Chapter Seven
THE JEWELERS BOX CAME first, along with the ridiculous florist’s order, then the man himself.
Paige sat at her father’s kitchen table with a mug of coffee going cold, her laptop open as she tried to focus on recreating the grant proposal she’d left behind at his house, when Kelsey came in holding a delivery slip and a small velvet box.
She held the box away from her body like it might go off. Behind her, through the front window, a courier was setting an enormous arrangement of white roses on the step. Paige knew the roses. She knew the box. She’d married the man who sent them.
“There’s a car in the driveway,” Kelsey said. “It’s him.”
Paige closed the laptop. She’d assume this was coming since the morning she left, and she’d told herself she was ready.
He didn’t want her personally or love her, but she was his wife, and he’d want to avoid the humiliation of a long, dragged-out divorce.
After all, his grandfather wouldn’t have approved of such things, and he clearly cared more about his grandfather than anyone in the world, even though the old man was dead.
The sight of his car in the driveway proved she hadn’t been as ready as she thought. She stumbled for a second before regaining her footing and went to the door before her father could because this was hers to do.
Maddox stood on the step in a suit she’d seen a hundred times, holding a leather folder.
He looked worse than she’d ever seen him, which she hadn’t expected to care about but did.
“Paige.” He said her name like the first word of a speech he’d rehearsed.
“I know I don’t have the right to ask for five minutes, but please. ”
She stepped out and pulled the door most of the way closed behind her. Her father was listening, and she didn’t want an audience for whatever this turned into. The cold went through her sweater. She didn’t invite him in.
He looked like he’d slept in his office.
More likely, he hadn’t slept at all. There was a day of stubble on him and a grayness under his eyes she’d only seen once before, the week his grandfather died.
She hated that she still tracked his face closely enough to know the difference.
She folded her arms and kept them folded. “You have the two minutes. Use them.”
He opened the folder. Inside was a single sheet, and she caught the letterhead before he started talking, the Caldwell logo she’d once thought she was marrying into.
He laid it out for her in order, clearly and sequenced, every piece built to carry him toward a close.
He would remake the anniversary, the real one this time, the dinner she’d cooked and he’d walked past. The jewelry was hers whether she came back or not.
The letter was the page he kept touching.
It said he’d absorb every cost her father’s company had taken when the merger collapsed.
He’d waive the termination provisions. He’d sign back the land options that favored Caldwell.
He’d make Templeton Construction whole down to the last dollar.
“I sent a copy of this to your father this morning already.” He paused, flushing.
“I did this to your family. Let me undo the part I can undo.”
She listened to all of it. She let him finish, because she wanted to be sure, and by the third sentence she was sure. “You’re still negotiating.” Disgust laced her tone. “I’m not a business decision, Maddox.”
He stopped.
“That’s what this is. You’re still moving assets and people around until you get the result you want.
You’ve decided the result you want is me to save face, because you sure don’t care about me, so now you’re building the deal that gets you me.
” Anger laced her tone, and she had to fight back the urge to throw the velvet box she was still holding into the roses.
“You think making my father financially whole means you’ve made me whole.
It doesn’t work like that. You can’t buy the marriage back the same as you bought it in the first place. ”
“Paige, that’s not—”
“It is though. You just don’t hear it because this is the only language you have.” She handed the folder back. “Give my father his money if your conscience needs it. That’s between you and him. It has nothing to do with me.”
“I don’t know another way to show you.” His voice cracked on that. The crack was real, and that was almost the worst part. “You tell me the way, and I’ll do it. Whatever it is.”
“That’s the tell right there.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“You want me to hand you the terms so you can meet them. There aren’t any terms, Maddox.
That’s what a marriage is. I needed you there for two years, unpaid, with nothing to close.
You couldn’t find the time. Now that I’m gone, you’ve cleared your whole calendar.
” She shook her head. “You don’t want me back. You want to win.”
His face closed the same as it had on the sofa night, an expression she’d never been able to read, and she didn’t try.
