Nate Kate didn’t wait for anyone. Hell, she didn’t look back, just marched straight up to the front door like a woman on a mission. When she reached it, she started pounding on the wood with the flat of her hand, definitely not a polite knock. “Kate,” her mother called weakly from behind us, but Kate didn’t even flinch. The door swung open a few seconds later and the poor maid on the other side barely had time to register what was happening before Kate sw ept past her in a blur of righteous fury and dogged determination. “I need to speak to Mr. Hinds,” she announced, already halfway down the entry hall. “We have a meeting.” The maid looked startled, maybe even a little alarmed. Honestly, same. Pete came up beside me, and together, we watched Kate disappear into the house like a small but extremely determined hurricane. He exhaled slowly. “Well, there she goes.” I glanced at him, figuring that we might as well use the opportunity to clear the air between us. It certainly hadn’t looked like she needed or expected immediate backup. “I’m sorry.” He looked over at me, a slight crease marring his brow. “For what?” “For all of this,” I said, gesturing vaguely around us. “I can’t imagine this has been easy on you.” Pete studied me for a moment, then shook his head. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, son.” Son. Being called that by him again did something strange to my chest. Over the weekend, he’d been so enthusiastic that I’d just been a little overwhelmed and amused by it, but now, it was more meaningful. More real. We’d gotten through something massive and yet, we were back here, with him acc epting me into his family. “If anything, I’m the one who’s going to be making this up to both my daughter and my wife for the next twenty years,” he said mildly. “Maybe twenty-five. I suspect those extra five years d epends on how Abram receives what she’s about to tell him.” I followed him inside. “Twenty years? That sounds extensive.” He snorted. “You don’t know Vanderhaul women yet. They don’t ever let things go.” I thought about Kate. About the look on her face in the car and the way she’d planted her finger in the air before telling a grown man, her own father, no less, that he wasn’t to say another word.
“Yeah, I think I’m starting to see that,” I said. “She really let you have it, huh?” Pete nodded gravely. “If you dare try to fight a battle for them, they’ll never let you live it down.” We followed the distant echo of Kate’s voice down the hall, growing louder with every st ep, until Pete slowed near a set of closed double doors. Her voice drifted through it. Her tone was sharp and furious but very much in control. Pete leaned slightly toward me and muttered under his breath, “See that?” I glanced at him. “The door?” “No, what’s on the other side,” he said quietly. “That’s the Vanderhaul Chihuahua.” I frowned. “I’m sorry?” “That’s what they call her in New York,” he explained. “She got the nickname because she’s small, loud, and terrifying, and she doesn’t back down.” I couldn’t help the smile that spread on my lips. “That sounds accurate.” Pete reached for the door and pushed it open, but even as he walked in, I hung back for a minute because Kate already had Hinds cornered behind his desk—and not metaphorically. Literally cornered. He looked de eply confused and mildly alarmed—just like both myself and the poor maid—like he’d expected a quiet conversation and had instead found himself in the middle of a courtroom drama he hadn’t agreed to participate in. “How dare you assume I would allow any man to go behind my back?” Kate was saying, pacing in front of his desk. “Especially my husband. The husband you forced me to marry if my dad wanted to ke ep his job.” Hinds blinked rapidly at her, then glanced at me, then at Pete, a pleading expression in his eyes as he made eye contact. Kate looked up, saw us, and shook her head. “Finally. It took you guys long enough to get in here.” “I—” Hinds had finally turned back to her, but his eyes narrowed in confusion and he cut himself off. “You what?” she demanded, her body practically vibrating with rage and tension. I moved forward before this escalated into something legally complicated, gently touching her shoulder as I st epped up to her side. “Kate, may I?” She didn’t stop pacing, so I reached out and lightly took her arm, guiding her back until she was by my side. She resisted for approximately half a second before allowing it, but I
