“We should tell Simon, though, just in case Travis decides to,” he said.
I frowned. “You’re serious?”
“We need to do damage control. Invite your father and foster parents to our house tonight. I’ll tell them about the trust fund and convince them that it wasn’t the motivation behind my proposal. I’ll also make it clear that neither Travis nor Hope’s word can be trusted.”
Ignoring the tingly feeling that the statement “our house” had given me, I said, “I’m not sure it’ll be so easy to convince them. I have plenty of faith in your acting skills, but I know my family. None of them trust easily.”
“A little like you.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “Even if you do manage to convince them you’re not the guilty party here, you’ll still find yourself being confronted by all three of them at some point.”
“Why?”
“Because once we divorce after being married for only a year, they’ll take it as an indication that this was about your trust fund all along.” Which was why I’d never meant for them to find out about it. “They’ll be beyond furious.”
Dane twisted his mouth. “Then maybe we should stay married for longer than a year.”
Um, say what? “Longer?” I was surprised the word didn’t come out on a squeak.
“Yes.” He turned to his computer.
Frowning at the blatant dismissal, I shook my head. No. No, that was a bad idea. Walking away from Dane after the year was over would be hard enough. Prolonging the whole thing would only make it more difficult. “That’s not necessary.”
“So you want it to look obvious to your family that this was a sham?”
“Well, no—”
“Then you might want to consider putting an extension on it. Give it some thought. We’ll discuss it again at a later date.”
“Just how big of an extension are we talking?”
“That depends on a few things,” he answered vaguely, typing away.
I was about to question him further, but then his cell phone rang. He immediately answered it, of course. Shooting him a scowl that he didn’t see, I pushed out of the chair and left the office.
Taking my position behind my desk, I got back to work. The entire time, one question kept floating around my brain: If I did agree to an extension, what “things” would its duration depend on?
My family turned up at the house shortly after dinner. All I’d told Simon was that Dane had a little something he wanted to explain, which was no doubt why there was none of the hostility in my father’s eyes that could be seen in Wyatt’s. Melinda had obviously told her husband everything.
I offered them drinks, but only Simon and Dane took me up on the offer. The two men fell into an easy chat while I made them coffee. They each then grabbed their own cup.
Dane took my free hand in his and urged my family to follow us through the kitchen and out onto the patio. It was incredibly impressive with its lavish stonework, ample seating, outdoor kitchen, stone firepit, and koi pond.
Simon let out a low whistle. “Wow. Looks just like my backyard.”
I chuckled, but my foster parents didn’t even crack a smile. Annoyance made my nostrils flare. I couldn’t blame them for being suspicious—they were right to be. But they’d never once been rude to Heather’s boyfriends, even though said boyfriends were married. So it didn’t seem fair that they’d act this way toward my husband.
Dane invited my family to take a seat as he sat me beside him on one of the rattan sofas. For a moment, no one spoke. There were only the sounds of fire snapping in the pit and water lapping at the edges of the pond.
“We wanted you to come here tonight so I could share something with you,” Dane told them, curving his arm around me. “You’ve heard me mention my uncle Hugh before. He took in my brothers and me after our father killed himself.”
Melinda gasped with the same shock that slapped me.
“He shot himself in the head to escape the many debts he’d racked up,” Dane went on, sounding remarkably unemotional. “He could have sold the large house we lived in and bought something smaller; could have sold his rental properties, shares, or small businesses. But he was too prideful for that. He didn’t have it in him to face people, to let them see how he’d failed. So he took his own life.”
I slid my arm around Dane’s waist, my shock giving way to anger at his father for being so proud and selfish.
“I’m so sorry,” Melinda said to him. “That must have been terrible for you.”
“Not as much as you might think. He wasn’t a good person,” said Dane, a dark note in his tone. “A man like that has no business having children. He’s the reason my brothers and I aren’t close.”
I barely stopped myself from frowning, wondering just what exactly he meant by the latter. I couldn’t question him; my family would think it weird that I didn’t already know.
“My mother had died of cancer years before that, so we had nowhere to go.” Dane looked down at me. “We could have easily ended up in foster care as you did, but we had Hugh. He didn’t just take us in. He tried to teach us how to make something of ourselves, how to play to our strengths and be mindful of our weaknesses.”
Ah, so Hugh had been his mentor.
Dane sipped at his coffee. “The lessons didn’t stick with my youngest brother, Travis. He and his wife are people who want the easy way in life. That’s why he married early. You see, Hugh left trust funds for each of us, but we weren’t allowed to access them until we were married. He didn’t want us to make the mistake he made: to never have a family of our own.”
Pausing, Dane smoothed his hand up my back and palmed my nape. “I didn’t want to build success on the heels of Hugh’s. I wanted to build something for myself. Wanted to implement all the lessons he taught me. Wanted the trust fund to be purely a gift from him, not the kickstart to success that Travis perceived it to be.
“But, as Vienna once pointed out, I’m never really satisfied with what I’ve achieved. I always have that nagging sensation that I need to do more. I guess that comes from feeling like you have to live for two people. I lost my twin when I was eight.”
Simon winced, and Wyatt’s scowl faltered.
I tightened my arm around Dane in a silent show of support.
“My cousin lost her twin as a child,” said Melinda. “She suffered from survivor’s guilt all her life; she tried to keep her twin’s spirit alive by living for both of them. She also pointedly avoided letting others close.”
“It’s hard to keep someone at a distance when they’re part of your everyday life,” said Dane, casting a meaningful look my way. “But I tried. I held out for four years. Four very long years. Then I realized that all I’d really done was waste time. I didn’t want to waste anymore. I didn’t want to risk that someone would come and steal her from under me. So, yes, I moved fast—as you all noticed.”
“Yeah, we noticed,” said Simon.
“Travis wasn’t happy when I started dating Vienna.” Dane took another sip of his coffee. “He tried coming between us right from the start.”