She’d spent two years trying but was too tired to put forth more effort into a lost cause.
“You should go home, Maddox.” She tried to hand back the jewelry box, but he wouldn’t take it.
With a shrug, she dropped it on the driveway and turned to walk back to the door.
He walked away after a moment. She stood on the step until the car pulled out, then went back inside, past her father. He said nothing but had put the kettle on. Paige understood him anyway. He’d heard the whole thing, he was proud of her, and he wouldn’t make her talk about it.
THE FLOWERS KEPT COMING for three more days, then stopped.
Paige threw each delivery out without reading the cards and waited for the next move in a campaign she’d already refused.
What came instead, that Tuesday, was Jayne, unannounced, holding a foil-covered dish she didn’t need to bring but wanted to.
"I made too much in that hotel kitchenette," she said, which was a lie both of them knew. Paige stepped back to let her in.
For a moment, they stood in the entry not quite sure how to proceed.
The last time they'd been in a room together, Paige had been Jayne's daughter-in-law and the hostess of a house that turned out to be a set.
Now she'd left Jayne's son, and neither of them had a script for what that made them to each other.
Then Jayne reached out and squeezed her hand once, briefly but warmly, which eased enough of the awkwardness for them to move past the doorway.
They sat in the kitchen. Kelsey was at the office, and her father out on a job site, so it was just the two of them, alone with the coffee and the subject neither had named.
Jayne had loved her from the first dinner, quietly and without conditions.
Losing that had been its own separate grief inside the larger one.
Paige had assumed the marriage ending meant the mother figure ending too.
Jayne setting a dish on the counter said otherwise.
"I'm not here for him," Jayne said, reading her. "I'm here because I lost a daughter-in-law I was fond of, and I wanted to see your face. What he does with his own mess is his problem."
She smiled, though it was wobbly. “Thank you, Jayne. I don’t want to lose you.”
“We won’t let him do that to us.” She shook her head, clearly annoyed with her son. “He didn’t tell me much.”
Paige didn’t start with the revelation since her thoughts were scattered.
“He came by and offered to make my father whole, covering all losses on the failed merger. He wanted to recreate the anniversary but hired out to someone else.” She rolled her eyes even as she reached for a tissue. “He wanted to buy it all back."
Jayne closed her eyes for a second. "Of course, he did."
"I told him he was still negotiating."
"Good." Jayne's mouth moved, not quite a smile. "He learned too much from that grandfather of his."
“You don’t know the half of it.” Paige had meant to hold back, to let Jayne talk first, but she’d never been good at that, and she trusted Jayne more than she wanted to.
So she told her the thing she hadn’t said out loud to anyone but her father and Kelsey that she’d overheard through her own kitchen wall.
Elim had wanted the Templeton merger but David wouldn’t sell into a hostile structure, so Maddox had married her to get it.
She’d heard her husband say he hadn’t cared who he married.
Jayne set down her coffee cup very slowly.
For a second, she didn't say anything at all, and when Paige looked up, Jayne had gone pale, one hand clenched on the table. She clearly hadn’t known anything about the plan, which reassured Paige.
She hadn’t really thought Jayne would have gone along with something so vile, but knowing she was as clueless about it as Paige had been made her feel better.
“I made a mistake letting Elim into his life so much.”
Paige frowned at that, but she didn’t want to argue.
If Jayne needed to believe this was all Elim’s fault, it wasn’t her place to rob her of that comfort.
So she moved on. “The part I can’t square is Laila.
She sat in my house for three days playing the tragic ex who gave him up out of love.
I don’t understand why she left quietly and stayed gone for ten years.
If she loved him, why didn’t she fight for him then, instead of waiting until Elim died, and Maddox was married to someone else? ”
“Oh, she loved Maddox in a young, teenager way, but not nearly enough.” Jayne was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, it was without her usual warmth. Anger laced her tone. "It was Elim. He paid her to go."
Paige froze. “What?”