Chapter 39
THEO
Ididn’t expect Raquel to text me back. I hadn’t sent those messages expecting anything at all, actually. There had simply been a few things I’d wanted to say and I’d said them.
Meanwhile, Colin and I were texting back and forth while I waited for my date to show up. The restaurant Alex had sent us to was ridiculously upscale. About as far away from the cafe Raquel and I had frequented in Quartz Pass as could be.
Colin: I’ve just landed. It’s really hot here. I think someone forgot to tell them that it’s winter. Why do people live here?
I chuckled and fired off a quick response.
Me: Just give it a chance. It’ll grow on you. I swear. Enjoy the sunshine! I’ll just be here, waiting for the girl I’m supposed to marry. Do you remember her name?
Colin: It’s Belle. Seriously, Theo. It’s not that hard. I flew all the way to Arizona for you. You can sit through dinner for Alex.
Me: You flew all the way to Arizona because you and Jane want to expand Thayer Steelworks. It’s not my fault you didn’t think about the autobody market until I mentioned it.
Colin: I’m man enough to admit that I’m intrigued, but still. There is an autobody market outside of Quartz Pass, Arizona. I could’ve investigated much closer to home.
Me: Maybe, but you won’t regret making the trip. You’ve been looking for business opportunities that align with manufacturing, right? I told you months ago that there’s a lot of potential out there. Don’t judge a town by its desert.
Colin: Of course. The booming private sector of Quartz Pass. Don’t worry, I’ll give it a fair shake. Our researchers happen to agree about its potential.
Relief slid through me at the assurance that he was now on the ground and fully invested in making the most of this trip.
I truly believed that he would find the opportunities Thayer had been looking for in the area, but my primary motivation for encouraging him to go out there was that I desperately wanted someone to save Raquel and Avery.
Maybe that someone couldn’t be me, but it could be him. Colin could walk in there without starting a small war. Nobody needed to know I had anything to do with it.
Me: Thanks, man. You have all the info you need, right?
Colin: Yep. I saved all the links you sent and I’ve got the location pins. If I get lost, tell Search and Rescue that I insist they find me. I refuse to die alone in a giant sandpit.
Me: Jeez, drama much?
As I hit send, I looked up to see a beautiful woman moving toward me. I didn’t know who I was supposed to be looking for, but Alex had said she was blonde, so it might well be the girl the hostess was leading toward my table.
Strangely, the expression on her face matched the one I was pretty sure I was wearing right now myself. She was gorgeous. Truly. With big eyes, pale hair that shone gold in the candlelight, and delicate features.
Features that were absolutely, without a doubt saying, Please let this be over quick.
I almost smiled when I realized my first impression of her had been right. That look definitely matched the one I’d had on my face when I’d glanced in the mirror on my way out of my room. I stood when the hostess motioned her toward me.
“Theo?” she asked as she came closer, extending a hand toward me when I nodded. “Hi, I’m Belle.”
I offered her a polite smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”
She looked at me as if she wasn’t convinced. She sat down and immediately reached for the water that had been waiting for her on the table. Somehow, things between us were awkward from the second I sat down too, neither of us saying a word for a few very long moments.
A waiter appeared and we each ordered a drink, but as soon as he left us alone again, we lapsed back into our awkward silence. After another moment of both of us staring at our menus as if they held the keys to a happy life, I finally couldn’t take it anymore.
“Okay,” I said, leaning back in my chair and waiting until she looked up at me.
“I feel like we should probably just address the elephant at the table. What exactly am I saving you from? Is your family’s reputation on the line?
Do you need to get married to get your inheritance or something like that? What is it?”
She laughed, the sound not altogether unpleasant, but it wasn’t Raquel’s rich, easy laughter either. At least the ice seemed to be broken now. The girl—I’d already forgotten her name all over again—reached for her wine and took a slow sip, some of the tension easing out of her brow.
“It’s none of the above, actually,” she said.
“A different kind of family crisis, then? Okay, I can work with that. Is it a long-lost cousin attempting a coup? Your board of directors refusing to sign off on you taking over unless you get married?”
“Oooh, you’re good, but nope.” She smiled, her head shaking softly from one side to the other. “It’s neither of those either.”
I groaned. “Fine, I give up. Hit me. Why did you agree to meet me tonight?”
She glanced around the restaurant before leaning forward and saying the last thing I’d expected to hear tonight. “I’m in love with someone my family doesn’t approve of. I agreed to this in the hopes that it’ll get my dad off my back for long enough that I can finish planning my escape.”
For the briefest moment, I thought she was joking. I even wondered if Alex had somehow arranged this so that I would admit that I was in love with someone else too, but nope.