could practically feel the indignation radiating off her in waves. Pete’s warning echoed through my mind. If he’d been right, she was never going to forgive me for this, but I’d deal with that when we got there. For now, I met Hinds’ eyes and did my best to remain calm. “There’s been a misunderstanding,” I said. “Someone overheard something they weren’t supposed to and they jumped to incorrect conclusions.” “Yes, Kate was saying,” he said faintly, looking smaller than I had ever seen him. Kate made a noise behind me that suggested she did not agree with this approach, but I k ept a light hold on her hand and explained. “Emma was real but we never met in person. We only talked online.” Hinds frowned slightly, looking more confused than ever. “Is that supposed to make it better? Because it still sounds like—” “Give me a minute,” I said. “I know it doesn’t make sense yet, but it will. So let me explain or I’ll let Kate do it.” Hinds held his hands up. “No, no, go ahead.” I nodded. “Emma and I met online and we talked for years, but even though we’d never met in person, she mattered to me. A lot.” Behind me, Kate had suddenly stopped moving. She just sort of leaned into me a little and I took a breath, tightening my grip on her arm. “After Kate agreed to marry me, Emma and I set a meeting. To see each other in person and say goodbye. When we arrived, we realized that we already knew each other.” “What?” Hinds asked, his head tilting. “What do you mean?” “Emma was a fake name Kate was using online, and I had been using an anonymous name as well. So the person who arrived, Abram, was Kate. There is no other woman.” Hinds fell back against his chair, blinking rapidly. He jammed one hand through his hair and dragged the other down his face. “I’m sorry. Emma and Kate are the same person?” “Yes.” She squeezed my hand and I pulled her just a fraction of an inch closer. “I’ve been in love with Kate for years.” Hinds stared at me for a long moment after I said it, like he wasn’t sure if he believed me, but before he could question it, I gave him the shortened version of everything that had happened, ke eping it simple with no unnecessary detail. “When this marriage was first proposed,” I said, “I didn’t know Kate was Emma yet, so I went to talk to my brother about it all. He suggested that I meet with Emma and tell her in person that I was marrying someone else. I was going to break it off with her before the
papers were signed, but obviously, that didn’t happen because she was the person I was marrying.” Hinds frowned. “So the affair?” “Never happened,” I said. “Not at all and certainly not in the way the papers are suggesting. My brother and I must’ve been overheard one night when we were discussing it and whoever was eavesdropping obviously didn’t have the whole story, but that didn’t matter. They’ll publish anything for clicks.” “So you haven’t been having an affair?” he asked again, looking like he was either clarifying or still trying to understand. “Or rather, there was one, but it was with your wife.” “Exactly,” I said. “There was an emotional relationship between me and a woman. A very real relationship, but it never existed outside of a screen, and once I knew I was marrying Kate, I was ending it. Obviously.” Hinds looked between the two of us. “And the timing of all this?” “Well, that was unfortunate,” I admitted. “Our marriage was obviously big news, but I k ept my relationship with Emma to myself for a long time. Until after I got engaged, to be honest. In that context, the timing makes sense. Our engagement leaked to the press, which made them interested in our story, and after we got married, someone overheard me clearing things up to my brother. Probably figured they could make some money since we’d been in the news.” Kate snorted softly, but I wasn’t blind to what this might look like to him. “Had it not been for the eavesdropper, I’d like to think that Kate and I would’ve eventually come out with the fact that our relationship existed before the arrangement came up, but honestly, we’re still trying to process everything ourselves.” Hinds exhaled through his nose, long and slow, like a man who had aged five years in the last fifteen minutes. “This is the truth?” “Yes.” “The complete and total truth?” he pressed. “There is nothing else?” “No,” I said, but then I realized that wasn’t all of it. There was something else that not even Kate knew about yet. “Actually, there is one more thing.” Hinds’ eyebrows sw ept up. “There is?” “Yes.” Kate shifted, looking up at me with worry flickering behind those gorgeous eyes. “Nate?” “When the idea of a Westwood marrying Kate to seal the deal was first being discussed, the plan wasn’t for her to marry me,” I said carefully. Her eyes widened to the point of what looked like pain, her face draining of color and her lips parting. Hinds frowned. “It wasn’t?” “No. Alex and my father proposed that Will should marry her. In the past, I had been rather outspoken about my views regarding arranged marriages,
and although that was always going to be my future, they were trying to give me time to come around. Obviously, they didn’t know about Emma.” “What?” Kate said quietly, so quietly that I barely even heard her and she was only inches away. “I was going to have to marry Will?” I rubbed the back of my neck. “It made more sense on paper.” Hinds looked de eply uncomfortable, but Kate let go of my hand and st epped around me, turning to look at me head on. “You were going to let me marry Will?” “No.” I scoffed. “Never.” Her eyes flashed. “That’s literally what you just said.” “That was their plan, is what I said. It wasn’t what happened though, is it?” I held her gaze. “After that first breakfast we all had together, Alex took me into the study at my dad’s house and told me that a new condition had been pinned to the deal. A marriage. He said he and my father were going to pitch it to Will.” “Did they?” “No, because I wouldn’t let them.” I exhaled slowly. There wasn’t a clean or professional way to say this. Hell, there wasn’t even a smart way to say it, so I just told the truth. “I shut it down. I told Alex it wouldn’t be happening and that I was next in line. It was going to be me.