by Stacey Lynn
Despite the chill and tension between us, though, he’s still been kind, which means I’ve now been spared approximately forty-eight hours of his mercurial mood swings.
Plus, he’s been touching me. A lot. Much like he’s doing now, with his hand on my thigh. I keep telling myself it’s so we become more comfortable with each other, especially in front of his mom, but I suspect I’m lying to myself. His hands seem to find me whenever I’m near, like he can’t be close to me and not have his hands on me in some way, and it’s softening me toward him…or the hope of him, whether or not it’s rational.
“What’s she going to think?” I ask, my gaze frozen on the huge home. I haven’t stepped foot out of the car and I’m already worried about dropping my drink or ruining an antique.
“She won’t say anything but good things.” His voice is still tight. But warm. He loves his mom and hates his dad, and it makes my chest burn. He takes my hand, which is clutching my purse in my lap, and I realize after a moment he’s twisting the sapphire ring on my finger. “She’s broken, Teagan. Used to be this wonderful woman, laughed all the time, played board games, and would sit at the kitchen table with me for hours playing Legos or helping me with my homework. If she’s having a good day today, things will be fine.”
His voice drifts and sadness lingers on his lips.
I don’t ask what it will be like if she’s having a bad day.
“Okay then.” I blow out a breath and pull my hand from his, reaching for the door handle. “Let’s go make sure her night is great.”
I flash him a smile, but it feels wobbly and fake, so I open my car door and slide out, waiting for him on the sidewalk.
He unlocks the front gate with a key, locking it as it closes behind us, and slowly ushers me up the winding walkway, leading me to what feels like my doom. After stepping up to the brick front porch, I glance back at the skyline. The sun is low, rays spreading out over the horizon as it begins to set. Everything’s in full bloom, the air crisp, and I’m almost blinded by the beautiful view.
I hear the door behind me open and turn to see Elizabeth Lane stepping out. Much like the other night, her beauty takes my breath away. Dressed in white wide-leg dress pants with a perfect pressed seam down the middle, she’s sporting pale pink sling-back pumps and a matching pink silk top that is elegantly tied with a bow at her chest. Her hair is the same color as Corbin’s, the color of brown sugar, although I imagine it’s highlighted gorgeously, straightened, and ends right at her shoulders. A clip pulls a small chunk of hair back and pins it at her temple, and I have a feeling the diamonds glistening on the pin are not fake, or from Claire’s or Target, like I would purchase.
She’s so beautiful…and empty. Her blue eyes have no light, and she is exactly how Corbin explained: reserved and also broken.
“Teagan, hello again,” she says, greeting me with a gentle nod, and then presses her hands to Corbin’s cheeks. She rolls to her toes and he leans down to kiss her cheek while she air kisses his.
Pity wells in my chest for her.
And for Corbin, who by all accounts has watched his mom become a shell of the woman she used to be.
“Come in, come in,” she says, stepping back and giving us room to enter.
I blink, certain I heard a slight slur in her voice, and Corbin’s hand on my lower back presses against me.
“Shit,” he mutters, more to himself than to anyone, and I have no doubt that today is what Corbin would call a bad day.
My fear is made obvious as we’re led into a room that is absolutely gorgeous. Four large and well-worn gray leather chairs surround a circular coffee table. My eyes take in everything: the black grand piano that shines like it’s just been dusted, the walls of leather-bound books, heaven for a bibliophile like me. I inhale the scent of leather and old paper as I slide into a chair Corbin has gestured to.
“Your home is gorgeous,” I tell Elizabeth. She’s sitting as elegantly as possible, propped on the edge of the chair across from me, Corbin between us, and already has a glass of red wine held in her fingertips.
Without even asking, Corbin reaches to the center table and pours a glass for me.
The decanter is almost empty, which means I doubt this is Elizabeth’s first glass of the day.
Which explains the slurring I thought I heard.
Crap.
