The corners of Tad’s mouth turn up, smiling as though he were waiting for this moment, and perhaps he has been. My own stomach curdles, not so much on my own behalf, but on Lowry’s. This is going to be wildly unfair to the man who has loved me with everything he has and has been almost achingly perfect, lack of returning my last text notwithstanding.
“Doctor Lowry Campbell is a psychiatrist. He was, when Ms. Patrick was a child, her psychiatrist for a period of four years. At which point he took a job in Chicago where he lived for the past fifteen years, and married a woman named Maeve Maxwell. Does that ring a bell for anyone?”
“The oatmeal heiress?”
Tad points at the man who volunteered this guess with an enthusiastic finger. “Yes, precisely the one. So, apparently, things didn’t work out with that heiress, so Doctor Campbell leaves Chicago approximately nine months ago and comes back to Boston where he quickly becomes involved with…you guessed it, Starla Patrick.”
I’m hoping for Lillian to dismiss this entire dog and pony show as a ridiculous waste of time. Can we all move on now, please? But she doesn’t. No, she brings that pen to her lips, pensive.
“What Ms. Patrick does in the bedroom on her own time is none of our concern as long as it doesn’t affect the business and I’m not buying your argument that it does. Taken alone, I would tell you to jump off the Pru, Tad.”
I don’t like the way she’s phrased this. Yes, she loathes Tad—because who doesn’t—but she’s not outright dismissing his preposterous accusations against Lowry, against me. Never has Lowry tried to influence my business decisions, and if he had, I wouldn’t have listened. If anything, he recuses himself because he’s aware his knowledge about the corporate world is inferior to mine. To think I would give him my ear or let him take advantage of my clout or my money is absurd. How insulting.
“However?” Tad’s brows are halfway up his forehead and I can tell he’s waiting to pounce on the verdict Lillian’s about to hand down.
“However…Doctor Campbell reappearing in your life right now is extraordinarily convenient timing. Your father passed recently, you’re vulnerable, and you already have a predilection for, well, men of a certain type. He’s older, he’s already been in a position of authority over you, and he’s established a level of trust with you that renders you vulnerable to his manipulations. I hate to say it, but Tad might have a point.”
Chapter 36
Starla
That was an unqualified disaster. Possibly the most humiliated I have ever been, and definitely the angriest. The board meeting had to be called after the riot that erupted when Lillian fucking Johnson—who I had sort of counted on to have my back at least about the Lowry thing if not the Jerome Garrett thing—totally fucked me over. Goddammit. Goddammit.
I text Holden on my way out of the meeting: If everything’s in order, pull the trigger on the Garrett deal.
Three seconds later, as I knew it would, my phone buzzes and despite having zero desire to talk to anyone with my brain exploding like the Death Star has just fired on it, I answer. And before I can say anything, Holden’s voice is in my ear.
“Are you sure?”
He means well. I know he does. It’s a huge decision and weighty for many reasons, but I’ve made up my mind and I’m tired of questioning myself, stewing over every little thing. Or every massive thing like this. I don’t feel awesome about this decision. In fact, I feel pretty crap about it. But I also believe it’s the best choice for myself and Patrick Enterprises and that’s going to have to be good enough.
“Yes, do it. Just fucking do it.”
Then I hang up and start trying to reach Lowry. Five maddening minutes later, I’m in a car on my way to his place because I’ve been texting and calling and even got desperate and tried to email him but nothing. Now I’m worried. Is he sick? Is he hurt or something bad happened to his family in Scotland and he didn’t tell me because he didn’t want me to fret? Except I’m goddamn fretting to the extent that I didn’t trust myself to drive and I didn’t have the patience for Holden to come pick me up, so here I am, checking my phone incessantly in the back of a Toyota Camry. Not a bad car, but the pickup is for shit and makes me want to yell at the driver. Because that would help, obviously.
