The Tycoon Page 18

  “I’d love to,” I whispered and kissed him.

  “I’m nervous,” he said across my lips, and my heart leaped and clutched and I felt something so powerful and tender I could have cried.

  “Me, too,” I told him. “Me, too.”

  Two hours later we were in the car. The windows were down and the wind was sweet but Clayton seemed impervious to all of it.

  I put my hand on his shoulder, petting him a little, hoping it might get him to relax. “It’s gonna be okay,” I said.

  “I know.” He gave me a quick smile. “You just need to remember that he doesn’t know who I am. And don’t try to remind him or force the issue. He gets really upset.”

  “I won’t.”

  “He might say things about you and me. About how I feel about you—”

  “Clayton,” I said. “I get it. I’ll take everything he says with a grain of salt.”

  He looked at me and then back at the road.

  “That’s for the best,” he said.

  There was a different nurse on duty when we drove up, and at the sound of the car, he stepped out onto the porch, his hand up in a wave. We got out of the car and Clayton made introductions. The nurse’s name was Steve and he’d just helped Dale with a shower and a shave.

  “The old guy is feeling pretty spry today,” Steve said with real affection, and I was so happy that Dale’s caregivers seemed to really like him. “You want to come in?”

  “Sure,” Clayton said, and he led me into the small cabin. There was a little TV room to one side, and on the other side was a kitchen with a yellow Formica-and-chrome table. Dale was sitting at the head of it, a coffee mug and a chess set in front of him.

  “Clayton!” Dale said. The word was garbled, but the genuine joy was clear as a bell. “You’ve come to play?”

  “No,” Clayton said and pulled me forward. “I’ve come to introduce you to Veronica.”

  Dale’s smile went wider, and liquid pooled and fell from the corner of his mouth.

  “Hold on there, man,” Steve said and cleaned him up a little. “You’re leaking.”

  “Sit,” Dale said and held out his hand, which was curled into a shaking fist at the end of his arm. “You’re as pretty as Clayton said you were.”

  I shot Clayton a knowing little grin. This was the stuff he’d been talking about in the car. The things Dale might say. Clayton was blushing.

  “Thank you,” I said as I sat, and Clayton leaned against the wall beside me.

  “Do you play chess?” Dale asked and I shook my head. “Neither does he.” Dale pointed toward Clayton.

  “Are you insulting my chess game?” Clayton asked.

  “If the shoe…fits,” Dale said, and when I looked up at Clayton I expected to see him smiling, but instead an expression of absolute sorrow covered his face. Complete grief.

  I turned back to Dale and put my hand over his fist. “We’re here to tell you that Clayton and I are getting married.”

  Dale sat back. “Well…” He looked from me to Clayton and back again. “How about that.” He put his fist over my hand and flipped my palm up so it was a handshake of sorts. His eyes were wet, and I leaned forward with a tissue from the box on the table and cleaned him up a little. “How about that!” he said again and then again. “I have something for you!” He began the process of getting up.

  “What is it?” Clayton asked. “I can grab it.”

  “No. You can’t,” Dale said, stubbornly trying to stand up and grab his walker. Clayton helped him get his body organized and we all watched as Dale shuffled down the hallway to a small bedroom in the back.

  “He does seem better,” Clayton said to Steve, who had occupied himself in the connected kitchen to give us privacy.

  “The cannabis oil helps a lot with the shaking,” Steve said. “And the small increased dose of Paxil, I think, has really helped, too. He’s more engaged for longer stretches. There’s less confusion at night.”

  Clayton nodded and Steve went back to work.

  “You grew up here?” I asked Clayton.

  He sighed heavily. “From about fourteen on. The last three years of Dad holding down a job was on The King’s Land. And then your dad let us stay while I worked for him. And I lived here as long as I could make it work between us.”

  But I could see the cost of it on his face. The cost of making it work. I stood up and went over to hug him. He started at first and held himself stiff in my arms.

