Was it the fear of how it would affect Ellie? she asked herself as she settled on one of the loungers on the deck. Or was it the fact that when it went to publication, she’d be closing the door on any chance of ever mending fences with Galen? She’d never felt a single qualm about any word she’d written before. Why was this different?
She felt that all-too-familiar tug at her heart when she considered what it would be like when she walked out that front door and never came back. Never saw Galen or Ellie again. Grief swelled inside her, threatening to reduce her to tears. But she wasn’t a crier, she told herself. She was strong. She’d made the tough decisions and survived before and she would again. But this time it was different. This time she’d be walking away from the man she loved.
Peyton closed her eyes and allowed herself to finally admit that she was in love with Galen. She’d never expected to fall for him, never wanted to. But now that she’d admitted it to herself, she found she couldn’t neatly box up her feelings and hide them away like she’d always done in the past. She loved him and she knew this article was hurting him, and yet she still owed it to her mom and dad to put it out there.
* * *
You could cut the air between Galen and Peyton with a knife, Alice observed as they were seated at a waterfront table at one of her favorite restaurants in Port Ludlow. Time was not making this match any easier. Alice sighed inwardly. This wasn’t how she imagined things progressing at all. These two would regret this for the rest of their lives if she didn’t step up and fix things. She only hoped she wasn’t too late.
After they’d placed their orders, Alice settled herself more comfortably in her chair and stared at the two of them.
“Which one of you is going to tell me what’s up between you?”
Silence, although her question did make them look at one another.
“Peyton, how about you start?” she coaxed.
She knew the girl was unlikely to sugarcoat anything.
“We’ve decided to separate. Things are not working out.”
“Really?” Alice frowned. “Is that all you have to say on the matter?”
Peyton started fiddling with her napkin, then her water glass, then placed her hands in her lap and looked straight across the table at Alice. “Really. I need to be honest with you. Galen discovered that I lied about my motives for entering our marriage.”
“Is that so?” Alice raised a brow and looked at her grandson. “Galen?”
He nodded, clearly not trusting himself to speak.
“So your motive to marry my grandson to be able to get dirt on me has upset him?” Alice stated calmly and reached for a breadstick. She snapped the end off and popped it in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully as she took in Galen’s and Peyton’s identical, somewhat comical, looks of disbelief.
“You knew?” Peyton blurted.
“Of course I knew. But the facts are the facts. You and Galen are the most compatible match for one another. Once you get this bee out of your bonnet, I think you two will be very happy together.”
“You can’t expect us to remain married after this,” Galen spluttered. “She has manipulated us and outright lied. I certainly can’t trust her and I don’t want her around Ellie, either.”
“Ah, yes. Ellie.” Alice looked down at her plate, searching for the right words. This was such a sensitive situation. Had she overreached herself?
“What about Ellie?” Peyton sounded truly concerned and had paled considerably.
“Have a sip of water, dear. I don’t want you fainting on us,” Alice said. “The situation with Ellie is complicated. Peyton, I’ve followed your life carefully since your childhood. I know it wasn’t easy for you and you struggled at times, but when I discovered you were alone and pregnant, I knew I had to step in and offer help.”
“You what? You’ve spied on me since childhood? You arranged the private adoption? What is this? Some kind of Twilight Zone episode?”
Peyton was incredulous and Galen equally dumbstruck.
“It does make me sound like a meddling old woman but I knew your parents well. I owed it to your mother to keep an eye on you. You see, your father not only betrayed our company, he betrayed a friendship, as well.”
“You were no friend of my mother. You left her to die.”
“And I will regret that for the rest of my days. Your father cut off all contact between us when you moved to Oregon.” Alice blinked hard and fought to compose herself. “Now, regarding the adoption—Nick and Sarah had been in our employ for quite a while and they befriended Galen and made his transition from upstart college graduate to astute and compassionate CEO a much easier one than if he’d had to work with anyone else. I knew of their struggles to have a child. I knew of your predicament. It seemed to me to be the best solution at the time, and it cleared your student loans and medical bills, did it not? Made the path easier for you to truly get ahead in your career? A career you have done exceptionally well in, too, I might add. And while I’m on the subject, how is your latest work coming along?”
Peyton just stared at her, dumbstruck. Galen was not so stricken.
“Her latest work is a pack of filthy lies!” he interjected.
“It is not! Can’t you even hear your grandmother now? She’s been pulling strings and meddling in everyone’s lives for years! Mine included.” Peyton slapped her hand on the table. “I can’t do this. I can’t sit here and pretend to be civil and enjoy dinner.”
She stood up and started to walk away. Alice reached out and caught her hand.
“Sit down, my dear, please. I have something to say to you and you will do me the courtesy of listening. After that, stay if you want to, or leave. The choice is entirely yours.”
To Alice’s relief, Peyton sat down again. All eyes in the restaurant were turned to them. Alice gave the other diners a quelling glance and all turned back to their meals immediately. In the meantime a waiter hurried over with their plates and another poured their wine. Alice lifted her glass and tipped it to the others.