At long last we reach Lowry’s building, and I barely say thank you before I’m heading inside, waving to the doorman as I pass at slightly less than a run, and pressing the button in the elevator—repeatedly, because again, that will clearly make it go faster—and then riding up to his hall, a ball of impending nervous breakdown. I suppose running to Lowry doesn’t help my case regarding being an independent woman whose boyfriend doesn’t have any say in her business dealings.
Except that I fucking need him. Not to tell me what to do about my business, but to hold me and tell me everything’s going to be okay, assure me that I have excellent judgment and that I’m not a horrible person nor an abject failure. And perhaps—as seems paramount to everyone who’s on the board of Patrick Industries—that my mind can be trusted. The worst thing is that I can’t even tell them I’ve never questioned my brain’s abilities because I have.
I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry in a fucking elevator. It’s not fair but I’m kinda mad at Lowry for not getting back to me. If he had, I could’ve asked him to come to my place, wouldn’t have had to bother coming here and I could’ve had some privacy for fuck’s sake. And I don’t even have a key to his place so I’m standing in front of his door and wishing to fuck I’d asked for one. He would’ve given me one, I know for sure.
I knock and listen, but I’m met with silence. Where could he be? Was there an emergency with one of his patients? But surely he could’ve found a minute to shoot me a text and tell me that? He knows how I get, he knows I’ve been having a hard time, and I can’t imagine he would ever do something to intentionally distress me. He wouldn’t, especially knowing my brain has been in such hardcore betrayal mode that I asked Doctor Gendron for an extra appointment. I see her every week, so I don’t make extra appointments without a damn good reason.
Even though it seems utterly fruitless, I knock again and press my ear to the door. Still nothing and I am way too close to having a tantrum right here in the hallway for comfort. I am a grown goddamn woman, I should be able to handle myself through this and not being able to see my boyfriend shouldn’t send me into a tailspin. Except the thing is, he’s not my boyfriend. He’s my daddy and I could really use his help right now. The comfort of his body and his words, and the knowledge that he’s one of the people who know me best on this earth and if he says I am competent and trustworthy then I am because he wouldn’t lie. He’s told me before when my mind is lying to me. He’d tell me if I wasn’t in any condition to be making decisions or if the choices I was making were bad ones.
I need for him to say it. Loudly, repeatedly, until I believe him.
“Goddammit, Lowry, where are you?”
I jump back when someone answers.
“He’s gone, dear. Left for Chicago late last night.”
It is completely mortifying that Mrs. Rodriguez, the elderly woman who lives with her family down the hall, has seen me literally bang my head against the wall. And…Chicago? What the actual fuck?
Maybe something happened to Maeve? But he’s been gone since last night and…
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Rodriguez. Are you sure he left?”
“Oh yes,” she says, taking a key from her pocket. “He left in a hurry but asked me to water his plants while he’s away. I’ve been doing it a couple of times a week anyway since he’s been spending some of his nights…elsewhere.”
She doesn’t say it cruelly or with disgust, but with that knowing old lady look that tells me she approves of the Scottish doctor having a love interest who he’s been having sexy sleepovers with. She’s probably been asking him when he’s going to marry me and have babies, for the love of god.
Which is when it hits me. Baby. He came over after I’d ta
ken the test, when the sticks were sitting in the trash, and Lowry’s an observant person. What if he saw…oh my god, what if he knows and that’s why he…
I have to clap my hand over my mouth because I am too close—far too close—to vomiting for comfort.
That’s it, isn’t it? He saw the pregnancy tests in the trash and didn’t want to deal. Didn’t want to deal with a baby, something that would tie him to me forever, didn’t think he could stomach dealing with not only my issues but whatever ones she might inherit as well. Too much. I’ve always been too much. Maybe he thought he could handle me—he was handling me, with aplomb, I’d say—but not anything else. God knows a baby throws a wrench into everything.