  “You’ve never been hugged in this house, have you?”

  “You don’t need to make it sound so dramatic,” he said, stiff and angry.

  “Okay,” I said peaceably, still holding him in my arms. My head against his chest where I could hear the pound of his heart. Slowly, so slowly, he relaxed and put his arms around me.

  “Thank you,” he whispered into my hair.

  I choose you, I thought. Even though Dale can’t and your father never did.

  I. Choose. You.

  The thump and slide of the walker was returning down the hallway and I stepped away from Clayton and sat back down. Dale got up to the table and pulled a worn and faded burgundy box from a small linen pouch he had attached to the handle of his walker.

  A ring box.

  Clayton and I looked at each other and then at Dale.

  “You gonna gawk at me or open the thing?” Dale asked, settling himself back down in his chair with a heavy sigh.

  Inside the box, on tattered cream satin, was a pearl ring surrounded by small diamonds.

  “It ain’t much,” Dale said.

  “It’s beautiful.” Somehow I managed to get the words out. My breath was clogged in my throat behind a ball of tears. “But I can’t accept this.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Dale,” Clayton said. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “It was your mother’s,” he said.

  It was as if a bomb had gone off in the room. I was blown back in my chair and I heard Clayton’s hard gasp.

  “Nina wore it every day for twenty years until we put her in the ground,” Dale said. “She wanted you to have it.”

  “Dad?” Clayton said, and I put my hand against his hip. Holding back or pushing him forward, I wasn’t sure. Just being there, maybe, in this moment. Letting him know for the first time in this house he wasn’t alone dealing with his father.

  “She’d be so happy. I wish she was here…” Dale shook his head and looked around. He was crying. The moment was gone. “I don’t know what…where’s Nina?”

  “Dale!” Steve said, rushing to our rescue because Clayton and I were in ruins. “Let’s take a little walk, huh?” He got Dale up on his feet and walking toward the back room. I heard him asking Dale if he thought it might rain.

  The ring sat on the table in front of us, the pearl so lovely in the sunlight.

  “You don’t have to take it,” Clayton said.

  “Of course I’m taking it,” I said, fierce and fast, but then I considered the situation. “Unless you think Dale will miss it.”

  Clayton shook his head. “It’s been six years since he knew who I am. Since he remembered having a son. And that that son had a mother who’d loved him—” Clayton stopped. Just stopped, and I could feel his grief.

  “I’m sorry,” I breathed and put my head to his shoulder. “I’m so sorry it hurts so much.”

  “Thank you.” He kissed my head. My hair. “Thank you for coming here with me.”

  And I knew, but didn’t say—couldn’t, really—that I would go anywhere with him. That’s how deep I was.

  I took the ring and I took the man and I took them both home.

  23

  VERONICA

  Three days later I was back at the ranch. Sabrina was on some kind of wild baking spree and the house smelled more like a home than it ever had when we all lived there. I wondered if she ate the stuff she baked, my diet-driven and health-conscious sister. The idea of her putting away a loaf of banana bread filled me with happiness.


  I needed to ask her to bake our wedding cake. I wasn’t sure why she hadn’t volunteered. The cupcakes she’d made today (I’d just eaten two of them) were amazing. Chocolate with raspberry stuff in them and the frosting was all light and fluffy. Perfect. I just needed that in a cake form.

  But she was out tonight. Something about seeing Garrett Pine in town.

  Clayton had cancelled our date tonight to stay late at the office and I was taking the opportunity to hang out with my sister, finish up some stuff for the foundation, and handle a few wedding details.

  I sat back from the computer with a happy sigh. A general lightness around my whole body. My whole self. I felt like I was made out of bubbles half the time. Bubbles and anticipation and sex. That’s what I was made of.

  Now I just needed a dog.

  Since Bea took Thelma and Louise my clothes were conspicuously free of dog hair and I didn’t like it. I clicked over to a rescue website and started sending Clayton pictures of dogs we should get.

