12. Sloane
TWELVE
SLOANE
"Okay, brief me," Andrew said, twenty minutes out from the estate. "Who am I going to embarrass myself in front of first?"
"Nobody. They'll love you." I ticked them off on my fingers. "Simon barely talks. Violet talks enough for the whole state. Eliza is... polished. You'll get along."
"And Xavier?"
I kept my eyes on the window. "Xavier's fine."
"That's the first one-word answer you've given me all week."
"He's Violet's brother. We've known each other a long time. Our history is boring."
"Nothing about you is boring," he said, like he was closing a deal. It was such a nice thing to say to someone that I felt bad I had nothing to hand back but a smile.
The car came through the gates, and the ocean behind the estate burned a blue so saturated it looked fake. We climbed out, and before my feet hit the gravel, Andrew had my suitcase and my tote off the seat with his own bag, waving me off when I reached for the tote.
"I've got it," he said.
"It weighs four pounds."
"Then it's no trouble." He smiled and shouldered past me toward the entrance.
It should have been charming. But I felt like an understudy shoved onstage mid-scene, trailing my co-star across the gravel while he power-walked my four-pound tote to the door like it might go off if I touched it.
Inside, he had the butler laughing in under a minute over a crack about the luggage, and by the time we reached the hall a porter was treating him like an old war buddy. Andrew was easy with a room. He had the same gift Simon had, the one I couldn't fake before my second coffee.
It was only with me that it came out stiff.
A house manager walked our group to the reserved wing of suites.
Andrew and I took one, Xavier and Eliza took the suite next door, and Violet and Simon got the room across the hall.
The accommodations were breathtaking, wide and flooded with tropical light, the sliding glass doors opening onto a private balcony over the crashing waves, two plush lounge chairs angled toward the water.
Andrew dropped his heavy bag on the rug, scanned the room, and flashed a brilliant smile. "This is going to be fun."
"What gives you that delusional confidence?" I deadpanned.
"I haven't been to Hawaii in years," he admitted, walking over to unlatch the balcony door and let the warm salt air spill in. "Last time I flew out, I barely saw sunlight outside the conference room."
"How many times have you been?"
"Twice, maybe? Both for work." He turned back, leaning against the glass frame. "I've never done the tourist thing. The beaches, the snorkeling, whatever grueling itinerary Violet's planned."
"Oh, she's got a minute-by-minute itinerary," I warned him. "And we'll be executing it."
He laughed out loud. "Of course there's an itinerary."
"Violet's always been like this. I honestly think she might have some kind of undiagnosed… I don't even know. She just loves a structured plan."
"Thriving on routine doesn't mean something's wrong with a person," he offered.
"I was joking," I said. "Mostly."
He smiled, then drifted over and sat on the edge of the king bed, resting his chin in his hand as he studied my face.
"I wasn't sure I'd fit in," he confessed. "With your inner circle, I mean. I almost declined the invitation."
"I know you did," I murmured. "But how else are you supposed to get to know someone if not by dragging them somewhere they've never been, surrounded by the people they love?"
He considered it. "That's a surprisingly good point."
"I have them occasionally."
He smiled again, his blue eyes crinkling. "How do you know her?" he asked. "Violet, I mean."
"We met in college. Randomly assigned as freshman roommates, and we just clicked. That was it."
He nodded, taking in the history. "I don't have friendships like that," he admitted, a trace of melancholy in his voice.
"In the corporate world I grew up in, your father's world, those dynamics don't exist. Every person holds a strategic position.
There isn't much room for people who are just in your corner.
" He paused. "It's an incredible thing, the loyalty you've got with her. "
"She's my family," I corrected. "Someone I chose."
We let a comfortable silence settle over the room.
"Why'd you agree to all this?" I finally asked, breaking the quiet. "The arranged-dating thing. My father's heavy-handed introductions. The whole circus."
He didn't flinch, his blue eyes steady on mine. "It was an easy decision," he answered, blunt. "Your father is one of the most ruthless men in our industry. If there was even a microscopic chance of connecting myself to his empire, to the network he's built, I was going to take the meeting."
I stared at him. The corporate math was sickeningly obvious.
"There's nothing wrong with that kind of honesty," I conceded. "He's offering a lot of leverage."