I reach out and rest my hand on Corbin’s thigh, his muscle hard and tense beneath me, but it’s not because he is just hard and muscled, but he’s tense and angry. Perhaps tonight isn’t the best night to deliver our news.
“So, tell me what’s new with you, sweetie. Tell me everything.”
There’s a hint of the woman Corbin says she used to be in her voice, but now I know it’s the liquor making her happier than she really is. The emptiness in her eyes never evaporates, and Corbin flips my hand to hold it in his.
“I have some good news,” he says. “Teagan and I are getting married.”
“Oh!” For the first time, her eyes meet mine and light up in a way that appears too genuine to be alcohol induced. “This is wonderful news, indeed. Let me go get champagne. We need to celebrate.”
Weird. Dreadful. Awkward. Horrific.
All perfect descriptors of how the rest of the night goes. After toasting our engagement with champagne, we’re served dinner on fine bone china with sterling silver flatware and cut crystal glassware. The main course is a heartbreakingly delicious scallop dish that leaves me wanting more.
And through it all, Corbin and his mom act as if our news really is the most fantastic thing to happen in Portland in a decade.
It’s mind-boggling how people can weave such a lie for themselves they believe it with their every breath, and all of it leaves me hollow by the time we go. And I have to do it all again on Friday, when Elizabeth takes me to an upscale wedding boutique for a meeting she scheduled while we were finishing dessert.
She is efficient, though, because in addition to the wedding dress assuredly handled, we’ve also decided on flowers, a trellis portico she wants brought in, and the invite list has been scribbled down on her personal stationery.
It’s safe to say, broken and drunk or not, Elizabeth Lane doesn’t mess around when it comes to planning an event.
I expected Corbin to leave the room at some point to hide from all the girly stuff, which I couldn’t care less about, but he never did.
I’ve just spent three hours planning a whirlwind marriage to a man who completely flummoxes me, but he’s further confused me by playing the perfect, loving fiancé, with soft brushes of his thumb on my shoulder, gentle kisses when his mom is watching but acting like she isn’t. It’s amazing how easy it is to fall into our roles.
“Where was your dad?” I ask once we’re back on the road. I highly doubt he’s working late like Elizabeth claimed more than a handful of times. Once was believable. By the fifth time, I think she was trying to reassure herself more than us.
And every time, Corbin flinched.
“With his mistress and son.”
He speaks the words so blatantly I jerk in my seat. “What?”
“His mistress and son.” He turns to me. “And no, I don’t mean his mistress’s son. I mean his son.”
I’m speechless. Nothing could have prepared me for this, but I somehow regain my vocabulary. “Your mom—”
“She knows. Tries to deny it, but she knows. Why else do you think she’s more drunken robot than human? If she’s not popping pain pills she’s drinking her misery.”
“Oh, Corbin—”
“Don’t.” He shakes his head. “Don’t apologize. He’s had a woman on the side since I was a kid. Found out about her when their son was a teenager. Kid’s twenty-four years old now and is a worthless piece of shit, but to my dad, they’re more important than we ever were. We’re the pretty picture he has in the city and his woman on the side is the one he really loves.”
I reach for him and stop. There’s no comfort I can give him and none he wants. Th
is has burned a hole in him his whole life and destroyed his mom.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Nothing to say. You have to know this because for the next two years you’ll pick up on it. Everyone fucking knows. No one says obvious shit, but it’s alluded to enough. Enough for the gossip queens to do damage and ostracize my mom even though half the men in town do the same damn shit to their women; they’re just smart enough not to fall in love with their side pieces or have bastards with them.”
Barbed pain slices through me with every word he speaks. His pain is so hot it heats the car. I’ve never felt so lost, so distraught for another person in my life. It’s worse than losing my parents, because I had closure. I had a mourning period and was able to grieve, and I’ve healed from the pain and replaced it with memories of the people I love.
He has a constant scab, scratching it wide open and making it bleed every time he’s around his parents.