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Why exactly would you do that, Nate?” I looked right into her eyes, knowing that if I was going to say it, I was going to fucking say it. “Because I didn’t want anyone else to have you.” Her eyebrows shot up and her jaw slackened as she searched my gaze like something didn’t add up. “But Emma... you were in love with...” “I told you, Kate. I chose you,” I said quietly, not that I thought it mattered. The room was so silent, Pete and Abram had absolutely heard me anyway. “I didn’t know you were Emma yet. Not consciously, but I knew you. I liked you and the idea of Will marrying you—” I shook my head and stopped talking, eventually just summing it up in one word. “No.” Kate stared up at me. “So you volunteered instead.” “Y ep.” Her mouth opened but then closed again. Hinds cleared his throat quietly, like he didn’t really want to draw attention to himself but also kind of needed to. Probably so we would leave him in peace and take our drama elsewhere. “Just to be clear, Emma is Kate,” he said. “Kate is the person you were supposedly having an affair with. The press have got it backward. When you agreed to marry Kate, you wanted to marry her as Kate, not this Emma person, before you even knew they were the same woman?”
I nodded. “That’s close enough.” “God, this is complicated.” He huffed out a breath, then leaned forward and glanced from one of us to the other, his eyes softening when they fell upon his goddaughter. “This is perhaps the most bizarre situation I’ve ever come across, and I’ve come across some pretty absurd things in my time. But alright.” “Alright?” He nodded, reaching for the contract on his desk. “It does explain things. I’m not sure I’ll ever fully understand it, but it sounds like you kids are going to be okay.” Relief trickled through me. “Does that mean the deal is back on?” He looked up at me. “I forced the two of you into this marriage. The least I can do is not destroy it over a misunderstanding.” Kate visibly relaxed. The contract was safe and absolutely everything was finally out in the open. Abram made the call to Alex to let him know we were back on. Then he walked us out to the driveway and shook my hand, pulling me a little closer. “Good luck, son. You’re going to need it.” I chuckled but nodded my agreement. “You’re not wrong, but we’ll be okay. We just needed time to work it all out. Time we haven’t had until now, but we’re good. I swear.” He smiled fondly as his gaze drifted to Kate, already waiting for me with her parents at their car. “Yes. You really are.” Instead of going back to the airstrip once we left, Kate and I opted to stay the night in New York instead. Neither of us had the energy to get back on a plane again. We’d been fueled by adrenaline and caffeine, running around with our heads cut off, and both of us just wanted to crash. We ordered room service and ate in bed with only one of the lamps on the nightstand on. Neither of us said much until we’d finished eating, her lying in my arms in the soft glow of the lamp. Eventually, she rolled over to look up at me, those red curls a wild halo against the pillow. “Was Will really the one who was going to have to marry me?” I k ept staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah. Originally, that was the plan.” She paused, then started laughing and gave my chest a playful smack. “You jealous asshole.” I turned my head toward her, rolling onto my side so we were nose to nose. “Maybe, but it doesn’t matter now, does it? I won. You can’t have Will anymore.”
“I never had Will.” “You flirted with him.” She groaned. “I was being polite.” My eyes widened. “You batted your eyelashes.” “I do not bat my eyelashes.” She scoffed, laughter sparkling in her eyes. “Are you really still bent out of shape because I was nice to your brother? One time?” “Emma would never,” I teased. Kate snorted. “Emma was too afraid to be mean to CB because he seemed so sensitive.” I recoiled slightly. “Sensitive?” She grinned and stroked her fingers through my hair. “Slightly.” “I was being mysterious.” She leaned forward and kissed me, effectively ending the argument, and it worked. It always fucking work. The moment her soft lips molded around mine, I was gone, but a few seconds later, she pulled back, and I rested my forehead against hers. “See?” I murmured. “I chose you from the beginning, Kate. I was never going to choose Emma once I knew I could have you.” Her fingers curled lightly into my shirt, her eyes resting sle epily on mine. “So what do we do now?” It was the same question she’d asked before, but it felt different this time. Not so much like standing on the edge of something unknown but like we were already on a journey to som eplace right. I reached up and tucked a curl behind her ear. “Anything we want, Katie,” I said. “Absolutely anything we want.”