I wouldn’t have thought he’d have left without a word, and if he’s gone to Chicago—back to Maeve? He wouldn’t. Except I wouldn’t have thought he’d be capable of abandoning a pregnant woman either, but here we are. Maybe this has something to do with his deep-seated fear about being like his uncle and he bolted? Why didn’t he fucking talk to me? He had enough time to ask Mrs. Rodriguez to water his goddamn plants, but he couldn’t be arsed to say a single fucking word to me?
“Dear, are you all right? You look like you need to sit down. Can I—”
“No, Mrs. Rodriguez, I’m—” I’m choking on a sob is what I’m doing because my entire world is falling apart. Everything is upside down. I’m getting into business with Jerome Garrett who I should believe is the worst of the worst, I’m turning my back on my father’s protégé—although after that performance today, I can’t imagine my father would object—and the man I thought loved me has left.
Except, that’s what Lowry does, isn’t it? Makes me trust him, makes me love him, coaxes me into complacency and into dumping all of my vulnerability into his lap, and then he fucking up and leaves. This is a pattern and I can’t believe I fell for this again.
“I’m fine,” I finish, and she clearly doesn’t believe me. Is looking at me like I’m a wounded fawn not worth saving because I’m so badly mangled. “There was a, uh, miscommunication. I’m sure we’ll talk later. Have a good evening.”
I bite my lip as hard as possible once I reach the elevator and punch the button for the lobby. Not going to cry. Not going to cry. I am not going to shed any more tears over Lowry Harrison Campbell. Not in front of his building where I summon another car to take me home. Not in the back seat where I sit in silence, not even bothering to check my phone now that I know why he’s gone. Not on my way to my apartment and not even once I’ve locked my door and then collapsed on my couch.
Numbness is stealing over me and I welcome it. I used to fight it because I knew what it meant, but it’s so much easier to be unfeeling right now. So I let it envelop me, surround all my feelings, and wrap them up in mist where they disappear.
I’d thought this day couldn’t get any worse. I was wrong. So very, very wrong. But who cares anymore? Not I.
Chapter 37
Lowry
This is my second night in Chicago. I’ve been haunting Maeve’s house and I’m sure Denny wishes I would go the fuck away. I’ve got to be interfering, but Maeve claims I’m not.
I don’t want to stay here. I want to go back to Starla, claim my rightful place as her daddy and look after her. Cuddle her, spank her, hold her, challenge her, but mostly love her.
I may have lost the privilege, though, because the calls and the texts and the emails have stopped, stopped less than twenty-four hours after I left, actually, and haven’t resumed. I thought I’d be back in Boston by now or at the very least on a plane, but I’m not. I want some sort of sign, some sort of clarity and I’ve got none. Even Maeve’s wisdom hasn’t been able to shore up my reasoning. I’m a goddamn disaster.
I’ve been trying not to panic over what will happen to Patrick Enterprises, though distraction is a sizable job. At least Maeve’s gotten me some awfully good whisky and I’ve spent a good portion of last night and today drunk off my arse.
My God, am I a rubbish human being. Maeve won’t say so, but I know she must think so and is simply taking pity on me because of how pathetic I am. Which is very pathetic. And very Scottish, what with the whisky and the grunting, and I wish there were some moors for me to prowl about. God, I’m a misery. A human plague who has had far too much to drink and ought to go to bed but I haven’t slept since I arrived and it might be morning again already? Awfully hard to say.
Yes, there’ve been some nights when I haven’t been with Starla since we started… I don’t know what to call it. Fucking seems vulgar, relationship seems vague. Whatever it was, I felt complete for the first time in my life. Twisted up into knots, aye, but also as though I couldn’t expect anything else out of my whole entire life because everything I wanted had been handed to me in a Starla-shaped package. I simply adore that woman, and now I may have tossed it all in the trash in an effort to protect her. In an effort, let’s be honest, to protect myself. Perhaps I ought to call? Try to explain?
