by M. Leighton
I swallow my sigh, but I can’t keep the sadness from my voice. Not completely. “Maybe Donald will have some suggestions. Have you talked to him since I called? Did you give him this new information?”
“Yes. He’s looking into things from his end, but I’ve also reached out to a contact I have on the Randolph Consolidated board of directors. If this little asshole wants to play hardball, he can see firsthand how the big boys play.”
“What are you planning, Dad?”
“I did a little digging after we got off the phone. It seems that all the stock was left to Jameson Gregory Randolph III. While Tag’s blood might be Randolph blood, his legal name isn’t. Stock has to be transferred to a living heir or recipient. If Tag hasn’t made some other legal arrangements to take over Jameson Junior’s holdings as Tag Barton, he might not have a leg to stand on.”
“So he’d have nothing, then?”
My father’s smile is smug and mean as hell. “Not a damn thing except a job at a vineyard, which he’ll lose, and whatever meager savings he’s managed to amass on his own.”
I should be thrilled at the prospect of Tag being destitute after what he’s put me through, after what he attempted to do to me and my family. So why am I not? Why do I feel like this is taking things too far? He had no such qualms when he lied to me to get what he wanted. Why should I have any qualms about hurting him?
It does bring rise to one confusing question, though. “Dad, if Tag has controlling interest and all the wealth that goes along with being the sole heir of Jameson Randolph, why would he marry me for Chiara? Why would he even want it when he’s already got so much money? He could buy ten vineyards.”
“Because he’s a greedy, soulless bastard, just like his father.”
That’s a pat enough answer, but I’m not buying it. It makes no sense that Tag would go to such extremes for a modest vineyard. On top of that, the Tag who I came to know and fall in love with was anything but greedy. Of course, I obviously had no idea who he really was, so what the hell do I know?
That brings me back to the present, to my current predicament.
“Well, whatever happens from here on, I’m out. I just want the divorce and Chiara. The rest is between you two.”
I’m not sure I’ll ever even visit my family’s vineyard again, but this is more about the principle of the thing. One day I may change my mind. One day, when all of this is behind me and my heart is hopefully healed, I might want to revisit the place that I’ve loved for so much of my life.
But right now, I can’t see that day arriving. I can’t imagine how I’ll be able to look at Chiara the same way again. I can’t imagine how I’ll be able to go there without seeing his face, feeling his touch. I also can’t imagine how I’ll ever get over falling in love with Tag Barton.
What began as a hideaway became my burial ground. And the man who felt like my biggest blessing had now become my biggest curse.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Tag
One of the benefits of being the surprise heir to a Fortune 500 company is the breadth of resources available. Money can buy the best when it comes to that. I had to make but a single call and fifteen minutes later I had Weatherly’s well-hidden address on my phone. Information has always been valuable—in life, in the Army, in personal affairs. Never has it been so welcomed, though. I feel relief, as though I’m back in control, knowing that Weatherly can’t escape me. Can’t hide from me. If I couldn’t find her, couldn’t get to her . . . that would be a problem.
I slow to a stop in front of the beautifully landscaped high-end patio homes. They look like Craftsman bungalows in an exotic rainforest or something. The surroundings are exquisite and lush, totally befitting of a woman like Weatherly. I can picture her here just as clearly as I can picture her covered in mud, lying beneath me between the rows of grapevines at Chiara. I’ll probably never be able to get that out of my mind—her creamy skin covered with my muddy handprints, her delectable body coming to life at my touch.
I get out and walk purposefully to the door that should belong to Weatherly. I’m not letting her go so easily. Whatever it is that her father is up to, she needs to know that I’m not going away without a fight.
I ring the doorbell and knock twice on the door, anxious to get this straightened out and head back home. I couldn’t be more surprised when William O’Neal answers the door, thunder on his face.
“What the hell are you doing here, Randolph?” he spits venomously.
For the first time, my pulse stutters. He just called me Randolph.
He knows. And if he knows, Weatherly knows.
Shit!
That’s what this is all about.
TWENTY-NINE
Weatherly
I watch Tag’s face as my father’s words sink in. I see the guilt wash in like a pale, frothy wave. If there was ever a teeny tiny part of me that thought maybe he had intentions of coming clean eventually, that teeny tiny part just died a teeny tiny, miserable death. It’s clear that Tag didn’t want me to know.
“Jesus, Weatherly,” he begins, pushing past my father. I stop him in his tracks.
“Don’t. Just don’t. Whatever you came here to say, it doesn’t matter.” I didn’t imagine that it would be so hard to say those words. My throat constricts as though it’s trying to close in around them, to stifle them. To keep me from uttering them. To keep me from ending things. Forever. “This is over. And you need to leave.”
“Weatherly, whatever you think—”
“It’s not a matter of what she thinks, you son of a bitch! It’s a matter of what she knows.
“Listen, O’Neal,” he says, whirling angrily toward Dad. “I get that you’re her father and all, but she’s a grown woman. This is between Weatherly and me. It’s none of your business.”
