by K. A. Linde
His eyes roamed up and down my body as if I were a piece of meat that he had purchased at the market. As if I were his for the taking.
It was not the first, nor would it be the last time Camden’s father looked at me like that. But the way his gaze fell on me… I knew that look in his eye. I had seen it on dozens of men. I knew their licentious thoughts.
For a long time, I’d hoped I was imagining it. Then we’d been out at a company function. Camden and I were in a fight. We were always in a fight. When his father approached me, I wasn’t on my guard. When his hand slid to my ass, I realized what was happening. I spilled my drink down the front of his tuxedo and rushed away. He’d never brought it up again, but I knew he remembered and I knew to keep my guard up around him.
I gave him my best blasé look and strode past him as if I didn’t give a shit that he was eye-fucking his daughter-in-law. I never told Camden. He’d likely go ballistic… or not care at all. I couldn’t decide which would be worse.
6
Camden
I needed more alcohol to survive this fucking dinner.
My father had been droning on about his latest golf partners and asking Lars pointless bullshit about Sweden. I’d discovered halfway through the conversation that he was not an actual prince. Though Candice called him that. He just smiled sheepishly and let her. I still didn’t know what his official title was, but apparently, he was part of the nobility, whatever good that did him.
The biggest surprise was that Katherine remained silent through much of dinner. She poked around at her food and ate a measly few bites. It was a miracle that she could hold her tongue that long. Usually, she was full of quips and jabs aplenty. I didn’t know what was going through her head right now, but I was more concerned with the conversation I was going to have with my father after dinner.
I wanted to avoid it. Even more than this dinner.
If I could have caught Katherine’s eyes, I might have been able to have her fake an illness, so we could leave early. But she didn’t look up at me. Not once. I was going to have to fix that. Even if every time I tried, it backfired in my face. She and I needed to have a conversation. A real one. Not one where we screamed at each other. As it seemed to be the only way we communicated in our stalemate.
By the time dessert came and went, anxiety had settled itself into my stomach. I didn’t show it, of course. My exterior was as hard as diamonds. I would never, ever let my father see that he affected me again. But I was not looking forward to our conversation.
Finally, Katherine looked up. She hadn’t touched her dessert. I hadn’t seen her eat dessert in months. Not with her crazy diet she’d been on since getting that new trainer.
She startled when she looked at me. “Are you ready to go home?”
She asked it as if she had been living with me these last couple of months instead of in her own penthouse.
Home. With me.
“We have a big day ahead of us,” she remarked faintly with a sly smile.
“What are your Christmas plans?” Candice chimed in.
“We’re going to a private island off of Puerto Rico to test out the new St. Vincent’s Resort,” Katherine said. “It’s going to be like reliving our honeymoon.”
She made that sound like a good thing. Though fucking her on our honeymoon was one of the best things that had ever happened to me. No games. No people. Just me and her for a month.
“Honeymoon sex.” Candice all but swooned as she looked up at Lars.
Lars blushed the deepest, darkest red.
“Unfortunately, I have to steal my son for a minute,” Carlyle said, pushing his chair aside. He winked at Katherine, who retreated from that look. “It won’t be long.”
Katherine looked like she wanted to bark back at him. So, I hastily rose to my feet. No point in letting her take the brunt of his anger. It was always reserved for me anyway.
“By all means,” Katherine said.
“Don’t smoke those disgusting things in the house,” Elizabeth said, wagging a finger at my father.
Carlyle shot her a devilish grin. “Of course not, darling.”
Then he tipped his head to the side, and I followed him out of the dining room. As soon as we were away from everyone else, my father produced two cigars and a lighter. He lit them as we headed toward the library that was currently under renovation.
“Well, son,” he said as he pulled open the door, “what do you think?”
I forced my face into neutrality. I’d liked the old library. It had been a refuge for me, growing up. I had no idea what he was doing to the room with its floor-to-ceiling built-ins and thousands of books.
I stepped inside with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. He’d gutted the room. No bookshelves. No books. Nothing cozy about it any longer. It used to have just one window with a cushioned bench. Now, there were enormous windows covering the entire wall. It must have cost a fortune. But the room wasn’t finished yet. It was still empty, except for the dust and construction work. I wondered how long I could hold my breath in here.
“It’s great. What are you putting in here now?” I asked, bringing the cigar to my lips.
“It’s a new studio for Elizabeth,” he explained. “She wants a design room.”
Of course. She already had a studio in Midtown and a store on Fifth Avenue. Not to mention, the upstairs room she had renovated into an enormous walk-in closet for her designs. Now, he was stripping out the one room in this place I’d ever liked to give her a studio.
“I’m sure she will like that.”
“She will,” he said. “It’s my anniversary present to her.”
I took another pull on the cigar and said nothing. I would have much preferred this was a joint. I needed to mellow the fuck out after all this shit.
“This wasn’t the real reason I brought you here though, of course,” he said, turning to face me.
