“I told you, I’m changing the inheritance arrangement.” Carter replied simply, keeping as cool and calm as he had been.
“You can’t change anything! You’ve had a major medical emergency! You shouldn’t be making any kind of big decisions at a time like this!” Ryder insisted, placing his hands on the foot of the bed and curling his fingers tightly around it.
“Ryder, my heart was hurt, not my mind. I’m just fine mentally. Never better, in fact. I know exactly what I’m doing.” He looked as sharp as he sounded and Ryder shook his head.
“And what is it exactly that you’re doing?” He asked hotly.
“I’m ensuring that the marriage you have stays true, because Regina is a good woman.” Carter spoke evenly.
Ryder had all that he could take. His temper blazed inside of him as he stood there looking at his father. He hadn’t gone through all that he had with Regina just to be denied his birthright as his father handed it over to her.
“No! She is not a good woman! You think she’s so wonderful? Well let me tell you just how good a woman she really is. She is my employee. She is a fake. She has been lying to you the whole time she has been here. I found her at a strip club working as a cocktail waitress and I hired her to pretend to be my wife and marry me just to piss you off and to make sure that I got my inheritance because you threatened to take it away from me if I didn’t get married after I screwed the senator’s wife!
You made that demand! I only married her because I had to! It was either marry her or lose my inheritance, and now here I am married to her like you ordered, and you’re giving my inheritance to her! I’m losing my birthright to her! To a cocktail waitress! This is completely unfair!” He shouted, pacing back and forth as he glared at his father.
Carter remained unruffled. He watched his son pacing, and spoke as calmly as he had been. “I’m teaching you a lesson. Money isn’t everything, Ryder. Family is. You need to learn that.”
Ryder’s mouth fell full open. “You’re telling me that? You think that’s a lesson that I need to learn? After you killed mother, you have the audacity to tell me that I need to learn that family comes first? This is ridiculous.” He shook his head and flung his hands down at his sides, turning away from Carter and heading to the door. He yanked it open as he stormed out and crashed right into Regina.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” He demanded in a scathing tone.
She seethed at him in a quiet voice. “You! You outed me! You told him everything! And how could you say any of that at all? I thought we were falling in love! I thought we were becoming a family! A real family. I thought that you were in this for love by now, and not for the money anymore. It shouldn’t matter that your inheritance is going to me if we are in love, because then we’d both have it anyway!
What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is yours! You’d still be getting it, but you’re not focused on me or us, and you’re not in love with me like I thought you were. You are still only thinking about the money. You’re still only focused on what you can get!” Hot tears rolled from her eyes and she balled her hands into fists.
He stared at her in disbelief. “I’m focused on what I can get? Is that what you think? Let’s talk about what you’ve gotten, shall we? You got my home, you got my family, and you got my money! You got my inheritance! My birthright! You took all of that away from me!”
Ryder gritted his teeth and shook his head as he glared at her. “You know what? Take it. Take it all and keep it. I’m done.” He walked away from her, straight out of the front door, slamming it behind him.
*
His knock was sharp on Taylor’s front door. Taylor opened it with a grin that faded quickly when he saw Ryder’s face.
“Oh god… what happened? Did your father pass away?” He asked in a worried tone.
Ryder shook his head. “No, the bastard is home and doing just fine.” He walked in as Taylor stepped aside, and he headed straight for Taylor’s bar.
“The bastard…” Taylor trailed off questioningly, following Ryder to the bar. “What’s going on?” He asked in confusion.
Ryder sighed heavily and turned to look at his best friend as he grabbed a bottle of bourbon from the shelf. “I need to beg a place to sleep. I am as of this moment, homeless and penniless. I’m a vagabond. Can I stay with you until I can get on my feet please?”
Taylor’s jaw fell and he stared at Ryder. “What are you talking about?”
“The big plan failed.” Ryder answered sullenly, pouring out two tumblers of bourbon.
“The big… you mean the fake bride plan? That plan?” Taylor’s eyes grew wide as he went to the bar and rested his hands on it, staring at Ryder. “That… failed? How?”
“My father betrayed me. Of course. What else would a man like him do?” He asked with bitter irony.
Taylor frowned as he reached for his glass of liquor. “Wait, how did it fail? I thought that you were falling in love with Regina.”
“Well, as it turns out, love is blind.” Ryder snarled as he tipped his tumbler back and gulped.
Taylor watched him as Ryder poured another shot. “We were both in it for the money at the start. Her for the million bucks, me for the inheritance. It was going to work. Then things began to change, and… I was falling in love with her. Now it’s all messed up. We broke it and there’s no way to fix it.”
Taylor frowned, turning his glass thoughtfully in his hands as he watched Ryder. “Well, if you want any of it back, you’re going to have to try to fix it.”