“None of my business? None of my business?” Dad hisses through gritted teeth. “You’ve been trying to take everything from me and my family, you marry my daughter for her vineyard, and you think that is none of my business? You couldn’t be more wrong.”
“I didn’t . . . It’s not what . . . This is all a big misunderstanding. If you’ll give me a few minutes with Weatherly—”
“She doesn’t want a few minutes with you, or didn’t you hear that? She’s done with you. And when I get done with you, you’ll wish you’d never met the O’Neals.”
“Look, do what you want. Think what you want. I don’t give a shit. She’s the one I care about. She’s the one I need to talk to. I need to tell her that I tried to buy Chiara so that my mother would always have a home. So that she wouldn’t be uprooted in her condition. She’s dying, for chrissake. I didn’t want her to have to move when you found out she could no longer be your housekeeper and your cook.”
“I would never have—”
“Don’t give me that load of crap! You’re a ruthless businessman who sees only bottom lines. You don’t see people or lives or futures. You see dollar signs. And she would be a liability in your eyes. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not, O’Neal!”
“However you try to paint this, you’re still the bad guy here. You lied to my daughter. You tricked her into marrying you so that you could get your hands on her property. Well, I’ve got news for you, smart guy. Chiara is protected. It doesn’t convey through marriage. It—”
“You think I don’t know that? You think I didn’t do my homework? That I can’t afford to hire a fleet of lawyers to research this, to find a loophole? I knew exactly what I was doing when I married your daughter. I knew what I was doing when my company donated five million dollars to her charity, too.”
My heart flutters at his words. “That was you?”
Tag turns to me now. His face softens and I’m reminded again of how amazing he can be, of how happy I was with him. For a while. Before he broke my heart.
“Of course it was me. I knew it meant a lot t
o you. And I figured you’d marry Michael if you had to, just to save those kids.”
“And you couldn’t have that, could you?” my father sneers. “You couldn’t risk anyone getting to it through my daughter before you.”
“I can’t deny that. I didn’t want anyone else involved with Chiara, anyone who might influence Weatherly. Anyone who might pose a threat to the only home my mother has known in nearly thirty years. But donating to Weatherly’s charity is hardly the act of a monster.”
“Then why marry her? Why do this to her if your intentions were so pure?”
“At first, it was just a stall tactic. I had to buy some time. When she told me about Safe Passage, I knew that could be the answer. She wouldn’t have to marry then. I could buy Chiara from her and my mother would be safe. I knew she would never make Mom leave. I knew she wasn’t like you. But then . . .”
My father glares silently at Tag, waiting. I’m the one who prompts him when his pause drags on.
“But then what?”
“But then I started to really want to marry you,” he says quietly, his smoky gray eyes sucking me in, fogging my resolve.
“If what you say is true, then why hide who you were? Once you made the donation, why hide that you’re Jameson Randolph’s son?”
“I knew she’d hate me. I knew this would happen. And I didn’t want it to.”
“Just how long did you think you could keep it from her? How long did you think you could hide it?”
Tag shrugs. “As long as I needed to. It’s surprisingly easy to cloak ones identity when money is no object.”
“So you’d have lied to me forever?” I ask, the tiny kernel of hope I’d begun to foster shriveling up inside me.
“Honestly?” he asks, stepping closer to me. “If I thought telling you the truth could cost me you, then yes. I’d have lied to you forever. I didn’t realize until recently that I’d do just about anything to have you in my life. To make you happy. And I knew this would make you hate me.”
I don’t know how he can make the confession of willfully lying to me sound so much like a confession of love, but I’m struggling to retain my anger. My father must see that, too, though. And he takes measure to restore it.
“If you think for one second that your smooth talking will get you out of this, you’re a bigger fool than I thought. You manipulated my daughter. You used her, lied to her and just admitted to having no problem with doing it forever if it suits your purposes. The best thing you can do for yourself is leave her the hell alone. This is going to get ugly enough for you as it is. You can trust me on that.”
Tag is still watching me, his eyes pleading with me, as my father stomps to the door and jerks it open.
“I suggest you do the smart thing and get out of here before I call the police.”
“I’m her husband,” Tag informs in a husky voice. It’s a statement of fact, yes, but it also has a possessive ring to it that stirs something primal in me. It’s as though he’s saying that I’m his and that no one can do a damn thing about it.
The words . . . the tone . . . the look in his eyes . . . Chills spread down my back.
“Not for long,” Dad growls. “Now get out!”
“I’ll need to hear her tell me that, if it’s all the same to you.”
He’s standing so close. His scent is so achingly familiar. There are still parts of me that gravitate toward him, that want to lean in to him like a freezing person might lean in to heat.
But he hurt me. He lied to me. He manipulated me. Those are facts, too. I’m not sure I will ever be able to trust him again. Not after this. No matter how much my heart wants me to.
“You need to go, Tag. It’s for the best. This was a mistake, right from the start.”
“You don’t mean that,” he says, his voice low. “You can’t mean that.”
“What did you expect, Tag? You lied to me. Right from the beginning. How did you think this would end?”
