by Ally Blake
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“I doubt that very much.” His words came with a growl. A growl that tapped into her very marrow.
“Lola!” Harper called.
“Yeah?”
“Need some air?”
Lola ran her hands over her face and pushed her chair back. “Sure.”
Harper led her little sister out the door onto the balcony. They were high enough to see over the gardens to the ocean beyond, but the moon was hidden behind a bank of cloud, meaning they could only hear the crashing of the waves against the cliff below.
Lola lifted her face to the sky and took a deep breath. “Can you believe that tomorrow I will be Mrs Grayson Chadwick?”
“Or he could be Mr Lola Addison?”
Lola shot her a look.
“It’s been done.”
“I’m sure. But not this time. Not by me. I’m happy to take his name. To fold myself into his family.”
Harper sucked in a breath through her teeth.
It must have been loud enough for Lola to hear, as she spun and took Harper by the hand and said, “That came out so wrong. I only meant that they’ve been like family for so long already. Not taking over from you, but as well as you. It’s helped, having them, what with you being so far away. I need to belong. To some place. To someone. I’m not like you.”
Holding on for all she was worth, Harper managed to say, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. About Gray.”
“Gray?”
“His parents actually. And Dad.”
“What do Gray’s parents have to do with Dad?”
Here goes, Harper thought, nearly one hundred per cent sure this was the right thing to do. “The deal. Dad’s deal. It was their fault.”
“What are you talking about? Dad lost money, not them. It was awful, but it was unforeseen.”
Harper bit her lip, the words clogging her throat. She’d kept Lola in the dark, keeping the family secrets for so long. To protect her. Meaning it was her fault they’d ended up here. Now she had to do her job and fix it.
“I’m certain Dad made that deal on the advice of Weston Chadwick. And when it all went bust he took no responsibility, leaving Dad out to dry.”
Lola reared back as if slapped. “That’s so not true.”
“Not according to Dad.”
“You’ve...?” Lola swallowed. “You’ve spoken to him?”
“Not since he left, no.”
When Lola had rung to say she was getting married, the first thing Harper did was hire an investigator, on the quiet, to track their dad down. To tell him? To invite him? To show him they were both okay despite him? They’d had no luck. She could only hope he was living off the grid somewhere. She could only hope he was happy too.
“Oh.”
“But back then—the day he came home broken, torn apart—he said so. Over and over again. That it was the Chadwicks’ fault. That Weston Chadwick was to blame.”
“I remember,” Lola said, her voice barely a whisper.
“You do?”
“I thought it was a dream, or a made-up vision of some sort. Most of my memories of Dad feel like that. Blurs of memory, or fantasy. I have no clue how much is real. But I remember him crying in the bathroom, you kneeling at his feet, gripping his hands, begging him to tell you everything so you could fix it. And him...” Lola swallowed. “Dad saying that he wished he’d never met Weston Chadwick.”
“But you were so young.”
“Not that young. I’m only three years younger than you.”
“You were always such a happy kid, Lolly. Even during that whole mess. I hoped it all went over your head.”
Lola shrugged.
“You see, then, why you can’t marry Gray.”
“What the hell?” Gray’s voice cut across the open space as Adele, Gray and Cormac spilled out onto the balcony, drinks in hand.
Harper’s gaze snagged on Cormac’s as he slowly shook his head.
“Lola,” Harper said.
But Lola gave her a pained look before going to Gray. Harper reached out to grab her hand, to bring her back, to finish the conversation, but her sister slipped through her fingers.
“It’s okay,” Lola consoled her fiancé. “You just walked in at the wrong moment.”
“When would the right moment have been?”
Lola glanced back at Harper, who said, “Tell him. Tell him what I told you. See if he denies it.”
“Denies what?” Gray asked, moving to stand in front of Lola. As if needing to protect her—from Harper!
But Lola held up a hand, staying him. “Don’t worry about it. She’s so used to having control over my life, it’s hard for her to stop.”
Was she serious?
“For what it’s worth, I never wanted to ‘control’ your life, Lola. It wasn’t my childhood dream to work three jobs to pay for rent, food, clothes. Or to hide from Social Services, who’d never have let me look after a thirteen-year-old when I was still underage myself. I wasn’t given a choice. Did I say a word when you dropped out of university, a course that I’d paid for, to become a yoga instructor? When you shaved your head? When you came this close to legally changing your name to Bowie?”
Lola’s eyes flashed, as if she had more to say but didn’t know where to start.
“No,” said Harper. “I didn’t. But I can’t keep quiet about this. I can’t stand by and watch as you marry a Chadwick.”
“Hey,” Gray growled.
Harper hadn’t noticed Cormac edging her way until he took a step in front of her. Protecting her. Gray noticed, eyes narrowing at his friend, who had clearly just taken sides.
It was Harper’s turn to hold out a hand, to stay him. These men! Had they no clue at all? This wasn’t about them.
“Lola,” Harper said, “I will stand by you no matter what choices you make for your life. I just want you to have all the facts. I want you to be sure.”
