Chapter Thirteen
PAIGE HAD COME FOR the red dress and stayed for the truth.
"I came for the dress," she said, because the silence needed something in it.
She lifted the garment bag a little. "The red one.
It's the dress I wanted to wear tonight, and I wanted to look like I hadn't fallen apart.
I thought I could be in and out before you got home.
Laila walked in while I was putting it in a garment bag, and I was sort of trapped. "
"Paige." He said her name like he was strangling on it. "You heard all of it."
She nodded, watching him not knowing what to do with that.
He'd always known exactly what to do but was now standing in his own bedroom with no play to run.
He didn't ask what she'd thought of it. He didn't try to build on it.
He just looked wrecked, honest, and unsure.
That last thing was the most attractive quality she'd seen on him in years.
"I heard the part where she stood in front of the mirror in her underwear, telling herself no man could say no to a body like that," Paige added. "She was very confident you'd take one look and forget I exist. In case you were wondering what else I got to enjoy from the closet."
Color climbed up his neck. "I...that’s...” He stopped and started again. "Yours are better. Objectively. That's not, I'm not saying it to—it's just true."
A laugh came out of her before she could stop it, startled and real.
"It is true," she agreed, and wiped her eyes.
She relaxed a little. "Okay. Dinner's still at my father's.
I told him Saturday. He's expecting us, and he isn't in a forgiving mood, so I hope you meant everything you said about being different, because you're about to prove it to David Templeton across a plate of pot roast." She picked up the garment bag.
"Give me ten minutes in the guest bathroom. You take the ensuite."
He blinked. "Huh?"
"I might as well get dressed here, since I'm here now." She left him still trying to compose himself, realizing it was fun to leave her husband unbalanced.
She almost stumbled. Her husband had come easily in that thought to herself. No stuttering. It sounded right in a way it hadn’t...ever before, she realized.
HER FATHER'S HOUSE smelled like pot roast and the rich roast coffee he only made when he was nervous or angry, which tonight was both. David met them at the door and didn’t shake Maddox's hand.
He looked at the man who'd married his daughter as a merger clause, and a muscle worked in his cheek. For a moment, she thought he might refuse to let Maddox enter, but after a glance at Paige, he stepped aside with a small huff. It was either mercy or a decision to do this with a table between them so he wouldn’t be tempted to let the talk become physical.
Kelsey was already there, arms crossed, wearing the expression she saved for people she'd cheerfully help bury. "Maddox," she said in an icy tone.
Dinner was the longest meal of Paige's life.
David asked Maddox questions with edges on them, about the shelter, about the build, about whether the Caldwell name on a contract meant anything now that the old man was dead, and Maddox answered every one plainly and didn't reach for charm.
That was the thing Paige kept noticing. The old Maddox would have run the table, warmed her father up, closed him by dessert. This one sat and took it.
Then David set down his fork and asked the question the whole meal had been working toward.
"You married my daughter to land my company," he said. "You want to tell me, at my own table, why I shouldn't throw you out of this house?"
The room went very quiet. Kelsey stopped chewing. Paige gripped her water glass and made herself not rescue anyone.
"You should probably throw me out," Maddox said.
"There's no version of what I did that earns me a seat here.
I married her for the merger. I used what I knew about her to do it.
She was twenty-two, and I was old enough to know better.
If you throw me out, you'd be right." He met David's gaze.
"I'm not here to give you a reason to forgive me.
I'm here because Paige asked me, and because I'd rather sit through your contempt than spend another night not trying to be worthy of her.
That's the whole answer. I don't have a better one, and I'm not going to build you one. "
David studied him for a long moment, obviously looking for the angle, the pitch, or the upsell.
He didn't find one, because there wasn't one, and his expression gradually shifted from fury to a wary, grudging attention.
"That's the first honest thing anyone in your family ever said to me," David said.
He picked up his fork again. "Finish your dinner.