Of course.
“How long will you be gone on this little jaunt to the Caribbean?”
“A week,” I said with a shrug. “Maybe longer. We’ll have the jet.”
“You’ll not be on vacation,” my father growled.
No. Aside from my honeymoon, when had I ever gone on vacation? “Of course not.”
“This Ireland deal is finally falling into place. You will need to be available at all times for meetings and conference calls. Have your phone with you and your iPad.”
“Already planned to,” I agreed. “I want this as much as you do.”
I didn’t know how many fucking ways I could prove that to him. Nothing I did mattered. I’d graduated top of my class at Harvard, top of my class for my Harvard MBA, and worked relentlessly for the company. I actually loved the work despite the crazy hours. I was damn good at it, too.
My father looked inscrutable in the soft light. “If we lose it, it will be because of your ineptitude.”
I clenched my jaw. “We’re not going to lose the deal. We’ve been working on it all year. We’re going to put a Percy Tower in the heart of Dublin. I won’t miss a thing.”
“Well, we’ll see,” my father said, little faith in me. “They’re going to come into the city after the New Year.”
“I’ll be prepared for that, as always.”
My father just looked at me and shook his head. “You’d better be. We wouldn’t want Candice’s chump prodigy taking over.”
I ground my teeth together. “She got married without telling anyone and is claiming to be a sex therapist. I don’t think anyone has anything to worry about with Candice.”
“And why isn’t Katherine pregnant?” he demanded.
I had no answer to that. None that he’d want to hear.
“We’ve been trying,” I lied.
“Not hard enough apparently. You’re going to lose that girl, and all of it will be down the drain. She’s just like your mother,” he said harshly. “She never loved you either.”
He was trying to get a reaction out of me, but I was numb to that
particular pain. My mother had left me. She’d left me with this monster… who had then made me into a monster. I didn’t need love from someone like that.
Nor Katherine’s love. She had given it away once. She would never give it to me. I’d never deserve it anyway.
I met my father’s anger with a flat stare. “I am not going to lose Katherine. Our marriage was not built on love. It’s a mutual understanding. You were the one who helped create this. Surely, you see that we have time. You’re just mad about Candice.”
My father just glared at me. I never knew why he hated me so much. I was his only son. The only son of the woman he had loved… the woman who had left. I didn’t know if he saw her in me somehow. But no matter how much of a perfect son I was, he would always look at me as less than.
“You’re not getting any younger.”
“I’m well aware.”
I didn’t need to hear this shit. I knew everything he was going to say. I’d heard it all before. This was how I’d been raised. To believe that love wasn’t a good enough reason to get married, that money was what was important, and to keep the family name and old money and virtues in one place. I still couldn’t believe he’d even approved of Katherine, considering her father had bankrupted them. But her name got her by.
I’d done my part. And it still wasn’t enough.
“If Candice can have a brat in a few months, you’d think that you could honor the agreement and secure the Percy line.”
I wanted to snap back at him. Anger burned through me. He ignited it like no one else. Not even Katherine with her brash behavior and smart mouth. My father lit me like a fuse dipped in lighter fuel.
My blood boiled, but still, I tried to rein it in. Knew he wanted it from me. “If I said that we were practicing quite frequently, would that satisfy you?”
“Just don’t fuck this up, too.”
Too.
The word made me tremble with barely suppressed rage. I’d never fucked up a goddamn thing.
“Fine,” I ground out. “I’ll go home and get started right now.”
I pushed past him and out of the claustrophobic construction zone. As soon as I was out, I felt like I could finally breathe again. If I wasn’t careful, I’d have a goddamn asthma attack. I hadn’t had one in fucking years. No way was I going to let it happen in front of my father.
I needed to get out of this house. Get away from my father. Get away from… everything.
Maybe then it would be far enough.
But knowing my father… probably not.
7
Katherine
Candice droned on and on and on about her sex therapy work. My ears were going to start bleeding. Elizabeth had excused herself from the conversation, but somehow, Harmony and I had been roped into staying and listening to her.
I’d pulled my phone out after Camden disappeared and started texting Lark with an SOS. She had responded with a picture of the sunset on the water and the message:
Merry Christmas Eve! See you tomorrow. Love you!
The rest of the conversation was her sending me picture after picture of all of my friends having the time of their lives while I was stuck… here. She could have at least had the decency to call and help me get out of here. Not that I could leave without Camden. Well, I could… but I wouldn’t.
Footsteps down the hallway indicated someone was returning. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Finally,” I muttered.
I swiftly rose to my feet. Harmony looked up at me with a pained expression.
“Weren’t you saying that you had to meet Kurt?” I suggested to Harmony, giving her a way out.
She stood up so fast that she nearly knocked the chair back. “Right, Kurt. I almost forgot.”
“Oh, do you have to leave already?” Candice asked.
“Unfortunately so,” Harmony said.
“Well, maybe we could meet up this week while Lars and I are still in town.”