Ryder shook his head and then tipped it back, lifting his glass to his lips and swallowing the bourbon in it. He coughed a little and shook his head. “All I want is a bottle of bourbon. I screwed up too bad this time. Now I don’t deserve any of it. Not my family, not my inheritance, and sure as hell not my lover and wife.”
“Uh huh.” Taylor murmured, his eyes trained on Ryder. He knew there was no reasoning with him at that point. “Well then, let’s finish this bottle. I have another one when this is empty.”
Taylor poured and Ryder drank until he was drunk, and then Taylor walked him down the hallway and put him to bed in one of the guest bedrooms of the massive home were Taylor lived. Taylor sighed and shook his head as he gave his friend one last look and closed the door. He’d wait for him to sleep it all off before they talked again.
***
Swallowing the modicum of pride that she had left, Regina went into Carter’s room the next morning. He knew the truth, and she knew that he knew it. There was nothing left to do but go and talk with him about it and apologize.
The one tangle in her mind was that she couldn’t understand why, if he knew the truth about her, he hadn’t undone his change to the inheritance.
He looked up at her as he typed away on his laptop, the keys clicking as his fingers flew over them. When he saw her, he finished what he was typing and set the laptop aside, reaching out his hand to her. She went to the side of his bed and sat on it, taking his hand into hers gently.
Tears began to fall again and she hated that she was crying once more; it seemed like she was crying all the time as of late, but the guilt in her demanded it. “I heard you talking with Ryder yesterday. I know that he told you the truth.” She shook her head as she raised her other hand to wipe uselessly at her tears.
“I just wanted to tell you that I’m so very sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone. I lied to you. I lied to this whole family. I let you all believe that I was a Carrington and that I was going to be here forever.” She closed her eyes and as she did, she felt him give her hand a squeeze.
“Dear one, I know. I knew right from the first time that you came over for dinner in that red dress. I knew what was going on. I knew that Ryder was rebelling against me and doing his best to get at me any way that he could. I knew that he was bringing you here to fulfill that demand I made of him.” He raised his hand and tenderly placed his finger beneath her chin, lifting it so that she raised her eyes to meet his gaze.
“You are in this family and you are most certainly a Carrington, because we’ve all accepted you into our family and we all want you here. You are ours now, and we want you to stay here. I want you to stay here.” He gave her a kind look and her heart broke inside of her.
“Please forgive me. I never meant for any of it to go this way. Please… forgive me.” She begged, taking his hand into both of hers.
He nodded and smiled. “Of course. Not that there’s anything to forgive, but you are forgiven. I owe you so much gratitude. Thank you for being here, for being who you are, and for taking on a fool like my son. I hope that you decide to stay because this is your home now. Ryder’s share of all of this is yours now. Yours and your child’s.”
She bit at her lip and her cheeks blushed pink as she replied. “I don’t think there are going to be any children.”
Carter chuckled and patted her hand. “Oh, I’m certain that there will be children much sooner than you suspect.”
Regina knew that he must be wishful thinking, and she felt awful about it. After what had happened between her and Ryder, she couldn’t see a way forward for them to start a family. They were already living in different areas of the house and barely on speaking terms with each other. Still, Carter’s pleas had not fallen on a closed heart or closed ears.
She gave him a small smile. “I will stay as long as I can, and I promise you that I will take excellent care of whatever I’m given responsibility for.”
He nodded and reached for her to give her a hug. “I am so glad that you’re my daughter. Thank you.”
***
A week had passed since Ryder had stormed from the Carrington mansion. He had spent most of those seven days drunk or passed out. He had no wish to deal with any of the reality of his life. On the morning of the seventh day, he trudged from the bedroom he had been sleeping in and made his way to the bar.
“Care to join me for breakfast?” Ryder asked as he reached for the bottle of bourbon that he had been drinking the night before. He held it up, looking through the clean clear glass, and he frowned, furrowing his brow. “We’re out. Does the liquor store deliver?” He asked, glancing over at Taylor.
Taylor shook his head and stood up out of the chair he had been sitting in. “They don’t deliver, thankfully. Here’s the rule, brother. When the booze runs out, you have to go home.”
“I am home.” Ryder looked back darkly at the bourbon bottle.
“No, you’re not. Come on now. I let you stay here and drown your sorrows, but you’ve drained the bar and it’s time to snap out of it and face up to the mess you made. Now put the bottle in the recycle container and get your stinky ass in the shower. Trust me, you need it. I’ll loan you some clean clothes to wear, and you can get cleaned up and go home to fix everything.” Taylor took his arm and led him away from the bar and back down the hallway toward the bathroom.
“I’m not going back.” Ryder replied, though it was in a monotone. His anger had burned away days before, and all that was left in him was despair. “There’s nothing there for me.”
