“You are a greedy son of bitch. And cold. So cold, Clayton, I can’t even believe it.”
I walked toward the chair where I’d put my purse. He opened his door, saying something to the assistant who sat outside his office.
A second later his assistant came in with a tray and set it down on the edge of Clayton’s desk. On the tray was a little white ceramic teapot, a teabag inside with the string hanging out. A packet of sugar. A little pitcher of milk. He was so quick, he must have had it waiting for me.
“May I?” he asked, and without my answering he made me a cup of tea. Just the way I liked it. I looked away. This was—officially—too much.
“I don’t expect you to answer me right now,” he said.
“Because you know I’ll say no.” I laughed, but even as I said it I knew that I wished I simply could say no.
It was my sisters, yes. But now that he’d made me say it out loud it was the foundation, too.
He handed me the cup and the degree to which I wanted to take it actually forced me not to.
“I’m leaving,” I said, gathering my purse, longing for a fortifying sip of that tea.
He set the tea back down on the desk.
“I’ll come out to the ranch tomorrow to discuss the details.”
“The details of…what?” I asked him.
“Our marriage.”
I laughed. Oh, I laughed so hard. “You’re not proposing marriage, Clayton. I don’t know what the hell this is, but it’s not marriage.”
10
VERONICA
When I opened the front door of the house, Thelma and Louise came running out to greet me, demanding extra pats for having been left on the ranch by themselves. I was thoroughly coated in dog fur by the time I got in the front door.
“Hello!” I yelled. “Bea? Sabrina?”
The dogs woofed at me.
I called through the house and finally ended up in the kitchen, where I found a note on the counter. From Bea.
Shit was dire if Bea was writing me notes on paper.
Don’t be mad, the note read. But I didn’t call, because I don’t want to freak you out. Or have a fight about you coming with. But I’ve gone back to Austin. Something happened at the bar and the police want to question me. EVERYTHING IS FINE! DO NOT FREAK OUT!
I immediately grabbed my phone and called her. But the call went right to her voice mail.
“Oh, my God,” I breathed. I called her again and this time left a message. “You need to call me. Now. Like, right now.”
I stared blankly into space, wondering how everything had fallen apart so fast and so…completely. A week ago, everything seemed fine and now it was literally a mess.
I texted Bea. Do you need a lawyer? Call Trina.
The answer came back immediately. I already did. Everything is okay. Can’t talk. Will call you when I can.
Was this supposed to be a relief? I wondered. Because it did not feel like a relief. It felt like if I made one sudden movement everything I had left would collapse.
How was it, the second I stepped back onto The King’s Land, everything always got worse?
Thelma put her head against my leg, like she knew.
The next morning, I woke up with a plan. Well, not a plan.
A goal. Well, not a goal.
A mindset. That worked.
I had a general mindset for how I was going to deal with Clayton.
I put on my skinny jeans and my comfortable pink-and-purple flannel shirt. I put in my contacts and brushed my hair into a high ponytail.
Practical. Pragmatic. Ready to make a deal. Ready to work.
Because there was one thing I was sure of—Clayton didn’t actually want to marry me. That made no sense. So a deal could be made. I just needed to know what he really wanted.
I hoped that I didn’t look like a woman who’d spent any time reliving those hot moments against Clayton’s office door.
When Clayton pulled up in his sleek sports car, I was outside with the dogs and I put my hand to my eyes, the sun off his windshield nearly blinding.
“Hey, Veronica,” he said, smiling as he walked up to me. Thelma didn’t know what to do with herself. She was trapped between wagging her tail and growling. I completely understood the feeling. “You look lovely.”
I rolled my eyes, which made him smile even more.
“You ready to talk?” I asked. He blinked and I was pleased to have knocked him off balance right out of the gate.
“You’re considering my offer?”
“I’m considering talking about your offer.”
“That’s progress.”
“Don’t get too excited, buddy. Let’s go inside.”
Instead of heading for Dad’s old office I led him into the screened-in porch. The only place that still felt safe on this ranch. If he had any feelings about this, any thoughts, he was silent about them. I’d brought in my computer and paper and pencils. Set up an impromptu office with Mom’s old sewing table.
He looked…comfortable back there. He wasn’t wearing a suit and tie but, instead, a pair of broken-in jeans and a leather jacket. A black T-shirt underneath it. Clayton’s weekend look.
I remembered it well.
“Where are your sisters?”
“Sabrina went back to Los Angeles and Bea went back to Austin.”
“You’re here by yourself?”
“Why? You have nefarious plans?”
“No.” He glanced around. “I just know you never liked this place. I thought your sisters would make it easier for you to be here.”
I shrugged, but his insight was dead-on. Being at the ranch by myself wasn’t comfortable. “They’ve got shit to do.”
Thelma and Louise followed us. Thelma jumped up on the wicker couch she now called home but Louise, the opportunist, came over to see if Clayton had any shrimp on his person. She sniffed his shoes thoroughly.