“Listen to yourself, Harps. I can’t believe you’re playing negotiator with me.”
“I’m not playing at anything.”
“Tell me you’re not trying to talk me down from the ledge. Grayson is not my version of leaping off a tall building. He’s the man I love. Come on, Gray, it’s nearly midnight anyway and if you see me a minute after I’ll turn into a pumpkin.”
Gray gathered Lola into his arms and they left. Adele and the others who’d been watching on from the sidelines seemed to have melted away.
Leaving Harper. And Cormac. And the cool of the night closing in.
“Harper,” he said, his voice deep. And disappointed. That cut like nothing else. “What the hell did you just do?”
“I had to tell her the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That your precious Chadwicks are the reason my father lost everything.”
Cormac ran a hand through his hair, the spikes popping up in its wake. “Says who?”
“Said my father.”
“With what evidence?”
Harper looked down at her feet. Her foot. She was still wearing only one shoe. She kicked the other one off and watched it bounce pathetically off the balustrade. “He told me so. The night I found him sitting on his bedroom floor in tears. The night before he disappeared for ever. I’d never seen anyone cry like that. Like every tear was a piece of his soul. He looked terrified. Said he’d screwed up and this time there was no way out. And that everything was Weston’s fault.”
Cormac moved to stand by her, not close enough to touch, but close enough for her to feel him all the same. He leant his arms over the balustrade, looking out into the dark, moonlit grounds. And he said, “From that you took him to mean that it was on Weston’s explicit advice that your father made that investment. And after it went bust Weston took no responsibili
ty for his part.”
Harper thought back, tried to squeeze more details out of the memory, but she could only come up with the low points. “I did. I do.”
“Harper, please tell me you have some kind of physical evidence. Phone records. Recordings. A note in Weston’s handwriting admitting culpability. Because if you don’t...”
“He told me. His sixteen-year-old daughter. While he wept on my shoulder.” Harper breathed in deep. “He tried so hard... To be a good dad. To be a success. But that investment... It broke him. When he told me, I went to hold his hand... He had a razor blade clutched in his palm. I had to pry it away from him. Don’t tell Lola that part. She can’t know. Ever.”
She quickly glanced at Cormac to find his dark eyes on her.
Then with a growl he reached out and dragged her into his arms.
She sank into his hard embrace, the simple act of his arms around her taking the edge off the chill she didn’t realise had its grip on her. He rubbed a hand up and down her back until the shakes came under control.
“He was such a sweetheart of a man, Cormac. He tried so hard... I tried so hard to make it easy for him to love us, to love me, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.”
Cormac shushed her softly, his breath wafting past her ear, creating new goosebumps all over her body. She turned her head till she leant against his heart.
When the silence became too much, she asked, “Do you believe me?”
He held her tighter. “I believe that you believe it. But Harper, you’re making big assumptions. Distorted through the lens of a devastated teenager looking for someone to blame other than the father she adored. You have to find a way to undo this.”
“Undo what?”
He breathed out hard before pulling away and looking deep into her eyes. “The grenade you just threw at Lola and Gray. The night before their wedding. You have to fix it now.”
She blinked. “That’s up to Lola.”
“To do what?”
“To decide where her loyalties lie.”
Cormac let her go so fast she stumbled, before catching herself on the back of a wrought-iron chair, the metal freezing against her hot palms.
“Weston Chadwick is a good man. A great man. The best man I’ve ever known. And a better father than yours and mine put together. Your accusation was serious. And Lola, Gray and I weren’t the only ones to hear it. Our friends were inside. And some random bartender. Did you forget that? We can only hope the others decide to let it go. If not...”
“What? Are you going to sue me for defamation?”
His eyes flickered between hers, the muscles in his jaw working. “I am his lawyer.”
“Wow. So it’s come to that now.” Harper began to pace, pressing a hand to her temple, which had begun to pound. “You’re unbelievable.”
“While you’re so caught up in your own way of seeing the world you don’t think. You just act. Without thought for how it affects those around you. Do you have any idea the kind of permanent damage that can cause?”
When she said nothing, Cormac shook his head. “You truly don’t get it, do you? And I thought my father was self-absorbed. But you, honey, you take the cake.”
“Whoa. Did you just compare me to your father?”
Cormac’s expression was dark and sharp. Not a scrap of his usual charm. “I found your bravado enchanting. The way you see the world as something to conquer, in a way I wished I could. But you’ve gone over the edge here, you’ve gone too far. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, getting mixed up in all this.”
Feeling utterly trapped, by her own words, by her feelings for Cormac, Harper lashed out. “In what, exactly?”
“This,” he said, taking a step forward.
Harper gasped in a breath, her entire body bracing for his touch. Craving it.
But it never came. His mouth twitched as he held his ground.
While the empty places inside Harper filled with a rage she couldn’t contain. “We aren’t doing anything, Cormac. We made out a couple of times and rolled around on your couch. That’s it.”
