4. Chapter Four #2
“Then come have coffee with me. You’re too angry to work, and I’m close.”
He should’ve said no. But she knew his father, Paulie, and his mother. He wouldn’t have to explain his family before complaining about it.
“Coffee,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Hayden, I heard you perfectly well last night.”
He agreed to meet her at a quiet hotel lounge near the office and ended the call.
Dasha was already seated when he arrived. Today, she was wearing a cream suit, and her red hair curved in its perfect line against her jaw. She didn’t reach for him when he sat down, didn’t try to invade his personal space.
“You look exhausted,” she said.
“Apparently, everyone has an opinion about my face today.”
“Paulie told you that?”
“Among other things.”
She ordered his coffee without asking how he took it. After ten years, she knew. The small familiarity brought an unwilling sense of relief.
For a while, she only listened. Hayden told her about his father’s demand and Paulie’s sudden concern for the wisdom of other people’s choices. Dasha smiled in the right places but didn’t make a joke of his anger.
“Your father is frightened,” she said. “He doesn’t know how to say that without turning it into an order.”
“He’s had enough practice.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s learned.”
Hayden took a sip of his coffee. It was strong and plain, and exactly right. “He called Caroline a baby-trapper.”
Dasha’s gaze lowered. “That’s ugly.”
The answer surprised him.
“You agree with him about the postnup, though,” he said.
“I think protecting yourself is sensible. I don’t think cruelty is.” She folded her hands around her cup. “And I know you. Once you’ve decided someone is yours, you’ll tear yourself apart before admitting you might’ve been wrong.”
“I’m not wrong.”
“Then you have nothing to fear.”
The words were soft, and so was her expression. She looked like the woman who’d known him before he was CEO, before his father had started sending him into meetings as the future of the company, before every choice became proof of whether he deserved the life prepared for him or not.
Hayden let out a breath. “Caroline offered to sign last night. I told her no.”
“Of course you did.”
“What does that mean?”
“Only that you’re consistent.” Dasha looked down at her coffee again. “There is something I should tell you.”
The pause changed the conversation. Hayden set down his cup.
“What?”
“I didn’t intend to become involved.”
He nearly laughed. “You attended my parents’ dinner without warning me.”
“Larissa invited me. I shouldn’t have come, perhaps, but that isn’t what I mean.” She met his eyes. “When Caroline left the dining room, I saw her in the hall. She was speaking to her mother on the phone.”
Hayden waited.
“I heard enough of the call to understand what they were discussing,” Dasha continued gravely.
“Which was?”
Dasha hesitated with such care that he knew the answer had been prepared.
“Your money. The apartment you’ve promised her mother. Caroline said there was no need to hurry you because once the baby came, you’d give her whatever she asked for. They laughed about how easy you were to persuade.”
The lounge seemed too quiet. Hayden could hear the low conversation at another table and the faint knock of a spoon against china.
“No,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“That doesn’t sound like Caroline.”
“I knew you’d say that.”
“When exactly did this happen?” Hayden asked, drumming his fingers on the table.
“During dinner. When she said she needed to go to the powder room.”
“She was gone for only a few minutes.”
“A few minutes are enough for a phone call.”
“Where were you?”
“I’d stepped away from the table. She didn’t notice me.” Dasha’s mouth tightened. “Do you think I enjoy telling you this?”
“I think you tried to persuade me to leave my wife last night.”
Color rose along her cheekbones. “And you refused me. If revenge were my purpose, I could’ve told you then.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “What were the exact words?”
“What?”
“You said they laughed at how easy I was to persuade. What did Caroline say exactly?”
Dasha’s eyes shone with wounded patience. “She said you liked rescuing her and that you’d never notice what it cost until it was too late. Her mother called you a fool. I know because Caroline repeated it and then laughed.”
It struck right where his father’s accusations had left him raw.
He remembered Caroline at the table the night before, quiet and unhappy. Caroline offering to sign a postnup. Caroline crying against his neck after he paid her college debt. None of those women sounded like the one Dasha described.
But he also saw the pattern his father had demanded he look at. The debt, the gifts, the home for her mother. The work she’d given up. A baby conceived on their wedding night. Facts he’d once held as proof of love now had sharp edges.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he asked.
“Because I knew you’d blame me.” Dasha’s voice shook slightly. “I kept thinking it was none of my concern. But after Adam called, I couldn’t sit here and let you defend someone who laughs at you.”
“You don’t know her.”
“Neither do you.”
The words hit with more force than he could take right now. Hayden went still.
Dasha reached across the table but stopped before touching him.
“I’ve known you for ten years. You knew Caroline for one weekend before you married her. I may have behaved badly last night, and I’m sorry. But I wouldn’t invent this.”
He stood.
“Hayden…”
“I need to go.”
She didn’t try to stop him. “Just be careful.”
Outside, he called for the car. Dasha’s story should’ve been easy to reject. She wanted him back. Caroline had asked whether he trusted her, and he’d said yes.
He did trust her. He did.
In the car heading east, office towers gave way to lower buildings. Hayden tried to put Dasha’s claim in the same picture with her hand on his tie, her insults at dinner, and ten years of games he was tired of playing.
But his father’s voice kept cutting through it. Look at the pattern.
Hayden remembered the wedding, Caroline’s vanished debt, the finished nursery, and her mother waiting for the home he’d promised. He remembered Paulie asking what he thought he was doing, as if Hayden were the only person who couldn’t understand the joke.
Then he imagined Caroline laughing into her phone.
He didn’t believe it.
The worst part was that he couldn’t stop wondering.