“I didn’t. I didn’t expect it to end. I didn’t want it to. I know I didn’t tell you on our wedding day, but I thought this would be forever. I . . . I know now that I should’ve told you, but I thought I made that clear in every second that we spent together.” He moves in close, his voice reduced to a breathy whisper that my father would have no hope of hearing. “Every touch,” he says, raising his hand as if to touch my face, only to let it fall away before he does. “Every kiss.” His eyes, his tortured, tortured eyes drop to my lips before they close, as if it’s too painful to look at them. To remember.
“Stop, Tag. I can’t . . . This is just . . . You need to leave.” The tremor in my voice is an almost palpable ripple in the air.
I pray to God that he doesn’t know how hard this is for me, how close I am to just falling back into his arms. I’m on the verge of throwing all caution to the wind—again—and giving in. No matter how bad that would be for me, no matter how deeply I could be hurt. In moments like this, when everything between us is sizzling to the surface and emotions are running high, I think I might give up anything—any amount of future pain and heartache—to be with him for just one more day, just one more night.
I’ve never been happier than when I was in his arms.
But I’ve also never been unhappier after making these recent discoveries.
His eyes open and his expression falls in the subtlest of ways. “I’ll go. For now. But I won’t be far. I won’t ever be far. You’re mine, fair Weatherly. You might not believe that right now, and I’ve done a shitty job of telling you, but I love you and I’m not giving up.”
He places a chaste kiss on my cheek, little more than warm breath and warm lips, before he turns away and strides back across the room.
“This isn’t over,” he tells my father as he passes.
“It was over before it began.”
Tag pauses, stares at my dad for a few seconds and then glances at me over his shoulder. His eyes hold mine for a heartbeat and then he’s gone, leaving me arguably more miserable than I was before he came.
—
I never dreamed days could be so long and exhausting. And not in a good way. Not in the way days felt long when I was with Tag, as though we had all the time in the world. Not in the way I felt limp and satisfied after making love with him for an hour, as though my muscles had turned to jelly. No, these days are painful. Agonizing. Humiliating. Never ending.
Somehow, word about Tag’s identity leaked out and made its way around our circles. I’m sure my father had something to do with that.
For the last thirteen days, there has been a mixture of outrage, disgust and pity. The outrage coming from most of Dad’s associates. The disgust has been primarily with my mother and her friends. And the pity . . . well, that’s been coming from my friends. I’ve been getting calls and visits, but the one common factor that every caller and visitor shares is pity. It’s in the voices, in the eyes, in the tentative smiles. They’re fairly dripping with it, as if to say, “Poor Weatherly. She fell in love with a man who was just using her.”
And they’re right. All of them. I let first my attraction and then my love for Tag blind me. I was so desperate to find love on my own that I didn’t think about ulterior motives, even though I had one myself. Sort of. But mine didn’t hurt anybody. And he knew what it was. I can’t say the same for his. Tag’s are still hurting me. And he’s not helping.
In between visits and calls, I’ve had deliveries. Dozens of them. Flowers, candy, expensive jewelry, all with similar sentiments on the card—I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Don’t give up on us, I love you. At first, it was as though Tag was just lashing out with his money, but then, with later deliveries, I began to see the heart behind the gifts. It was subtly personal for a day or two. Wildflowers from the forest near the waterfall where he proposed, a basket of grapes from the field our cabin overlooked, earrings that match my engagement ring, brea
d from a little bakery we found on our honeymoon. The gifts haven’t stopped. Not for one day. They only seem to be getting harder to ignore, especially when my delivery came on Tuesday and I began to realize what our time together meant to Tag. Every moment, it seems, made an impression on him as well. The evidence came to my front door that day and every day since.
It was in the form of a picture. It was a photograph taken at Chiara, showcased beautifully in a heavy silver Tiffany’s frame. It wasn’t the frame that stopped my heart, though. It was the picture itself. The shot was taken at sunrise after a rain, in between the rows of grapevines. The earth was dark and wet, and there were puddles that held water, reflecting the fiery orange of the rising sun. I took one look at it and I knew which row it was. I knew why he took a picture of that exact puddle. There was a handprint in the mud, possibly the one that Tag left there as he drove his body into mine that first time. Chills spread over my skin when I saw it. I stared at it for at least a full minute before I sat down in the floor, leaned up against the front door and cried.
That wasn’t the only picture either. I’ve gotten eight so far. All of them have come in stunning frames, some even encrusted with jewels, jewels that I’d be willing to bet are real. But they’ve never impressed me. No fancy frame could do that. No jewelry or flowers or candy could do it either. Only the personal gifts, only the meaningful pictures.
Every day Tag has told me that he loves me. Not in words, but in the beautiful hues of a sunrise, captured at different spots throughout the Chiara lands that have special meaning only for us. Each of them has chiseled away at the ever-widening crack in my heart until it’s now an all-consuming chasm.
I might’ve weakened by now if it weren’t for my parents, my mother especially. In her artful way, she tells me what’s going on in the outside world. She keeps me informed of the fallout from Tag’s audacious maneuver. He’s the talk of the town in our circles, which means I am, too. In ways I never wanted to be. The elite Atlanta corporate world is divided—those on the O’Neal side and those on the Randolph side.