But I suspect I’ve been a right tosser with no more sense in my head than all my brothers put together, which is still less than a thimble-full. I could’ve talked to her, told her that Tad had accosted me in the parking lot, threatening her, threatening me, threatening us. Except I was so determined not to trouble her, not to add any more to her heavy load, not to have her blame me for the loss of that final hope at her father’s approval that I took it upon myself to try to save her when I know full well she’s smarter than I am. In general, yes, but particularly where business—whatever the hell that means—is concerned.
There’s a soft knock at my door and I nearly throw the bottle at it, but that would be a waste of the whisky I haven’t drained out of this bottle. Yet. I will, I surely will.
I make, I don’t know, some kind of noise that apparently lets Maeve know I assent to her coming in? Or perhaps she’s sick of having a soused Scotsman in her house and doesn’t give a goddamn what I want. Which would be fair. Completely fair.
In she comes at any rate, looking like she pities me but also like I’m close to being a nuisance, which is not a corner of the matrix any man cares to occupy.
“There’s something I think you ought to see. Are you too drunk to watch TV?”
“Is that even a thing, hen? Can ye be too drunk to watch TV?”
“If it is, I think you might be it.”
That’s…insulting. Or perhaps caring. Can’t decide which. Probably because I’m rather soused.
“What’s on TV, then? In the middle of the night?”
Her fine mouth pinches as though she can’t decide whether to tell me or not, but eventually decides this can’t get much worse and spits it out.
“It’s six in the morning in Boston, you degenerate. There’s been an announcement about Patrick Enterprises, all the financial channels are covering it and it’s going to rock the markets when they open in a few hours. Shall I turn it on?”
Starla’s on TV? No, surely Maeve would’ve said. She said an announcement about Patrick Enterprises. But from where I sit, that’s just as good. An avatar, a proxy for the woman I love who might never speak to me again because I’m a complete numpty.
“Yes, please.”
Maeve takes up the remote from the nightstand—issa bit odd to be staying in the guest room of a house that used to be yours, aye?—and flips to some high-up channel where a fancy-looking man and a fancier-looking woman are talking about…something.
And then I hear it: Patrick Enterprises. I know her. It. As Starla would say, whatevs. The point is, that means something. I try to focus through the whisky haze, and hear the fancy lady say, “In a move sure to rock the business world, Patrick Enterprises heiress Starla Patrick has sold a large portion of her shares to her late father, Jameson Patrick’s, archrival, Jerome Garrett. The sale was announced moments ago, and I’m sure I’m not the only one eagerly awaiting the details of the transaction. This is one of the more surprising sales of the past decade.”
She did it. Starla sold a fair porti
on of her father’s business to Jerome Garrett, much as she said she would. Much as she wanted to. I knew she could, and if she were truly determined, would, but…it’s still a bit of a shock to see the whole thing on TV. Nothing I ever do makes the evening news. Which is just as well. But Jesus Christ, Starla is important. Foolishly enough, I don’t think I’d grasped the magnitude of the situation until now. The pressure she must’ve been under, and adding to that an attack on a very personal, incredibly tender part of herself…
Guilt swamps me. Whatever cells in my body that haven’t been flooded with alcohol are now swollen with remorse. My strong and extremely capable yet also delicate girl, and I left her alone. Without another soul to rely on in the world, I abandoned her. Again. In an effort to not be the reason she lost the last shred of pride she’d gleaned from her father, but… Jesus, I’m terrible. And yet I have the same urge I had when her father died.
“Maeve, be a love and get me on a plane?”
* * *
Fair enough, Starla’s not answering calls, texts, anything else. She probably hates me and right about now, I’m hating myself. For a multitude of reasons, including the fact that I’ve had enough whisky in the past twenty-four hours to make an elephant intoxicated, and I’ve got the pounding headache to show for it.
I head straight to Starla’s from Logan, fully prepared to be turned away. Except that when I reach her studio door, it swings open and I nearly fall over from the wind.
I’ve met Holden before, in passing, and while he’s looked at me as though I were some sort of suspicious character, never has he looked at me as though he wanted to slit my throat. He is now.
For Her Own Good Page 39