43. Kash
Chapter Forty-Three
KASH
I can’t stand the scent of lavender.
Buy lavender essential oil in bulk. Got it.
No information about you today?
Nope.
Naina was back at the hotel and pretending I didn’t exist. Which was fine by me.
The doctor discharged her yesterday morning, and she had her sister and best friend to entertain and distract her.
Sami and Kat were better at taking care of Naina while I was distracted.
Their presence had not gone unnoticed by my family, and my stepmother had casually questioned at breakfast if we were expecting more guests.
As if this was her house, and not an empty hotel.
We had distant family members here whom we hadn’t spoken to in years because more than anything, we needed to maintain the image that an SFV grand opening was the same as ever.
I was surprised Lex had shown up.
The Kingston’s were even more concerned about their image than the Sutherlands. We were a sinking ship Lex wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole under normal circumstances.
“I spoke to your father this morning.” Lex appeared behind me. “We’re pushing back the opening another week.”
I looked at him over my shoulder.
“How did you convince him to do that? We’re ready to open.”
“I convinced him it’s not a good look to go ahead with the opening when his daughter-in-law was just in an accident. Regardless of how the family feels, Naina is a member of this family until the divorce happens and they needed to act accordingly. And when that didn’t work, I threatened to withdraw all future investments. Again.”
I laughed humorlessly.
The threat of losing his investment would have definitely convinced him.
The Kingston’s had been investing our projects for longer than Lex and I had been alive. It was one relationship my father would never want to spoil.
I was convinced that had Lex been a woman, my father would have married me to him.
Lex pulled out the barstool beside me and waved down Liam. The restaurant and bar were still closed, but I didn’t really care. I needed peace, and it just happened to be at the bottom of a bottle.
“You look miserable,” Lex commented.
“Doesn’t he always?”
The barstool on the other side of me was pulled out, and Reid sat down.
“What is this, an intervention?”
I downed the remaining scotch in my glass and had Liam pour me another shot.
“How’s Naina?” Reid asked.
“Fine.”
“I saw her this morning on the pool deck with her sister and friend,” Lex said.
I ground my jaw. If I was hoping that Naina would stay inside and rest following her accident, I was mistaken. Granted, she was just going to the pool, which was still on hotel property. When I asked her if she was sure she wanted to take the stress, I had been met with icy silence.
I understood.
From where she stood, I promised her things that weren’t mine to give, even if I never said those promises out loud.
“What did you do her?” Reid asked.
“You are the last person who should be questioning me,” I said.
Reid rolled his eyes. “Are you ever going to let it go? Vera’s gotten over it.”
“Is she actually over it, or did she just say she is?” I raised an eyebrow.
Reid’s smile faltered, and I knew I had him. Vera wouldn’t get over it for as long as she lived. If there was one thing Sutherlands did well, it was holding a grudge, especially when it came to Ford-Vanderbilts.
The Sutherlands and Ford-Vanderbilts had started out as business rivals until they decided that they could be the biggest names in hotel development and management if they partnered up.
They sealed the deal with a marriage that was miserable to its dying days. The only good thing about that marriage was that no child resulted from it.
For over a hundred years the Sutherlands have held fifty-one percent of the shares in the company and the Ford-Vanderbilts forty-nine percent.
The power struggles were never-ending.
“He’s trying to make you miserable, as well,” Lex said. “Better to ignore him.”
I turned to my old friend.
“How’s your fiancé, Lex? Still planning the wedding that’s never going to happen?”
Lex’s jaw flexed in anger. If he was the kind of man who reacted in anger, I was sure I would be lying on the floor right now.
“Just because you can’t handle your relationship doesn’t mean I can’t handle mine,” he said.
Behind him, the door of the restaurant opened, revealing the last person I wanted to see. Maybe all those years spent in my father’s office had turned me into a masochist who sought pain because that would be the only reason I invited Nick Kayes here.
“Just the person we were missing,” I said.
Nick stalked into the room, brown eyes narrowed in anger, mouth drawn into a frown.
“What did you do to Naina?”
Reid and Lex looked curiously between the two of us.
“Have you been talking to her?” I asked. My gut twisted thinking about their conversation. When did Naina call him? When she was in the hospital? After?
“No, but I have been talking to Sami,” Nick said. “And according to her something you said has upset Naina. What, did you call me here so I could fix it for you?”
“I don’t need you to fix anything,” I said. “I called you here because Naina once said that you’re an option for her.”
The three of them looked at me in utter disgust.
“It makes sense in my head, and that’s all that matters.”
“Call me crazy, but shouldn’t it also make sense in Naina’s head? You know, the woman you’re married to?” Reid said.
Nick pinched the bridge of his nose, cursing silently.
“It obviously makes sense in her mind because she chose him,” I said. The words tasted like poison in my mouth, and I picked up my glass to wash them away with scotch.
This was what being nice got me. Fucking misery.
How had I gotten it so wrong? Naina was brilliant, smart, funny, beautiful, obviously she had someone who wanted to be with her, and whom she wanted back.
My greatest fucking fear.
I should have married Crystal. I was going to be miserable without Naina regardless, at least this way she didn’t have to join in my misery.
I was never going to make her laugh, her happiness and safety was going to be someone else’s responsibility.
I would never have the opportunity to explore every inch of her body, to hear her greatest hopes and most daunting fears.
I was never going to be there to support her when she needed me because it was never going to be me she needed.
“She didn’t fucking choose me,” Nick said. “It was never a choice she had to make, and if you ask her, she will tell you the same thing. I have never been, and never will be, an option for her.”
I rubbed a hand over my face and through my hair.
“Then why did she tell me you were?”
“I think the more important question is even if he was, do you really want your wife to be with someone else?” Lex asked.
The three of them stared back at me with similar expressions of curiosity.
The thought of seeing Naina with another man fucking killed me. I died a thousand deaths when I thought she was missing. I couldn’t go through that again. I couldn’t be on the other side of the phone telling Samira that something happened to Naina because of me.
“You know it can’t happen, Lex. It’s not worth arguing about.”