“You’re kidding me,” he said, his face blank, shadowed in the semi-darkness. “That’s how you see our past few days together?”
“Of course. What did you imagine would happen after tomorrow? In the time it takes for you to wax your surfboard I build and destroy companies. My life is structured. Settled. Take that house of yours. Do you not understand the pressure you put on any woman who walks through that door? It’s like vodka for the ovaries. But I’m not the kind of woman who’d be content to settle down and play house. To pop out a couple of perfect, polite, high-achieving kids and imagine that will make me happy. While you...”
She took a breath.
“You might have everyone else fooled, but I saw right through the Mr Laid Back Happy Easy Charm act you have going on. You are so restless here it’s a miracle you can stand still. I can feel it every time you look at me. You yearn, Cormac. For more, for different, for something. Only you don’t know what. I know how that ends. I could never fall for a man like that.”
Cormac stood so still after her tirade, she wondered if he’d heard her at all. Then his voice came to her ragged and worn as he said, “You done?”
Harper nodded.
“Then I’m glad I realised that’s how you felt. Before...” He brought a hand to his mouth and turned away.
Harper swallowed, but couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Before what?”
“No. You’re not getting that from me too.” Cormac’s head dropped, his body a study in disillusionment. “I hope I’ll see you tomorrow at the wedding, and only because I hope there’ll be a wedding at all.”
He walked towards the open doorway leading back through the games room.
What had just happened? How had that fight even begun? How had it spiraled out of control so fast? That was really it?
“Cormac,” Harper called. “Cormac, come on.”
But he disappeared without looking back.
“I did what I thought was best,” she called, clueless as to whether anyone heard her. “I did the best I could!”
Her words wafted away on the night breeze. The taste left in her mouth bitter and acrid, leaving her feeling sick to the stomach.
The options as she’d seen them had been black and white—not tell Lola and fear for her for the rest of time, or tell her and hope she’d raised her to make smart choices.
She’d done what she thought was right.
And once again it wasn’t enough.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS RIGHT on midnight by the time Cormac threw his keys onto the hall table, the clattering sound echoing in the lofty space.
He deliberately did not look into the media room, or at the cushion he’d found Harper clutching only the night before, as he marched down the hall. He didn’t even bother turning on the kitchen light before he went to the fridge for a beer.
The snap of the bottle top echoed in the emptiness of the big house. “Vodka for ovaries”, as Harper had called it. Cormac slowly put the drink on the bench, untouched, and gripped the cool countertop.
How the hell did she do it? Cutting straight to the heart of him. And why Harper? Why not some sweet, lovely, modest girl who kept all the contradictions she saw within him to herself?
Why? Because what would have been the point?
She was right. Cormac hadn’t kept the house hoping one day his mother might come home. He’d kept it for himself.
If you build it she will come.
“She” being some imaginary woman content to settle down and play house. To pop out a couple of perfect, polite, high-achieving kids who would fit in nicely in the fantasy future he’d imagined might negate his own rotten childhood.
A fantasy was all it had been, for such a life would bore him to tears.
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No wonder he’d been treading water. He’d been waiting for more. For different. For a tectonic shift. For someone who would see through him—to the good and the bad—and want him anyway.
And, like all men who ought to have been more careful in what they wished for, he’d found her.
Only he hadn’t realised it until he’d seen Harper lashing out at his oldest friend, at the family who’d taken him in, and he’d chosen her side. Without thought. Without a pause. He’d stepped into her corner.
Protecting Harper had been a case of pure instinct. Protecting her from Gray and Lola. And from herself.
For she’d made a great hash of things.
He’d seen no choice but to impugn her ridiculous assertions. Even if it had meant her pushing him away. For she was too stubborn for her own good. Stubborn and fierce and so very fragile.
It had seemed better to make himself the target—for her anger, for Gray’s, and for Lola’s—or she’d never forgive herself.
Only now he hoped he hadn’t gone too far.
Cormac picked up the beer and drank. Grimacing as the bubbles burned his throat.
He’d gone for the jugular in accusing her of acting before thinking. Of strong-arming, like his father.
When the truth was, seeing her cornered he’d been the one struggling against a ferocious rise of emotions he couldn’t control.
Anger, frustration, fear; feelings he’d spent his life striving to avoid. By living simply. Wanting little. To the extreme of living in a sleepy town at the bottom of the world surrounded by people who only saw the good in him.
For in the back of his mind he’d always wondered, and worried, at what point his father had turned from a functioning man and into a monster. Was it genetic? Pre-determined? Or a slow and steady series of choices?
Despite the fact he felt as if he’d been flattened by a steamroller, the silver lining to tonight’s fracas wasn’t negligible. With emotions high, loyalties stretched, things could have spun so far out of control. Yet he’d kept his head. As he always did. As he always would. For those were normal emotions. Human emotions. It was the way you dealt with them that made you the man you were.
The abundant love Harper felt for her sister made her the woman she was. But tonight it had threatened to swamp her. To pull her under.