Heir of the Hamptons

by Erika Rhys

  42

  RONAN

  During the week following the wedding, I was preoccupied with the legalities of gaining access to my trust, loaning ten million dollars from it to my business, and cutting Ava the $200,000 check that I’d agreed to pay her upon our marriage. It was only at the end of the week, when the dust settled, that I sensed she was avoiding me. She went to work early, she came home late, and since our wedding day, we’d barely exchanged a handful of words.

  Not that I blamed her. I’d hurt her and given her every reason to back away from me. But as I awoke on Saturday morning, one week to the day after our marriage, dissatisfaction gnawed at my gut.

  With the wedding behind me, and my business financially solvent, I should have been the happiest man alive—but I wasn’t. Yesterday, when I’d written out the check, and Jack had slapped me on the back and congratulated me for saving Kingsley Tech, I’d felt a sense of relief but not the excitement I’d expected to feel.

  And when Jack and I had gone out for a postwork drink to celebrate, although I’d done my best to join in my buddy’s exuberance, I hadn’t been feeling it. For such a hard-won victory, it felt surprisingly hollow to me, and given all that had happened, I attributed my lack of excitement to my guilt about hurting Ava.

  Guilt. Maybe that was why I couldn’t get her out of my head. It wasn’t just about the sex, because although I missed that aspect of our relationship, I missed the easy rapport that we’d had together even more. I missed seeing her smile and hearing her laughter, even when it came at my expense. And if I was ever going to sort through the complicated feelings I had for her, only time together would help me figure myself out.

  So, after showering, dressing, and grabbing a cup of the coffee that Ava had already made, I joined her in the living room, where she was sipping coffee and watching the morning news.

  “It’s been a busy week for both of us,” I said.

  Her gaze didn’t leave the television screen. “It has.”

  “But now that my paperwork’s in order, I’m free all weekend. Want to catch a movie this afternoon or go out for dinner tonight?”

  “Can’t,” she said. “I have a big event proposal due Monday, so I’ll be working both today and tomorrow.”

  “Bummer. Although it’s great that your business is doing so well.”

  She took a sip of her coffee. “Yes—ever since you lined up that magazine article, the phone’s been ringing off the hook.”

  “Give me a call when you head home tonight. I can throw some steaks on the grill or order takeout.”

  “Thanks for offering to take care of dinner,” she said. “It’s very thoughtful. But I’m seriously behind on this proposal. Since I need to work late, I’ll probably pick up a salad or a sandwich near my office.”

  “Maybe tomorrow night, then.”

  When she looked at me, her expression was unreadable. “Sure,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  43

  AVA

  The first week after the wedding was hell. The second, not much better. Ronan kept pushing me to spend time with him, which I couldn’t allow to happen.

  Not when looking at him sent a knife through my heart, and hearing his voice made me ache for what could have been. My pain was too fresh, my emotions too raw.

  But by the third week after our marriage, the Ronan-diet I’d imposed on myself began to have positive effects. While I still loved him, I felt that I was making progress on accepting the reality that we weren’t right for each other. Being with him had shown me the strength of my desire for commitment, marriage, and children, and while Ronan was a good man and a fabulous lover, he wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment. Perhaps he never would be.

  Throwing myself into work helped, and at eight o’clock on Wednesday evening, as I sat at my desk at Oasis, catching up on my accounting for the past month, I consoled myself with the knowledge that my fledgling business was finally thriving. Maybe I wasn’t over Ronan yet, but someday I would get there. For now, I just needed to maintain my current course of avoiding him as much as possible.

  Which was why when my phone rang, and a glance at the screen revealed Ronan’s number, I exhaled sharply, anticipating another of his invitations to have dinner or watch a movie together.

  There was no point in letting it go to voicemail. If I did, he’d just call again—and again. Or he’d show up at Oasis, as he’d done last Thursday, and I’d feel obliged to suffer through an evening with him, which would only set back my recovery.

  So I picked up the phone. “Hi, Ronan, what’s up?”

  “Bad news,” he said. “I didn’t want you to find out online or on TV.”

  He didn’t sound like himself, and concern gripped me. “Are you OK? What’s going on?”

  “It’s not me,” he said. “It’s my father. His helicopter went down near Long Island two hours ago.”

  “Oh my God, Ronan—I’m so sorry.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” he said, with a roughness in his voice that told me how gutted he truly was. “The Coast Guard is searching for Dad and his pilot, but it’s a long shot. Even if they survived the crash, the water’s too cold for anyone to stay alive for more than an hour or two.”

  “Are you at the apartment?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m leaving Oasis now to catch a cab. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  44

  RONAN

  Over the days that followed, Ava was a rock. Throughout the futile search for my father’s body, the eventual abandonment of that search, and the funeral, she stood by me. When I needed to talk, she listened—and when I felt lost and overwhelmed, she sat with me for hours at a time, holding my hand in silent support.