“Met him once.”
“What?” Oh God.
Heat stings my eyes but I push it back. He needs to unload, so I listen.
“Only Trey knows. We came back from Stanford. Christmas morning, junior year. Dad took off on Christmas fucking morning, snuck out before we opened presents and did any of that shit. Followed him to the Humboldt area. Fucking set her up in some pretty little bungalow in a family friendly neighborhood and I pulled up, seconds behind him, and before he could tell me shit, a teenager bounded out of the house and called him Dad.”
“Corbin.” Instinct guides me and I unlock my seatbelt, throwing myself at him despite the fact he’s driving. As I bury my head into his shoulder, one of his arms wraps around my back, holding me against him. “I’m so sorry. That must have been so hard.”
“Fucking killed me. He didn’t even do shit, you know? I mean, fuck, I was twenty-one years old and suddenly everything made fucking sense. Nights he worked late he was actually at fucking T-ball games. He put Grant in the best schools, treats his mom, Jill, like a queen, keeps her away from his real life, but he’s been more of a husband and father to his side family than he ever was to his real one. Fuck!”
He pounds the steering wheel and I hold him tighter.
Let him unleash all the bullshit that has snaked its way into his heart and body and soul, making him despise the man in his life he should admire more than anyone else.
So many things about him start to make sense, clicking into place and creating a devastating and yet beautifully broken picture. Franklin’s comments from the gala make sense. He thinks Corbin is doing the same thing he has done, creating a family with a lower-class woman.
Disgust buries itself deep inside my stomach, but I don’t push it or him away. I hold him until we reach his condo in the city.
Chapter 19
Corbin
I had no intention of spewing all of my family’s sordid history and reality in such a harsh way. I’d intended to share it in small, manageable doses where it wouldn’t overwhelm me and suffuse my anger, which seeps into my marrow whenever I think of Jill and Grant Maverick. My father has given them everything but his name, because he refuses to claim his own child publicly, yet he’s given him everything else. Paid for the best schools, set Jill up in a safe neighborhood so she could stop working her waitressing job at the restaurant where they first met.
For me, he’s groomed me since the day I was born to take over Lane Holdings.
Lane men earn their own way, son.
Lane men work to prove they’re the best men, Corbin.
I might have a trust fund that allows me never to have to work a day in my life. I might have a Fortune 100 company I will someday run when it’s required of me, but I have never been handed anything except expectations, where Grant has been given everything: schools and money and the thing that pisses me off the most—affection and genuine love.
And all the pissant does is spend his money on drugs and alcohol, a spoiled selfish fuck of a guy who throws away everything my father gives him, everything I’ve always wanted, because he knows exactly who he is, who I am, and he despises us all for it.
My father leaves destruction in his wake and pays no consequences for his actions.
Well, fuck him.
Fuck my father and his company.
I couldn’t give a shit if I ever step foot into the damn offices again. Why tonight is the tipping point, I don’t know.
I’m seething in the elevator ride up to the penthouse, handsomely provided by my trust fund. But fuck that, too.
I’m fucking thirty-two years old and I will be the man I want to be, not the man I’ve been groomed to be.
Next to me, Teagan is quiet. She huddles close, and thank God for her. I don’t know why and I’m not asking. I don’t give a shit why I feel so damn good when I’m so close to her, but I like it.
Had it not been for her earlier, after seeing the waste of a robotic woman my mother has become, I might have driven straight to Jill’s house where my father always spends his weekends and nights when he’s not actually working, and throttled him to death. Somehow, Teagan took all the fury boiling in my chest, dug her face into my shoulder, and held on to me like she’d evaporate if I wasn’t fused to her.
The elevator doors ding and open and I stalk out, keys at the ready. I throw open the door to my condo and toss the keys onto the table.
Shoving my hands into my hair, I look around, hating everything in the damn place except what’s been made by my own two hands. All of it can go besides a few special pieces and other items I mentally catalog.
