trust him.
Then he’d returned to the same people who spoke about his marriage as if he’d been tricked.
His phone vibrated on the desk. Dasha’s name appeared on the screen.
He almost rejected the call. He still remembered her hand reaching for his tie on the terrace. But rejecting her meant sitting alone with his father’s words, and Hayden had heard enough of his own thoughts.
“What?” he answered.
“You sound charming.” Her voice was warm rather than offended. “Your father called me.”
“Of course he did.”
“I gather the family meeting went well.”
“It wasn’t a family meeting, it was an ambush in my own office.”