“Maybe,” Harmony offered reluctantly.
Then Camden stormed into the room with all the force of a hurricane. He had a cigar in his hand, which he promptly put out in a tray by the wet bar. He tipped back the rest of his discarded drink, and then his eyes found me. “Time to go.”
I nodded and hurried after him as he darted toward the elevator. I barely had time to retrieve my coat and purse before following after him. The doors almost closed before me.
The air was heavy between us. Charged with energy and anger. He smelled like cigar smoke and scotch and aftershave. I should have been irritated with him, but I wasn’t. I knew what it was like to have to deal with difficult family members. I hadn’t seen my father in prison in years. My mother treated me like everything was perfectly fine, even when it wasn’t… especially when it wasn’t. I had a brother who had literally changed his name and disappeared to Texas to get away from us. I’d learned that my friends were my family long ago, but it didn’t mean that my family didn’t still bring out the fire in my veins. When it happened to Camden, it somehow made him so much more… human.
He’d hate for me to say it, but the height of his fury with his father was also the height of his humanity. A part of me just wanted to help. Not that he’d ever let me help. It was a festering wound that revolted when touched.
So, I held back. I waited and debated on saying anything. It wasn’t like I was the queen of dealing with my issues.
And yet…
And yet…
It wasn’t until we were back in his penthouse that I worked up the nerve to say something.
Camden was angling for the wet bar, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows as he went. I saw a bender ahead of him.
“What happened back there?” I asked.
He wrenched the top off the crystal decanter. “My father.”
“Well… obviously,” I said softly as I breezed toward him.
He poured himself a knuckle’s worth of liquor. Drained it and then poured another.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Do I look like I want to talk about it?” he snarled.
I ran a hand down his arm. My nails grazed his forearm. “Tell me about it.”
“He’s a prick. What more do you need to know?”
“I know what it’s like,” I said gently. “My father isn’t exactly a dream come true.”
“Yeah, well, you’re lucky he’s locked up then.”
I flinched at those words. My father was a monster but a different kind than Camden’s father. Mine loved me… in his own way. He’d spoiled me. But he’d ruined everyone he did business with to get there. Camden’s father just hated everyone who stood in his path and didn’t buck under the force of his personality.
“Don’t take this out on me,” I told him. “I just want to talk about it. You were mad when you came back out the first time. That’s why you snapped at me and Harmony.”
“Katherine, tonight is really not the night.”
“Why won’t you talk to me?” I demanded, unable to keep the edge out of my voice. “Must you cut me out of everything?”
His eyes found mine. But instead of the fire that usually burned there, it was just emptiness. There was nothing looking back.
I swallowed at that look and brought my hand down to rest on his. “I know what your father is like. I understand that he’s an asshole.”
“You have no idea,” he muttered.
I sighed. “I never wanted to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I know how bad your father is because… he came on to me.”
Everything about Camden stilled in that moment. “What?” he asked, his voice lethal.
“It was at a company event this summer. He’d always… looked at me like that. Like I was eye candy. But you and I were fighting, and you left with…” I didn’t say her name. “And your father approached me.”
“What happened?” he asked, low and brutal.
“Look, I handled it. He touched my butt, and then I poured my
drink on him. He’s never done it again. But I know the kind of person he is.”
Camden looked like he was about to explode. “And he’s never going to do it again because I am going to kill him.”
I squeezed his hand and held him in place. “Camden, no, please. I don’t want you to do anything. I never told you because I knew this would happen. I knew you’d be mad.” Or he wouldn’t care. Though I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I’d thought it was a possibility. “I don’t want or need you to defend my honor.”
“Katherine, he touched you.”
“And?” I demanded, holding my ground. “For one, I told you that to explain that I understood your anger and that you could tell me what was going on. And two, why do you even seem to care?”
“Fine. He was pissed about Candice coming home pregnant. He wanted to know why we weren’t pregnant. Suggested that I wasn’t doing my duty,” Camden told me.
I winced at the words. The ones we had been arguing about before his father went and spit on him about it. It wasn’t Camden who wasn’t ready to have a baby. It was me. And I could see that written on his face.
“I see,” I whispered.
“Yes, so do you see why I didn’t tell you about what he said? You’d just get more pissed off that I was bringing this shit up to you.”
“Fine,” I said, straightening my spine and letting the rest of it drop. “But you didn’t answer my second question. Why did you get so mad? It’s not like we’re together. Not like that. We haven’t been for a while.”
“You are my wife,” he said fiercely, as if that explained everything.
Considering the fact that this had all been arranged and Camden never seemed to care one way or another that I was his wife, it didn’t feel like enough of an answer. Was he mad because it was his father? Was he mad because it was me? It didn’t make sense. Not with how we’d been together for months.
“So?”
“What do you mean, so?” he asked. “You’re my wife. If another man touches you—I don’t care who the fuck he is—I’ll kill him.”