All it took to know that she was deadly serious was one proper look into her eyes. She was staring back at me intently, not trying to hide or avert her gaze, and all I saw was blatant honesty. I was a little impressed, actually.
Terrified for her but impressed.
“You’re not kidding, are you?”
“Not even a little bit.” A confident smile appeared on her lips. “If you tell anyone before I’m ready for them to know, just remember that I have some of the best hackers in the world on speed dial. They could make life real interesting for you.”
I let out a low whistle between my teeth. “An escape plan and a threat in the first five minutes of our date? I like you. It’s a pity we won’t be getting married, but alas, my heart isn’t up for grabs right now either.”
She chuckled. “That’s good to know. I kind of thought as much. It’s not every guy who looks bored when I sit down across from him.”
“Wow, and she’s modest too.”
“You know what I mean,” she said, still smiling as she shook her head. “It’s just that I’ve never arrived for a date with someone who looked like he’d rather spend his time getting open heart surgery or having a root canal.”
I picked up my whiskey and tipped the glass toward her. “Likewise. Cheers.”
She took a sip of her wine, set the glass down slowly, and folded her hands on the table. “Do you want to tell me about her? If you’re here instead of with her, I’m going to assume I’m not the only one who fell for someone I’m not even supposed to have met.”
“Definitely not, but I’m more interested in hearing about this plan of yours. You’re really thinking about escaping?”
“I have a job lined up in New York and everything. Honestly, I don’t care about what’s right, or what’s done, or what my family says, I’m doing this.”
“Good for you,” I said, and I meant it completely. “If you want, I’m happy for us to fake that we’re dating while you do whatever else still needs to be done before you can execute this plan of yours.”
“Thanks. Can I let you know if it comes to that? My boyfriend is a teacher at a public school in Brooklyn. The job I’ve got lined up is there too, but it turns out that uprooting an entire life lived in one city and moving it to another is a little more complicated than I thought.”
“Brooklyn, huh?” I nodded. “I admire the fact that you’re packing up your life and moving all the way there without anyone’s knowledge or permission.”
She shrugged. “What can I say? I love him. You and I might not need each other, but I do need him. Fuck my inheritance and anything else that my family tries using to control me. If everyone else can make their own way in this world when they have to start from the bottom, then so can I.”
“That’s…” I trailed off. Everything she’d been saying hit home so directly that I felt a little off kilter. “Fuck. You might’ve just inspired me.”
“Happy to be of service.” She took another sip of her wine and then cocked her head. “What about you, Theo Westwood, last eligible bachelor of the Westwood tribe? Who’s the unsuitable, but undoubtedly lucky lady, who’s stolen your heart?”
“Raquel.” I said her name out loud for the first time in a month, and it fucking hurt so bad that I almost flinched.
“She’s from a small town in Arizona. I took a trip on my bike recently and ended up stuck there for a while, but you know how it goes.
One minute, I was happy, living my life with the woman of my dreams, and the next, I was harshly reminded that duty was calling. ”
She widened her eyes. “Boy, do I know how that goes. You love her?”
“More than I ever thought it was possible to love another person.”
“Then you should take a risk too,” she said as if it really was that simple. “We’re not getting any younger.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one who’d be detonating decades of family tradition. Hell, I think it might even be more like centuries.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “If you love her, you should go get her. I know the Thurstons aren’t the Westwoods, but I’m detonating at least two generations of family tradition myself. I’m supposed to take over our company next year. You don’t see that stopping me.”
I stared at her, struck completely dumb for a long moment. “I didn’t know.”
“That’s because it doesn’t matter, Theo.
You’ll regret it forever if you let her go.
Westwood and Sons will survive without you.
You know that. Just like I know Thurston Security Solutions will survive without me.
Companies come and go. As enduring as yours and ours have been, they’re not meant to be prisons.
So get back out there to your small town and start your own. ”
“I really wish it was as easy as just hopping on a plane back to Arizona and opening up shop.”
“It is that easy, whether you want to see it that way or not,” she said. “What are you waiting for? Permission to be yourself? Consent to love who you want to love?”
I groaned. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“When you’re eighty years old looking back on your life, will you think back to this moment and regret not just grabbing your balls and going for it, or will you think back on it and realize that you’re damn glad you came to dinner tonight?”
As I stared back at her, I realized that this was the slap in the face I’d needed to wake up and remember who I was. The often-forgotten youngest brother who was an adventurer, a dreamer, and the idiot who’d bought a motorcycle because he’d always been restless.
Maybe it was time to stop following in the footsteps of a family who wasn’t quite like me. Maybe I hadn’t ever known where I belonged in W&S because I didn’t belong in that tower at all.
Maybe it was my time to shine for exactly who I was, in exactly the unexpected place where I’d found that sense of belonging I’d been missing all along.