  Fun fact about Clayton, he loved dachshunds. I wanted to get him twenty.

  I checked my watch and realized I’d been sitting at my computer for far too long. I stood and headed out the door to the mailbox at the end of the long driveway. Sabrina never remembered to get the mail and, granted, most of it was junk, but between the wedding and the will, I didn’t want documents to get lost in the shuffle.

  It was one of those staggering February days, bright and crisp and clear. The air smelled like weather and change, and I took great big lungfuls of it. I didn’t want to live on this ranch—not in the slightest—but for the first time in my life I was glad that it was in my life. That it was a place I could go. That this land, and this open space, was mine to visit.

  It wasn’t home. It never really had been. But it was something besides just a bad memory.

  As expected, the mailbox was jammed with stuff, catalogs literally spilling out of it onto the ground.

  Dammit, Sabrina.

  I gathered it all up in my arms, letters and junk mail falling down onto the gravel. One letter, a big manila envelope was covered in stamps. Panamanian stamps. And the name on the return address was Dylan King.

  I dropped everything in my arms and tore open that envelope.

  A small note fluttered out and landed on my shoe.

  Don’t marry this dirtbag. I’m not taking his money.

  I flipped over the paper in my hand and read it.

  To: Dylan King

  From: Clayton Rorick

  CC: Madison White

  January 14th, 2017

  Dylan,

  I am not sure if the news of your father’s death has reached you. If not - let me be the first to extend my condolences. Not that I believe you will care. All of us knew the kind of man your father was.

  Do not worry about your sisters. Veronica has agreed to marry me, and I intend to take care of her — and in extension Sabrina and Bea — for the rest of my life.

  In exchange - I offer you 2.5 million dollars on the condition that you don’t step foot on The King’s Land. You haven’t cared about being a King, don’t start now.

  Please reply at your earliest convenience.

  For a second the dots were so far apart they didn’t make sense.

  It was like the words had been written in a foreign language that I only half understood. I read it again. And then again. Once more with Dylan’s note, and by that time I couldn’t not understand.

  I battled the instinct to run. To walk away from that letter. Like I’d never read it. But I picked up Dylan’s note and I put them both back in the envelope. Closed the flap like I could reseal it.

  Stop it from causing more damage.

  The letter had been drafted the day of my father’s funeral. The day the will had been read and Clayton had found out that he inherited everything as long as Dylan never came back.

  So Clayton offered Dylan money to stay away.

  My hands went numb.

  Maybe, I thought frantically, maybe this wasn’t what it seemed. Maybe there was an explanation.

  But…God, I’d already done this. I’d already been this fool.

  Did I think cuddling with me on the couch was change? Did I think meeting his father meant that he couldn’t possibly lie to me again?

  Did I think that agreement would keep me safe?

  He hadn’t chosen me. He’d chosen everything the King family could give him.

  And me—my body, my future, my goddamn heart—I was just part of the deal.

  I headed back to the ranch before I remembered that most of my stuff wasn’t here. It was in Dallas, in Clayton’s penthouse. Fuck it, I thought. I’ll leave it. All of it. I did it before, I’ll do it again. I would go back to Austin. Back to my sister.

  But then I remembered how he’d insisted that I not run away, even if I was hurt and angry. I’d stay and we’d talk. He’d written it into that stupid agreement.

  It didn’t matter, I told myself. It wasn’t like he meant anything he agreed to. The whole thing was null and void on account of his being a liar!

  But somehow that didn’t console me. I thought of all those speeches I’d written in that first year after I ran away. How everything I’d wanted to say to him had burned me up from the inside. I wasn’t doing that shit again.

  I was going to tell that asshole to his face exactly what I thought of him. And when he tried to explain how I was wrong, or it wasn’t what it seemed—I’d put a fork in him and get the hell out of there.