“To your good health,” she said.
Galen and Peyton automatically followed her lead but she noted that Galen didn’t sip his wine, instead placing the glass back on the table with careful deliberation. Her poor boy. He was in turmoil. She could see it as plain as the nose on his face. He’d fallen in love with Peyton, too; she could see that. It was why he was hurting so badly now. A pang of regret flicked along a nerve in her back and she flinched before taking a steadying breath and preparing to make her statement to Peyton. Maybe after this Galen would be free to admit his love and to fight for his woman. She could only hope.
“Now, Peyton, I imagine that you have written what you believe to be the truth.”
“I know it’s the truth. I’ve done my research. I’ve checked my sources,” she said stubbornly.
“The thing is, there are always many sides to a story. If you aren’t careful, my dear, you will end up repeating your father’s mistakes and, like him, end up irrevocably hurting the ones you love most.”
Peyton’s nostrils flared as she drew in a sharp breath. “You are the one who hurt our family.”
“My dear, I suggest you need to rely a little less on personal memories and go straight to the source of all your discontent. I tried to protect you and your mother then, and once you’ve checked your research more carefully, you will find that you’ve allowed your father’s somewhat skewed version of the events of that time to overcome your usual reason and ability to report rationally. I know you’re at the top of your profession, Peyton, but I fear you are well off the mark with your current assignment.
“Can I also say that I found your approaching and exploiting your old college friend Michelle beneath the caliber of reporter I have always thought you to be.”
“You haven’t fired her, too, have you? It wasn’t her fault,” Peyton interjected.
; “No, of course it wasn’t. Michelle came to me right away and told me exactly what was going on. I allowed her to give you access to specific information because you deserved at least that. But twisting that information to suit your own needs, that is not what I expected of you. I know you think you circumvented the matchmaking process with Galen, but I can assure you that you did not. Michelle had no control over the outcome of who Galen was to marry that day. You and he are the perfect match for one another. It is my goal to see my grandson and my new great-granddaughter happy. You also deserve to be happy, Peyton. But your happiness, and now that of Galen and Ellie, is entirely up to you and what you decide to do next.”
Eighteen
Peyton parked her car on the bluff of the windswept beach and got out to scan the sand that stretched out below. This was a lonely and godforsaken stretch of the Oregon coast. It suited her father perfectly. In the distance, she could make him out, a large surf rod embedded in the sand next to him. He stood there, oblivious, the wind buffeting him, a light rain soaking him. Self-contained in all his animosity and resentment at the injustices of the world. She swallowed hard. This wasn’t going to be easy. The last time she’d seen him, after she’d given Ellie up for adoption, he’d basically told her not to bother visiting again.
His words had been calculated to hurt and do as much damage as possible. But here she was, nearly ten years later, gearing up for another onslaught of his vitriol and unhappiness, all in the pursuit of truth. Would he even give her that much? she wondered. Or would he just retreat back to his basic cabin off the beach and continue to wallow in his misery?
She never understood how a man who’d appeared to have it all when she was a child could have come this low. But now that she was older and, she hoped, wiser, she could begin to understand.
Peyton locked her rental car and started down the weathered steps that led to the beach. The wind whipped around her, throwing sand at her skin with stinging intensity, while waves crashed loudly on the beach beside her. He must have seen her approach, but he didn’t react until she was almost upon him.
“You’re back.”
He didn’t sound happy about it.
“Yes, I’m back, Dad. How are you doing?”
He shrugged. “What do you want?”
“Some answers.”
“Have you done that article yet?”
Peyton sighed. The last time she’d tried to talk to her father he’d been about to hang up on her, until she’d told him what she was planning to do. “Not yet, no.”
“What’s taking you so long? I told you what that bitch did to me. About time she got a taste of her own medicine.”
Peyton shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket and stared out at the waves and their inexorable assault on the sandy beach. She weighed the questions she’d been practicing in the back of her mind on the long drive here. It was time to ask them, even if it may well end up being the last time her father ever spoke to her. She turned to face him.
“Dad?”
“What?”
His response was abrupt. Hardly an invitation to open up for a deep and meaningful conversation, but she had to press on. She deserved to know the truth.
“What really happened when you lost your job at Horvath Corporation? Did you steal from them?”
Her father stared out at the sea and the lines on his face appeared to deepen beneath her gaze. His lips firmed, then trembled as they parted on a huff of breath. He seemed to grow physically smaller in stature, his shoulders more bowed, his head more bent. His hands curled into fists at his sides.
“It was only meant to be a loan,” he said so softly she barely heard him speak.
“A loan?” she prompted when he fell silent again.