“Where did these dogs come from?” he asked, tilting his shoe just slightly so Louise could smell the bottom of it.
“They’re mine. Well, Bea’s initially. But they’ve adopted me.”
“Lucky you,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was joking.
“Go away,” I said to the dogs, who ignored me and settled for naps around the room.
“You look like you’re ready to do business,” Clayton said.
“I am.” I sat down at the old table and gestured for him to have a seat in the rocking chair in front of my desk. “Five years ago, you and my father made a deal. If we’re going to…do this—”
“Get married.”
“Then the deal you make will be with me.”
“All our cards on the table?”
I nodded. He nodded.
Excellent. Agreement right off the bat.
“In order for me to pay off my sister’s debts. And set up a trust for them as well as take over control of my mother’s foundation, you are demanding—”
“Offering.”
I laughed without any humor. “Demanding we get married.”
“Offering.”
“What does that marriage look like to you?”
He was silent for a second and I realized I’d surprised him. “Like what we had,” he finally said.
“So, I love you blindly and you lie.”
“We were friends,” he said. “I didn’t lie about that. I didn’t lie about wanting you.”
“Would you have dated me if it weren’t for the deal my dad gave you?”
He looked out the screened windows at the hummingbirds around the old birdfeeder that Trudy maintained. His silence told me a terrible story. A horrible truth.
“You know, I think even considering this is a mistake—”
“I started dating you because you were funny and sweet and so sexy it practically killed me.”
Halfway through his words I was shaking my head. Denying him. “You’re lying.”
“Whether you believe it or not does not make it less true.”
“I’m just supposed
to believe that you saw me one day in the office and fell for me?”
“Why not?”
“Because men like you don’t fall for women like me!” I cried.
The silence after my words was thick and deep. And embarrassing.
His cheeks got red. The tips of his ears.
I pushed away the humiliation. “If I’m going to stay in this room,” I said, “much less consider talking about marriage, I need one thing from you.”
“What?”
“Honesty. No lying.”
His eyes met mine, and after a long second, he nodded.
“Why?” I asked. “Why did you ask me out that first time?”
“James Court.”
“What? What does he have to do with…anything?” I remembered him briefly at the funeral being an utter piece of shit. But that was sort of his thing.
“Your father offered him the deal.”
“The marriage deal?”
He nodded again. Slowly. Like he really didn’t want to tell me. And things started making sense. “He asked me out. Just before you and I started dating.”
“I know.”
“And he was awful about it. Like…” The memories came up from the basement where I’d locked them. “He wouldn’t take no for an answer. But what does he have to do with you asking me on a date?”
“You deserved so much more than him,” he said simply.
“I deserved you?” The words stuck in my throat because for a while there I’d believed that I did. That we’d deserved each other.
“No. You deserved better than me. Better than what your father was offering. But he was determined to see you married to a man he believed he could control.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because James Court and your father wouldn’t stop. And you know that.”
This should be humiliating. It was humiliating, but it was also entirely my father. And there was no level to which my father would not stoop to get what he wanted. And no he wouldn’t have cared what I thought. Or wanted.
“So, you offered yourself up as sacrifice.”
“It was never a sacrifice,” he said quietly, and I could feel this sudden, powerful desire to believe him. I wanted to believe that he might not have asked me out without the deal, but that he was happy once he had.
And that way lay ruin; I knew that.
“Did he offer James Court the land, too?”
“No. I asked for the land.”
“Oh, my God, you’re not as noble as you want me to believe, are you?”
He turned to face me, leaned forward so I couldn’t escape his gaze. I found myself holding my breath.
“Yes, I wanted the land. Yes, I wanted more control of the company. Yes, I was a greedy son of a bitch. But I wanted you, too. My mistake was I wanted everything.”
I wanted everything.
Clayton looked down at his hands with such intensity I looked at them, too, like maybe there was something there I wasn’t seeing and should.
But they were just his hands. Large and square.
“There’s always a choice to make,” he said. “I should have chosen you. I regret that I didn’t.”
Those words caught me up short. Chosen you. When had anyone chosen me? My father hadn’t. My sisters needed me, that wasn’t the same. Five years ago, I’d thought Clayton had. I thought he’d plucked me out of my ordinary life and settled me down in a fairy tale because he chose me. But I was just part of the jackpot he was sweeping up in his arms.
What would it be like, I wondered, to be someone’s first choice? To be the thing they wanted more than anything else?
I literally couldn’t imagine.
“Easy for you to say now. Now you have it all. You have the ranch. The business. Your land.”
“And you?” he asked.
I laughed. “Not like you had me. You won’t ever have me like that again.” No one would. That girl was gone.
And I needed to remember who I was now. And, more importantly, what I needed. I wasn’t here to feel bad about the past, I was here to secure the King sisters’ future.
And I was going to do it—and tie it up in a pretty bow. Because that was me.
I stacked my papers, tapping them against the table with a little click that was highly satisfying.
“Let’s discuss terms,” I said. “We’ve started with no lying.”
