He turned his shoulder to them and gave Jamie his attention.
“I talk to my son,” Jamie declared. “I know.”
Rix sucked in a breath.
“Full disclosure, Chloe and Dru talk even more frankly, and we’ve got our orders. Things have been rough going for you two, and we’re to make sure you both don’t get bitten to shit in this viper’s den.”
Straight up.
He loved this guy.
“Tell me,” Rix demanded.
“Helena?”
Rix nodded.
Jamie shook his head.
“I don’t know her. She spends more time in England than here. Though she’s well-heeled and well-connected, she’s not well liked.”
“No surprise. The dad?”
“Honestly?”
Rix nodded again.
“I like Ned. Quite a lot. I was growing up in Texas while he was growing up here, but the lore of the Bernhard-Sharps is legendary. Both sides of that family, for generations, all the same. There was a man he was meant to be, and if as a boy he didn’t show signs of being that man, he was made into that man by any means necessary. Ned became that man.”
Another nod from Rix.
“That said, the last five years or so, he’s mellowed. I think because Helena is mostly out of the country and not driving him insane, something she spends a great amount of time doing. And Blake began to have her own pursuits which stopped including doing everything she could, most of it not good, to get his attention. He was able to be who he is or just stop dropping out to escape their games or bolstering his defenses to withstand them and actually start enjoying his own life.”
“And his youngest daughter?”
Jamie watched Rix closely as he said, “He talks about her. A lot. Even before Hale got involved with the work you do. And not just because our kids worked together. He’s proud of her. I think he misses her. I think she was the only sanity he had in his life.”
Jamie got closer and kept going.
“Rix, you should know, she’s out here because of Ned. He found out she wasn’t in the wedding party, and saw the guest list and that she hadn’t RSVPed. He asked why. When Blake made some excuse about how her invitation must have been lost in the mail, he asked why she was getting an invitation rather than wearing a bridesmaid’s dress. And since he’s not only paying for her wedding, he, alone, controls both their trust funds—”
“Holy fuck.”
That was news.
Jamie dipped his chin. “Yes, until they’re thirty-five. He can cut them off. He can reinvest. He can donate. And he can invoke, that being invoke clauses that would mean one fund would absorb the other, like Alex would get Blake’s. Or it would be absorbed back into the family estate. My guess is, he cited the clauses and Blake asked Alex to be in the wedding. But my sense is, the bottom line in all of that was that he wanted an excuse to see his youngest daughter.”
“Did planes stop flying westward?” Rix asked. “He get banned from his own home, which we spent last night and most of today in and we haven’t seen him at all? That is, when we weren’t waiting at a restaurant to have lunch with him, but he didn’t show.”
“Ned’s a complicated man, Rix. In New York, for the last century and a half, his family hasn’t only been one of the most prominent, they’re also one of the most important. He employs a lot of people. He wields a great deal of influence. He takes both seriously, and as far as I can see, he handles them fairly. But that amount of responsibility takes time to manage. I’m not saying this in his defense. I just think, in his own way, he loves his girl. I always thought that, but when pictures started surfacing of her and you, and he knew I knew you, he was the one who told me a lot of this.”
“He feel you out about me?”
“Absolutely.”
“So that’s why I got friendly Ned, we’re buddies. Because you talked me up.”
One side of Jamie’s mouth lifted.
“No, I told him you were what you are. Loyal as hell. The best friend my son could have. Gentle with women. And your own man. He admires those things. So that’s why you got friendly Ned.”
Rix smirked. “Gentle with women?”
Jamie returned the smirk. “He didn’t need to know that you give Chloe shit every chance you can.”
Rix was relieved to have a real reason to laugh.
“Though, you’d throw yourself in front of a bullet for her or Dru, and I might have mentioned that,” Jamie continued.
Rix grinned at him.
Jamie also returned that but then he got serious again.
“I remember Alexandra as a quiet kid. Bright. Very active. But shy. I’ve seen her more than once, Rix, but I didn’t want to say it that way because I knew she wouldn’t remember me, and I didn’t want to make things awkward. She was always in another world, or maybe trying very hard to pretend she wasn’t in the one she was in.”
“That hasn’t changed.”
“You two okay?”
Rix didn’t fuck around.
“We’re falling in love.”
Jamie’s head ticked to the side, but he let show he was happy for Rix.
“She doesn’t like crowds,” Rix told him. “Her family has treated her like shit. You’re not wrong in your take. She’s learned to retreat into a shell where she feels safe, so right now, she’s exposed. And she doesn’t like it so I really don’t like it.”
Jamie dipped his chin again. “So, in the end, you’re here to protect your woman, and I’m telling you how to shore your resources. Because Helena is not a warm person and Blake is a goddamn mess.”
“Tell me about her. Blake.”
“I don’t know much about her either, except being aware of some of her shenanigans. That said, my daughter is a lovely, good, kind-hearted young woman who captures spiders and carefully lets them free outside. And she hates Blake Sharp.”
Incoming…outgoing.
Rix looked to where the women disappeared.
“You need a car while you’re here,” Jamie went on and Rix turned back to him. “A driver. A shelter from the storm. An escape plan. Dru or I’ll make it happen for you.”
“Thanks, Jamie,” Rix muttered.
“You’ve been holding that beer for ten minutes and not drinking it. You want something else?”
Rix shook his head and took a sip.
It was a good ale, still cold.
Jamie clapped him on the arm and left his hand there. “You two’ll get through. Sunday will be here before you know it. And tomorrow, you’ll be with us, so she’ll be safe.”
It was deeper when he repeated, “Thanks, Jamie.”
A flash exploded.
Rix growled.
Jamie dropped his hand and smiled.
“You’ll get used to it,” he remarked.
“Maybe, but I still won’t like it,” Rix replied.
“Sadly, no,” Jamie agreed.
Another flash popped.
Yeah.
They’d make it through.
But maybe by the skin of their teeth.
She’d been gone too long.
The only thing okay about that was that Dru hadn’t returned either.
And clocking the mean girls (all five of them, including the bridesmaids, Blake and Helena), Alex and Dru weren’t in their clutches.