“Your mother deserved the best of everything. It’s what she grew up with and I’d promised her that if she chose me, her life didn’t have to change. I was overstretched financially, but once I was on the treadmill, I just couldn’t get off it. It gave me a buzz to give your mom the latest gadget, the best garden, the latest model car, everything. At first I only borrowed a little bit to tide us over from paycheck to paycheck. I’d reimburse it and no one was any the wiser. But then your mom got sick and I got behind in returning the money, and eventually I had to borrow greater and greater sums. It became harder to hide it and I had to adjust some of the financial reports to ensure that no one would pick up the discrepancies.”
“Why didn’t you just tell Mom we were living beyond our means? Why didn’t we downsize sooner, before you needed to take money from the company?”
He laughed but it was a bitter and twisted sound. “And lose your mother’s love? I couldn’t bear to see the disappointment on her face if I told her I wasn’t what I pretended to be. It was my role to provide for you both. She was the love of my life, my whole reason for being on this earth. I had to be able to offer her the moon and the stars and more. She came from a wealthy family, she had everything, but she chose me. I had to show her I was as good as the people who’d cut her off when she married me. The people who, even when she became ill, would have nothing to do with her. No help, not a letter, not a phone call, nothing. I had to be everything to her. I wanted to be everything to her. And I turned out to be nothing, after all.”
A solitary tear worked its way down his weathered cheek and Peyton felt her heart twist in compassion to see her proud, if misguided, father let down his guard this way. What he’d done had been incredibly wrong, but he had done it for love. Peyton had grown up believing her mom’s parents had died, but this revelation from her father made her realize that she had a whole other family out there. More people who didn’t want her. But she couldn’t afford to dwell on that now.
“Dad, I think she would have loved you anyway. I never saw her love for you falter or change, even when she got really sick and we had to move from California.”
He just shook his head. “If that bitch hadn’t fired me, we’d have managed. It’s her fault your mom died the way she did. If I could only have stayed in my job and kept my benefits, your mom would still be alive today.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I know that. And I want Alice Horvath and her sanctimonious family to pay for what they did to us. They deserve to be taught a lesson. They could’ve afforded a few hundred thousand here and there. There was no need for them to punish me the way they did. I need vengeance, Peyton. I deserve it. Your mother deserves it. You deserve it. I can’t do it myself, so you have to do it for me. You have to!”
His eyes took on a haze of fury and Peyton realized it was very possible that he wasn’t entirely sane. Maybe he never had been. He’d always been prone to irrational outbursts. And his love for her mother had bordered on obsessive; she could see that now. But his choices and actions, they were all on him, whether he could admit to them or not.
She felt as if the scales had been ripped from her eyes. All these years she’d believed him to be the innocent party, somehow unfairly wronged in the process that had seen him lose his job and their lifestyle. And now she knew the truth. He had stolen the money from Horvath Corporation. He had falsified reports. The knowledge that he’d been guilty all along, while proclaiming his innocence and acting the injured party, was devastating. All these years she’d been coached by her father to hate the Horvath family, when all along they’d been innocent. The very people she’d been brought up to vilify, the people who’d welcomed her into their family with open arms, had been the victims all along.
“I’m not doing it, Dad.”
“You have to,” he repeated.
“No, I don’t. It’s time to let go of your anger, if you can. You know you did wrong and I’m grateful you’ve finally told me the truth.”
“The truth is they deserve everything they get. They need to be knocked down a peg or two.”
“No, Dad, they don’t.” Something Alice had said t
o her last night about protecting her and her mom tickled at the back of her mind. “They could have pressed criminal charges against you back then, do you realize that? Alice Horvath chose to only fire you because she knew if she pressed charges that Mom and I would suffer even more.”
“She should have let me keep my job.” He remained adamant.
“Would you have done that in the same position?”
“I always meant to give the money back,” he said sullenly.
“I’m sure you did,” Peyton answered sadly. “Dad?”
“What now?”
“I have a daughter.”
“That child Galen Horvath is looking after?”
“Yes. She’s my daughter.”
Finally, something in her tone made her father look at her and meet her eyes. “The baby you gave away?”
“Yes.”
“More meddling from that bitch, I suppose.”
“No, more care from Alice Horvath. She made it possible for me to finish college, Dad, without loans. She made sure my baby went to a loving home with people who cared for her as if she was their own. And when they died suddenly, she gave me a second chance at motherhood.”
Magnus looked away from her and toward his surf rod, noting it was bucking away with a fish on the line.
“I’ve got to go,” he said.
“Dad? Don’t you want to see her? My daughter? Your granddaughter?”
He shook his head. “No. I want to be left alone.”
If he’d taken his filleting knife out and sliced her heart from her chest he couldn’t have done any more harm than he’d done with his words right now. Choking back the tears that threatened to fall, she nodded in response.
“Fine, I’ll go. I love you, Dad.”
No response. She turned and walked down the beach toward the stairs that led up the bluff to her car, unaware of the wind that tugged at her hair, whipping it across her face until she could barely see. She shouldn’t have expected any different, she told herself. He’d always been this way. But not to even want to see a picture of his own granddaughter? That was a blow she hadn’t been expecting.
Vengeful Vows (Marriage At First Sight Book 3) Page 15