“No running away,” he countered. “Even if you’re hurt. You stay and we talk things over.”
I wrote those terms down and pretended to be nonchalant when I said, “No sex.”
“No deal.”
“Clayton—”
He leaned forward, his elbows on the small table between us. He smelled like weekend Clayton. No aftershave. Just coffee and mint.
“This will be real,” he said. “In every sense of the word. I want to be married to you, Ronnie. I want to live with you.”
“Where?”
“My condo.”
“My life is in Austin. My company. My house.” My house was kind of a dump and I could do my work anywhere, but I wasn’t conceding shit if I didn’t have to.
“I could move to Austin.”
I blinked at him. Stunned. Staggered, really.
“It will mean some travel and perhaps time apart. But I’m willing to make that work.” He cocked his head. “Are you?”
I hadn’t expected him to compromise. I’d expected him to be bossy and cruel and demanding. Not…giving. Reasonable. Or fair.
“I suppose that would be all right,” I said.
“What else?”
“No expectation of love,” I said. “I don’t expect you to love me and I don’t want you to expect that from me—”
“I have no expectations that you will love me,” he said firmly.
“Yeah,” I laughed, and it was bitter to my own ears. “Likewise.”
“You were quite keen on children during our last engagement. Have you changed your mind?”
It was like he’d forced the conversation around a corner I hadn’t seen coming and wasn’t prepared for. I sucked in a breath and shook my head.
“Then I agree to children,” he said.
This was where the negotiation fell into ridiculousness. I put down my pen. Despite wanting to be all business, as cold and impersonal as the man across from me, my hands shook.
I put them in my lap. Clenched them into fists so I wouldn’t feel the tremors.
“I grew up with a father who didn’t love me,” I said. This was an old wound, but it still ached. “And after my mom died, my house was cold. I don’t want my children to feel that way. For my sisters I could survive this…relationship we’re negotiating. But my children—”
“Our children.”
“Deserve better.”
“You don’t think you could love our children?” he asked.
“Of course I could,” I said. My body ached at the thought of children.
“Then you’re worried about me? You don’t think I’m capable of loving them.”
“I don’t know if you’re capable of loving anyone.”
“I will love our children,” he said. It was as if we were discussing the sale of a house. Or the merits of a kind of car. Was a man like this able to love?
Could I love our children enough for the two of us? Or would his chill seep through everything?
I looked back out at that hummingbird. Working so hard just to survive.
“I used to have all these speeches I wanted to give you,” I said. “After I left. It was like this ritual I had. Every night when I couldn’t sleep I’d write out something I wished I’d been brave enough to say to you. I had dozens.”
“Where are they?”
“Bea found the notebook and made me get rid of it. She said it wasn’t healthy.”
“Do you remember them?”
“Of course.” Those speeches were written on my heart.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Give me one.”
&n
bsp; “They were mean. Awful. I wanted to hurt you the way you’d hurt me.” I shook my head, still watching that hummingbird. “But then I realized that I didn’t really know you enough to hurt you. I didn’t know you at all. I knew what you ordered for dinner at Bishop’s and how you liked to have sex. I knew you slept on the left side of the bed and hated beets. I knew you worked hard and treated your employees well.” I remembered when I realized this, how it had felt like a balm. It had been a relief from my pain. Now it felt awful. “That’s it. Six months. Dozens of dates and weekends away. I practically lived with you and that’s…that’s all I knew.”
“It can be different this time.”
“Can it?”
“Are you implying that’s all there is to me? My dislike for beets?” he snapped. He was angry, and even that seemed like an improvement. It felt like a breath over the embers of what we’d been.
“I don’t know, Clayton. I don’t know if that’s all there is to you. Or if that’s all you wanted to show me.”
He was silent for a long time, looking over my shoulder. And then, finally, he met my eyes. I sat up, like I’d been shocked. Or caught.
“I had my own speeches,” he said after a minute. “Well, not speeches. But at night I’d rewrite what happened in that study. Sometimes you never came in. And sometimes I punched your father out.”
“Funny,” I whispered. “I’ve had the same fantasy.”
“But most of the time, I just stopped you from running away and tried to explain.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because what was there to explain?” he asked. “It was what you saw. There’s no excuse. The only thing we can do is start over.”
“How? Pretend what happened…didn’t happen? Because that feels impossible. I don’t know how you and I start fresh with that memory rotting between us.”
“Can I remind you what I’ll give you if you agree?” he asked.
“I know what I’ll have.”
“No,” he said. “Let me tell you what I’ll give you.”
Speechless, I nodded. “Protection for your sisters. Security for all of you. All the King daughters would get what they deserve from their father’s estate. In a way they never did when Hank was alive.”
I hated it, but tears burned in my eyes.
“We will extricate the foundation from the company and it will be yours. No strings. No ties. I had thought tying the foundation to the company would keep your father from folding it out of spite. But I was wrong. And if something happens between us down the road, the foundation is all yours. Children,” he said, “if we should be so lucky.”
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