  I hadn’t been close to my father, but he’d been a powerful force in my life, a force that continued beyond his death in the form of the investment firm that he’d built into one of Wall Street’s largest, and which was now part of his legacy to me.

  Throughout my life, no matter how bad things got between me and my father, I’d always held onto a sliver of hope that someday our relationship would improve. I hadn’t been aware of how much that hope meant to me, until death snatched it away.

  In the days after the funeral, as I grappled with the reality of my father’s will, which left me one of the wealthiest men in the world, Ava was my best advisor.

  “Be true to yourself,” she told me. “You don’t necessarily have to do what your father would have done. Give yourself time to think each decision through, and don’t let anyone rush you into anything.”

  Which was why, two weeks after the funeral, when I returned home from work on Friday night, I was dismayed to see a large suitcase sitting in my apartment’s foyer. While my father’s death made our original agreement null and void, we were still legally married, and I’d assumed that Ava would discuss any major decisions with me.

  When I reached the living room, her bedroom door was open, and when I stepped into the doorway, she was leaning over a second suitcase, placing a stack of clothing inside it.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I’ve taken a vacation rental in Brooklyn for the next month,” she said. “That should give me enough time to find something more permanent.”

  “So you’re moving out.”

  “I only stayed this long to support you through the aftermath of your father’s death,” she said. “Now that our agreement is over, it’s time we both got on with our lives. Which means me moving out of your apartment and the two of us getting the no-fault divorce that we both committed to. Since there’s no reason to remain married for the full two years, I don’t expect you to pay me any more money than you already have.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “I don’t want a divorce—at least, not yet. And I definitely don’t want you to move out.”

  She rose to her feet, crossed her arms over her chest, and leveled me with a look. “Why not? Your business is safe, you have more money than you’ll e
ver need, and no one can take it away from you. There’s no longer any reason for us to live together, let alone stay married.”

  I took two steps toward her, before something in her expression stopped me and told me I needed to put everything I had on the line.

  So I did. “Before our wedding, I told you I wasn’t in love with you—that I wasn’t capable of loving anyone in that kind of way. But now I’m not so sure.”

  She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re different from any woman I’ve ever known, and I can’t stop thinking about you—about us. I’ve never been in love, so I don’t know if I’m in love with you, but I’m sure about one thing—I want time to find out.”

  She shook her head. “If you’d said those words to me a few weeks ago, I would have gladly given you that time. But when you told me you could never return my love, it wasn’t easy to choke down that bitter pill. And when I did, it forced me to face the magnitude of what I want with you and to accept that you don’t want the same things.”

  “All I’m asking for is more time.”

  She sighed. “Then give me one good reason to unpack my bags.”

  “I thought I just did.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “I get that I hurt you,” I said. “I didn’t intend to, but I did. That’s the real reason you don’t want to be with me.”

  “That’s not untrue, but it’s a total oversimplification.”

  “Then complicate it for me, damn it. Tell me where you’re coming from.”

  Her voice took on an edge of exasperation. “I love you—although right now, I really, really wish I didn’t. But the fact that you drive me crazy doesn’t stop me from wanting you. I want to make love to you every night and to be your wife for real. I want to be the mother of your children and spend the rest of my life with you.”

  “Then why are you leaving? Why—”

  She cut me off. “Because loving you has made me realize what I truly want, Ronan. And I’m no longer willing to settle for anything less.” She slammed her suitcase closed, turned it onto its wheels, and pulled it around me and out of the bedroom.

  I followed her as she wheeled her suitcase through the living area into the foyer and attached it to the other suitcase that was already sitting there.

  “Don’t go,” I said. “We need to figure this out together.”

  “There’s nothing more to figure out,” she said, reaching for the apartment door. “I tried to make you into someone you’re not, and I’m sorry about that. But what’s done is done.”

  And with that, she opened the door and rolled her bags through it. As the door began to swing shut behind her, I threw out my arm to hold it open, my gut twisting as I watched Ava step into the elevator.

  Before the doors closed, she looked at me. “I love you, Ronan. I love you more than you know. But here’s what you need to understand: I also love myself.”

  And with that, the doors closed, and she was gone from my life.

  45

  RONAN

  Throughout the next week, I did my best to distract myself from the gaping hole that Ava’s absence left in my life and absorb myself in work. On Wednesday night, I even went out to a bar with Jack, but although the women of Manhattan were as beautiful and varied as ever, I was too preoccupied with thoughts of Ava to take interest in any of them, and after two drinks, when Jack began flirting with a vivacious pixie-faced redhead, I made my excuses, called it a night, and took a cab home.

  On Friday evening, when I returned to my apartment, my mail included a manila envelope containing divorce papers, which I shoved into a drawer, before calling in a pizza order and settling down in my armchair to play my favorite video game, Destiny. Eventually, I’d deal with the divorce and all that went with it, but I’d been in a lousy mood all week, and right now, I just wanted to eat pizza and shoot something.