  He’d given me a key to his penthouse, so when I got there at midnight, I let myself in. The place was dark and quiet but the light was on over the stove, which meant he was home, he’d just gone to bed.

  The light over the stove thing was for me. So I didn’t trip over things on my way to the kitchen for a glass of water in the middle of the night. I didn’t ask him to, it didn’t even occur to me. He’d just done it on his own.

  Stop! I told myself, staring at that light like it was a beacon. You can’t take all these things and build love. It doesn’t work that way. You know that.

  “Veronica?” His soft, sleepy voice came from the dark hallway that led back to his room and he stepped out of the shadows wearing a pair of loose pajama bottoms and nothing else. His hair was rumpled and his face…

  It’s a lie, I told myself.

  He wasn’t happy to see me for me.

  “I thought you were staying at the ranch tonight,” he said, stepping toward me like he was going to hug me.

  I put my hand up and stepped back.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did something happen?”

  “I got a letter from my brother,” I said, my voice as cold as I could make it.

  If I hadn’t been looking I wouldn’t have seen it. If I’d been distracted for just a second, I would have missed the way his face tautened. Guilt and anger completely revealed. And then, because he was a son of a bitch down to his bone marrow, the moment was gone and it was just his face looking back at me.

  Revealing nothing. Nothing at all.

  “And?” he asked.

  “Don’t—” I breathed and was surprised when fire didn’t come shooting out of my mouth with the words. “Don’t pretend you don’t know. He sent me your letter.”

  “I can explain.” He walked toward me, cutting through the living room, and I knew what he was thinking. How he’d wear me down and then maybe touch me, and I’d capitulate because I was weak and wanted to be loved so badly I’d take it from any corner.

  Not tonight.

  “Don’t get any closer,” I said.

  “I did it for you,” he said.

  And, honestly, if you’d have told me an hour ago I would be doubled over with laughter I would have called you crazy. But here I was, laughing so hard I was crying. Or maybe I was crying so hard I was laughing.

  Very difficult to say.

  “He could have come back and ruined everything. We had no guarantees that he would look after you.”
/>   “He’s our brother.”

  “And that hasn’t meant shit to him. Ever.”

  I flinched, wishing the words weren’t true.

  “I did it for you and your sisters. I took care of you the only way I could. My intention has always been to give you the company.”

  “What?” I cried.

  “It’s true. After the deadline for your brother’s return, I was going to give you the company.”

  “And then you were going to marry me? How fucking convenient for you!”

  He moved toward me and I stepped away, but he didn’t stop. “When I decided to give you the company you weren’t even speaking to me. I had no way of knowing you’d agree to marriage.”

  “Just covering all your bases. I get it, Clayton. It’s why you’re such a good businessman. You’re smart. And you’re thorough and you’re fucking heartless.”

  “You’re happy,” he said. “I know you’ve been happy the last month. Because I’ve been happy.”

  “No lies!”

  “I’m not. I’m not fucking lying,” he snapped. “I told you I would do everything I could to make you happy. To protect you.” And he walked toward me again, but I dodged him, going into the kitchen.

  See, the crazy thing was, I could see his reasoning. It all made sense in a manipulative way. I thought of that boy with the dollar bills rolled up in his shoe and I didn’t want to understand his motivations. I didn’t want to feel sympathy for the goddamn devil.

  “I asked you to choose me,” I said. “And you couldn’t even do that.”

  “I do choose you! I do!”

  “I think…you can choose me when it’s easy. When it doesn’t cost you anything. I chose you and it cost me everything. My pride. Who I thought I was. The life I’d created. My sister was right--” Oh, God, I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t. I’d cried too many tears over this guy already. Over the failure of my love to mean anything to him.

  “You’re the only thing that’s ever mattered,” he said. “All of this has been for you. I love you, Veronica. I’ve loved you since I was sixteen and I saw you outside your father’s office. I loved you five years ago and I love you now.”