"He is," Andrew agreed. "But that leverage only gets handed to me if you actually agree to marry me."
"You don't think I'm attractive enough that you'd want to marry me for my personality?" I teased.
He let out a booming laugh. "You're objectively gorgeous," he assured me. "But the financial acquisition crossed my mind first."
I laughed, a genuine, unforced sound with no bitterness under it. There was no tension between us at all, which was fast becoming one of the things I appreciated most about Andrew Maxwell.
He excused himself to use the bathroom. I sank onto the edge of the mattress, staring out the open balcony door as the sun began its slow descent toward the water, turning the waves a liquid gold.
Andrew's phone lit up on the nightstand where he'd left it, and I didn't mean to read it, but my father's name doesn't ask permission.
Mr. Ty
Status?
One word, no greeting, the way he opened every message that was really an order. He wasn't on this island, but he was here. He was always here. He'd just learned to use other people's hands.
I was going to make this trip look effortless.
A whole week of Xavier watching me laugh with a man who actually paid attention to me, a week of proof, for him and for me, that I'd moved on and landed on my feet.
And maybe, if I performed it long enough, the proof would stop being a performance and turn into something real.
Andrew was handsome, a gentleman, and brutally honest about his own flaws. There was nothing wrong with the man.
But he wasn't someone I could ever fall in love with.
Andrew came out of the bathroom, and the early night I'd been promising myself evaporated. There was a welcome dinner, because of course there was, penciled into Violet's itinerary somewhere between "arrive" and "sleep."
The whole group gathered at a long table on the terrace, and Andrew's campaign resumed before I'd fully sat down.
He pulled my chair out so fast I nearly sat on the floor. He refilled my water any time it dipped below the rim, like it was a performance review. When I mentioned, once, in passing, that I run cold, a staff member materialized with a cashmere wrap before I reached the end of the sentence.
"Thank you," I said, and draped it over the back of my chair, where it stayed.
Every gesture was textbook. And sitting beside him felt like being courted by an extremely well-reviewed hotel concierge—with not a minute of it moved my pulse an inch.
Then Eliza asked him something about the hotel chain he ran, and I watched the stiffness slide off him like a coat.
He lit up. He talked with his hands. Eliza leaned in and fired back a question that pulled the big laugh out of him, the booming one I'd heard about twice.
In two minutes, they were knee-deep in the catastrophic hotel opening in Singapore, talking over each other and not minding it once—as if the rest of the table stopped existing for them.
I watched it and felt nothing I had to fight.
If anything, I felt relief.
Xavier caught my eye across the table. He tipped his head a fraction toward the two of them, one brow climbing, and I read it without a single word attached: Are you seeing this?
I pressed my lips together to kill the smile and lost. The corner of his mouth went up in response.
I looked at the candles to keep myself from laughing.
We drifted back to the suites once the table broke up, and Andrew was asleep within minutes. I lay awake a long while, listening to the water, before I dozed off.
When I woke the next morning, Andrew was still asleep on the opposite side of the mattress, his breathing a soft, steady rhythm, his bare arm thrown at his side.
I checked the clock, slipped out of bed, washed my face, and pulled on a sundress.
When I came back into the bedroom, he was sitting up against the headboard with his blond hair sticking up at a chaotic angle.
"Morning," I said.
"Morning." He groaned and stretched both arms over his head. "I feel ready to conquer the world."
"Good." I smiled. "Because I have a feeling you're going to have fun today."
"God, I hope so," he sighed, scrubbing his face. "The grind's been brutal lately. I just want to sit somewhere warm and be motionless for a few days."
"How'd you end up in that line of work?" I asked. "Was it always the dream?"
"It was my father's empire," he admitted with a wry half-smile. "Same dynamic as yours, I assume. The only real difference is I wasn't forced to marry someone to inherit the keys."
"Ah, the glorious advantages of being a man," I deadpanned.
He chuckled. "A few of them, yes."
We wandered down to the open-air dining pavilion for breakfast. The rest of the group had already gathered, Violet and Simon anchoring one end of the table, Xavier and Eliza across from them, two empty chairs left at the near edge.
The second I walked in, my eyes found Xavier.
He was already watching me, chin dipped, his dark brows pulled into a scowl.
I broke eye contact and slid into my chair.