I'm not promising to ever like you again, but we don’t waste food. "
It wasn't warmth. It was a door left open a crack, which was more than Paige had expected her father to give. Maddox resumed eating, clearly understanding the gesture and deciding not to push for more. Smart move.
After, Kelsey started clearing plates with a clatter that said the détente was hers to withdraw at any time, and David took his coffee to the den but paused at the doorway.
"The drawings are why you came, she says.
" He didn't turn around. "Use the table.
I'll be in the other room. Don't make me come back in here. "
Then it was the two of them at the cleared table, and Maddox let out a slow breath. Paige almost laughed at how undone he looked, this man who closed nine-figure deals, wrung out by a pot roast.
"That was worse than the board," he said.
"That was my father being nice." She pulled the drawings toward her.
"You survived it without trying to manage him.
I noticed. He noticed too, which is the only reason you still have all your teeth.
" She let a beat go. "Now tell me the rest of it.
The part you were going to say upstairs before I stopped you. "
Maddox nodded. "When Laila left ten years ago, something in me shut off.
I didn't grieve it right. I just sealed it away and called it moving on.
My grandfather liked me better that way.
Grief made me useful. Feeling nothing makes for clearer decisions.
" He turned the cup back. "Then I met you, and the emotions I’d refused to acknowledge started stirring again, but I didn't recognize what was happening.”
She arched a brow, unsure if she believed him.
“Being with you proved I wasn't as numb as I'd decided to be, and instead of admitting that, I punished you for reaching the parts of me I'd shut down. Your singing, your terrible singing, the dog hair on everything, and just your presence... It was grating but that was me coming back to life. I just didn’t realize it.
Instead, I resented it, because feeling things had always cost me, so I focused on closing the deal with you so I could make the merger happen.
Then I focused on the merger, where it was safe. "
Paige held very still. She'd wondered for two years what she'd been to him. This was close to the center of it. “At least you didn’t call it proposing or dress it up as something pretty or romantic. I was the deal you closed. I was grating.”
He flinched but didn’t deny it. "That's not your fault.
I need to be clear about that. You didn't fail to fix me, and it was never your job to.
You reached me just by being who you are, and I refused to let it count.
I looked at the best thing that ever happened to me and told myself it was a distraction.
" He made himself hold her eyes. "Then Elim died, and Laila came back, and I was already married you by then but still didn’t realize—”
"Stop," she said gently. "Back up. You married me before Laila came back."
"I married you as a campaign." He made himself say it.
"That's the part I won't soften, because softening it would be the old me managing you.
Elim wanted the Templeton merger. He'd wanted it for years. He pointed me at you the same as he pointed me at every deal, and I was numb enough to do as I was told.”
He closed his eyes and clenched his fists.
“You were twenty-two. I was thirty-two and knew exactly how to make a twenty-two-year-old believe me.
I used everything I learned about you in those first weeks to become the man you'd marry.
The short ribs. The things I told you about my father.
The promise to adopt a dog... I studied you and built the version of me that would land you, knowing what I was doing the whole time.
I was working the deal while you were falling in love.
" He looked at her straight. "Grief doesn't excuse it.
My grandfather taught me to move people around like pieces on a board, but he didn't move you. I did. That was my hand."
The old fury moved through her, familiar, but his refusal to ask for absolution tempered some of it. He was handing her the knife and pointing at where it had gone in. "Why are you telling me this? You have to know it doesn't help your case."
"Because you married someone who studied you in order to trap you, and you deserve to hear him admit it before you decide anything.
" He shook his head. "I'm not building a case.
I'm done building cases. If I wanted to win you I'd have brought a better speech.
This is just the truth, and you can do whatever you want with it. "
She didn't answer that. She didn't know how to, so she reached for the pot roast, and put more of it on her plate she didn't intend to eat. “I don’t know if you’ve been volunteering still—”
He nodded. “I have. I saw most of them had been adopted straight out of the development lobby.”