  By the time my door phone buzzed, I had shot a few hundred cyborg warriors and eaten half of my pizza. When I hauled my ass out of the chair and answered, it was my sister, Cara.

  “Come on up,” I said. “If you haven’t eaten already, I’ve got pizza.”

  When she arrived and stepped into the apartment, Cara surveyed the collection of discarded pizza boxes on the kitchen counter and eyed the vases of wilted flowers in the living area.

  “Wow. Looks like someone’s returned to bachelor living. Did your maid quit or something?”

  “No, Josefina’s out of town this week visiting family. Want a slice of pizza or something to drink?”

  My sister shook her blond head and gestured toward the living area. “Sit down, Ronan. There’s something I need to say to you.”

  I sat back down in my armchair, and as Cara seated herself on the couch across from me and fixed me with her bright-blue gaze, I braced myself for the lecture I sensed was coming my way.

  “Earlier today, Ava told me that she’d sent you divorce papers,” she said.

  Annoyance simmered in my gut. “I just got them today. Did Ava send you over to make sure I sign them within twenty-four hours?”

  My sister’s eyes narrowed as she glared at me. “What crawled up your ass and died? Don’t you dare take out your Ava-related frustrations on me. I’m not here to make you do anything—as if I even could, given how ridiculously stubborn you are. I came here to make one last attempt to save you from your own stupidity.”

  “If you’re talking about Ava and me, it’s too late,” I said. “A week ago, I came home and found her packing her bags. I asked her to stay, but she turned me down and made it clear she wants nothing to do with me. She even left everything I gave her in her room—rings, dresses, shoes, the diamond earrings you helped her choose—everything.”

  “That makes perfect sense,” Cara said. “Ava’s a strong woman, and she sent you a strong message.”

  “By telling me she wants to be my wife and the mother of my children right before she walks out the door and sends me divorce papers?” I got up from my chair and began pacing back and forth. “What kind of fucking message is that?”

  “One that any woman would understand. You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

  “I care about Ava. I really do. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m in love with her.”

  Cara screwed up her face at me. “Are you serious? You’re totally in love with her.”

  “How can you be so sure about that?”

  “For one thing, every time you look at her, it’s written all over your face,” she said. “What the hell do you think being in love is, anyway?”

  “I don’t have a fucking definition. How would I when I’ve never been in love?”

  “Tell me this,” she said. “What do you miss most about spending time with Ava?”

  “We used to laugh together a lot,” I said, remembering the day I’d taken Ava to play minigolf. “I miss having coffee together every morning, and I miss our movie nights. We’d order takeout, watch a movie together, talk, make out on the couch—that kind of thing.”

  “How have you felt since she moved out?”

  “Shitty and kind of empty inside,” I admitted. “I can’t get her out of my head, and I haven’t been able to focus on work.”

  “How does Ava look in sweat pants and a T-shirt at seven a.m., with messed-up hair and no makeup?”

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  “Just answer me,” Cara said.

  “She always looks beautiful, with or without any goddamned makeup.”

  Cara’s lips parted in a wide smile. “Congratulations, Ronan. Whether you want to admit it or not, you’re in love.”

  I stopped pacing. Was my sister right? I had a feeling that maybe she was. Was this what love felt like? Because if it was, I’d loved Ava all along. The truth had been right in front of me, but because I’d never been in love before, I hadn’t recognized my feelings for what they were. And by not recognizing the depth of my feelings for Ava, I’d completely screwed up.

  �
��Fuck,” I said, turning to face Cara. “You’re right. If love means everything I’ve felt since Ava walked out that door, then I am in love with her. But is that enough? You know I’m not exactly ideal husband material.”

  “Because of Dad’s history with women or your own?”

  “Both.”

  “Don’t let your fears take over,” Cara said. “No one’s perfect, and we all have our share of self-doubt. But right now, you have a decision to make. You can either listen to your fears and let the woman you love walk away, or you can listen to your heart, make a commitment to Ava, and resolve with everything in you to honor that commitment and make it work.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I said. “I already tried and failed to convince her to stay.”

  “Bullshit,” Cara said. “When Ava told you she loved you and wanted a life with you, how did you respond? When she put her heart on the line, did you tell her how you feel—or did you hedge your bets and pussyfoot around?”

  Understanding flooded through me. “She tried to get through to me, but I let my doubts hold me back—and now, it’s too late.”

  “Not necessarily,” Cara said. “If Ava gave you a second chance, would you take it?”

  I looked my sister in the eye. “I’d seize it with both hands.”

  “Are you ready to do your utmost to be the man she deserves?”

  “I am.”

  “Then I’ll help you,” she said, looking thoughtful. “But you’re going to have to set your male ego aside if you want to have any hope of pulling this off. After all your fuck-ups, convincing Ava to give you a second chance is going to require serious groveling.”

  “You mean going down on my knees, like in the movies?”

  “That’s just the beginning.”

  “Sign me up,” I said. “I’ll do anything.”

  46