“I need to make some calls,” I snap at Teagan, not meaning to, but too lost in plans to stop myself. “I’ll be in my office.”
“Okay. Do you need a drink?”
She’s at the doorway to the kitchen, beautiful in a bright blue dress. It dips into a deep V, baring enough cleavage that my dick went hard as soon as I saw her. A wide swath of fabric makes her waist look tinier than it is, and then it flares out to just below her knees. It’s fancier than I know she normally wears, fancier than necessary for a dinner with my mother, but it matches her new ring perfectly. She could be wearing a linen sheet wrapped like a toga and she’d still be beautiful. It’s not the way she looks that’s so damn attractive, even though every day I’m around her the urge to get her beneath me increases exponentially, it’s the fact that she seems to know me.
Like now, standing far away, there’s nothing but a gentle strength radiating from her, waiting to help. To comfort.
But hell if I want comfort. I want to grab her and tangle my hand in her hair and slam my mouth to hers and dive my dick inside of her to expel all the fucked-up bullshit slamming against my skull.
Bad idea. Not now. When I take Teagan, when she comes to me, I’m taking her because she’s giving herself to me, not because I’m an asshole with too much shit in his head to be gentle.
“No.” I heave a breath, forcing myself to calm, but the raging waters deep inside are turning into a typhoon. “Just space, and I’ve got alcohol in my office.”
She licks her lip, her tongue swiping along her bottom lip, and then she bites down. “Okay, then.”
I stare at her, and she says nothing else. She looks as lost as I know I look like a raging beast.
“Good night, Teagan.”
I turn and walk away, head to my office, and close the door behind me. I need quiet. I need to get liquored up. I don’t know what in the hell I need, but I know it’s not what I’ve always thought it would be.
Within an hour, I’m on my second drink, forcing myself not to chug the hell out of my Johnny Walker. I need to do this right, even though I want to throw my hands in the air and shout fuck it.
I have lists lined up in front of me, my desk looking much like my kitchen table yesterday when Teagan was in full planning mode.
Now I understand. She’s distancing herself from something—someone—who scares the hell out her.
Leave it to Lane men to scare another woman shitless.
My phone rings and I answer it.
“Mr. Merryweather,” I say before he can announce himself. I’ve got caller ID, but I don’t need it.
When the son of the richest man in Portland calls you at home at nine o’clock on Monday night, you call him back as soon as you can.
I won’t miss the way people jump through hoops for me.
“Thanks for getting back to me. I need your help with something.”
“Anything, Mr. Lane,” Eleanor’s lawyer replies. “Is this about Eleanor’s will?”
“No. I have something else I need you to work on, but I need it kept absolutely private.”
—
My limbs are liquid and my brain is complete mush by the time I finally close my laptop for the night. Or morning, rather. I’ve lost all concept of time while I plan my extraction from Lane Holdings, spending hours on the phone with Merryweather on how to proceed so I can sell my shares, ensure my father will never gain control of any of them, and walk away without consequence.
The main weapon my father will come at me with is my trust, but it’s irrevocable, which means as soon as I came of age at twenty-five and began making withdrawals, he had no say in how I spent it. Plus, the trust was created by Eleanor and not my dad. He’s got jack shit, even though I can already picture the threatening and blustering he’ll do.
Whatever.
The door creaks, opening slowly, and I sit back in my chair as Teagan walks in.
“Hey,” she says, whispering. “It’s late.”
Two o’clock in the morning, based on the clock on my phone. “Yeah.”
God, she’s pretty. Her hair is pulled up, and her face is free of makeup. She’s dressed in pajama shorts and a tight T-shirt, and it’s clear she’s not wearing a bra.
She’s dressed for bed, but came to check on me before doing so.
Sweet. Pretty. Simple. Normal.
Who would have thought I’d ever fall for someone like Teagan Monroe? Not me, but hell if I’m not enjoying the process.