Taylor flipped on the bathroom light and walked over to the shower, giving the nozzles a twist as the water began to spray out. “Yeah, you do. You have a gorgeous wife at home who loves you and every reason in the world to try to hold on to her, and your siblings, and even your father. You were devastated when you thought you were going to lose him. You even admitted that to me the other night.”
“I was drunk.” Ryder frowned, looking over at Taylor resentfully.
Taylor smacked a thick folded towel into Ryder’s chest. “You were honest. You have a future there and you need to go back and get a hold of it so you can hold on to it. All you have to do is let go of all that bitterness and anger and resentment toward your father. It’s not his fault your mom died. That was her choice. She knew the weather was bad and she got in the car and drove off into it anyway. That’s all on her. I’m sorry she is gone, but you can’t keep blaming your dad for that. Be honest with yourself about that. I know your mom was an angel, but she made a bad choice, and everyone else had to live with it.”
Taylor walked to the door and closed it behind him, giving Ryder one last look before he left. “Think about that.” He shut the door, leaving Ryder alone in the bathroom and steam began to fill the air and frost the mirror.
Ryder got into the shower and as the hot water rolled over him, he closed his eyes and Taylor’s words took him back to the night his mother died. They had all tried to talk her out of it; all of the siblings pleaded with her not to go, telling her that the weather was too bad to drive in. They pleaded with her to stay, but in the end, it was indeed her choice to get into the car and try to make it to the city. He wept as he realized that Taylor was right. All the years of anguish and pain, all the bitterness and resentment and rage, all of the loss and grief flooded through him and he wept in the shower until the water ran cold and he finally turned it off.
He got out and dried himself off, dressing in the clothes that Taylor had lent him, and he looked at his reflection in the mirror. His face was scruffy with the beginnings of a beard; he hadn’t shaved all week. He had looked like hell all week, but the shower and the clean clothes were a start.
Taylor was right, he admitted. He did have to go back and try to find a way to fix all that he had so selfishly and thoughtlessly broken.
He drove himself Back to Carrington Manor and parked his car out in front of the house. It was going to be humbling and difficult to face the demons he’d left in his wake, but he had to take them on. He had a family and a future to try to win back and save.
He went first to his father, knocking gently on the door. When he heard his father call out to come in, he walked quietly into the room and his father blinked in surprise as he looked up over the top of the book in his hands. Setting the book down slowly, he rested his hands in his lap and regarded his son with a look of patience.
“Father…” He began, not sure where to begin. “I owe you an apology. I owe you a lot more than that, but I will start with the apology.” He paused and saw that his father was listening to him.
“I’ve hated you for most of my life because I blamed you for my mother’s death, when really it’s been mother that I’ve been angry with all this time. I never admitted it to myself. She was the one who went out in bad weather. She was the one who made the poor choice. She was the one who cost herself her own life and took herself away from her family.” He took his eyes from his father’s gaze and walked with a heavy sigh toward the window, looking out of it as he spoke and tears fell beneath his dark lashes.
“I couldn’t put all of the blame and hurt and anger I had on her because I felt guilty for being angry at her. She died… she paid the highest price for her bad choice. How could I possibly blame her for that? I couldn’t be angry with her; she was dead. So the anger fell to one who was truly innocent in the situation. It fell to you.” He swallowed the lump in his throat and turned toward Carter, taking one step after another until they were face to face at Carter’s bedside.
“All these years you’ve borne the brunt of my bitterness and hatred, and you’ve always stood by me, regardless of the terrible way that I’ve treated you. You’ve absorbed the anger and pain I had, taking it all in while still keeping me close, even though I wanted nothing to do with you.” He shook his head in disbelief as he realized just what his father had done for him. “Why did you do it?”
Carter gave him a smile. “I did it because you’re my son, and I love you.”
Ryder choked on his tears and reached his arms around his father’s neck, holding him tight as he wept until there was nothing left of the poison in him. When he let go, his father held onto his shoulders and looked him directly in the eye.
“I forgive you. Do not let the past bind us and hold us captive to its miseries. There is a future ahead for us, for all of us, including your wife, if you want it.” He gave his son an encouraging nod and Ryder heaved a great sigh.
“You know, it was probably the best thing to give my inheritance to Regina.” He laughed ironically and shook his head.
“What are you going to do?” Carter asked, eyeing him closely.
Ryder raised his brows and pushed his hands down halfway into his pockets. “Well, now that I’ve smoothed the waters over with you, I’m going to try to talk to her. I’m pretty desperate to save the love of my life, if she’ll have me back. Father, there’s no one like her.”
The Billionaire's Secretly Fake Bride (MANHATTAN BACHELORS Book 3) Page 24