Winning Over the Brooding Billionaire, page 15
He needed to play by all the rules. He needed to go by the book. As a father himself, he had to make it right. As old-fashioned as it was, Sam needed to ask Boswell Kane for the hand of his daughter.
Knowing that was the missing piece to his proposal, he was able to just relax and watch how seamlessly his and Shelby’s worlds combined. He got to see all the behind-the-scenes work that went into an event, and how good she was at it.
The barn had undergone a cute transformation for the grad, but what Shelby did for her father’s birthday elevated it to new heights.
She had briefly considered a Western theme for the party, but she had decided it could too easily become hokey. Instead, she had opted for a formal black-tie affair, and he watched as she transformed the barn to fit that vision.
As the day drew closer, Sam was aware of feeling increasingly nervous. He rarely got nervous.
But when he finally met Boswell Kane, he knew exactly why he was nervous.
This was the father of the woman he was sleeping with.
Shelby had, in such a short time, brought the light to a dark world.
Not just his world, but Hannah’s.
He was startled to find the presence of her father made him a little ashamed that he had not done the right thing before now. For the longest time, he had allowed himself to believe that what was happening between him and Shelby was okay. Better than okay.
He had lost faith in forever. She had been the perfect woman because she didn’t want it at all.
But it had all started to feel terribly off. Not right. As if he was not being true to himself by not offering his protection, his commitment, his life, to the woman he had come to love.
He avoided Shelby all night because he was sure if Boswell saw them together, he would see, very clearly, what was going on between them.
Finally, the opportunity he had been waiting for presented itself. Boswell slipped outside and Sam followed him.
It was a gorgeous night. Chillier than the grad night, fall already in the mountain air. The pool on the creek would be a good place to propose, even if there would be no swimming in the creek tonight.
He was glad it was dark. He was blushing thinking about it.
“Sam,” Boswell greeted him.
“Sir,” Sam replied.
“No, no, Boswell, please.”
Not until after he’d asked his question.
“Unbelievable place you have here,” Boswell said. “Like nothing I have ever experienced before.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”
Boswell wanted to talk about business! He wasn’t familiar with tech things and he probed Sam’s expertise.
It occurred to Sam that he had done such a good job of avoiding Shelby tonight that her father had no idea what was going on between them.
“Uh, sir, I need to talk to you about something.”
Boswell looked at him shrewdly. What was he expecting? A business proposal?
“Um, you might not be aware that Shelby and I are, um, dating. Seeing each other.”
Boswell tilted his head, squinting at Sam. “My, my,” he said, “are you the reason my daughter is blooming like an autumn rose?”
“Um, well, I certainly hope so, sir. I wanted to ask you...”
He suddenly wished he had thought about this more. Maybe looked up how you asked a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Beth’s dad had died when she was young. Of a cancer very similar to hers.
Genetic, the doctors had said.
And still Sam had not absolved himself. What could he have done differently? Was he really going to do this again?
Yes, he really was.
Sam had made million-dollar deals. He ran one of the biggest ranches in Alberta. He liked to think he handled whatever challenges were thrown at him.
But now he felt like a gauche boy.
“Yes?” Boswell asked, puzzled.
“I wanted to ask you if you’d be okay with me asking Shelby to be my wife.”
Boswell ducked his head and didn’t say anything for so long that Sam was afraid the answer was no.
He hadn’t considered that possibility. At all. What would he do if Boswell said no?
But when Boswell lifted his head, Sam saw the reason that he had ducked it in the first place.
His eyes shone with tears.
“You could not give me a better birthday gift than this,” he said softly. “Thank you for my daughter’s happiness. I cannot wait to get to know you better, as my son.”
* * *
It was 3:00 a.m. Shelby felt exhausted as the last of the limos had pulled out, the Mercedes-Benz bus was gone and only one jet remained on the tarmac.
Her father’s.
Lydia came and took both Shelby’s hands in her own.
“I cannot thank you enough. This has been one of the most memorable evenings of my life. I mean that, Shelby.” She cast Boswell a look.
Shelby could not miss the pure love in that look. “I’ll wait at the plane for you, Bosley.”
Somehow Shelby actually liked the endearment now. She was glad he had Lydia. Love did that, she supposed, softened all the edges.
And yet she felt a little troubled by her love of Sam tonight. He had seemed off, preoccupied.
As if he was avoiding her.
Maybe he had read something into her inability to say the words I love you. She felt if she said those words, the enchantment would be broken, like the clock striking midnight at Cinderella’s ball.
It was silly. It was superstitious. And yet she clung to that superstition as if it was a talisman protecting them all—her and Sam and Hannah—from a darkness that waited. To destroy all happiness.
She shivered. Where was this coming from? Except for Sam ignoring her, the evening could not have been more perfect.
That was a pretty big except.
I wonder if it’s over, she thought, and a terror that she had mostly managed to tame over the summer roared back to life.
Good things did not last.
She had always thought the end of summer—this event—would be a natural concluding point for her and Sam.
But now that it was actually here, she did not feel ready.
Her father took Shelby’s elbow. “Let’s sit outside for a minute.”
They walked to a bench that had been set up to overlook the ravine.
“I’ve been to so many parties in my life, I’ve lost count, Shelby. But what you just did tonight? It transcended. What an extraordinary gift to give a father. Not just the party, but an opportunity to see who his child has become. Seeing you in your element, I am just bursting with pride.”
“Thanks, Dad. It was my privilege to do it for you. I have to confess something. I overheard you and Lydia at Christmas two years ago. Plotting to cut me off.”
He chuckled. “And you beat us to the punch. That’s my girl.”
She was twenty-eight years old, and she was his girl. She still loved his approval. It occurred to her she would always be his girl. There was something extraordinarily comforting in that. She laid her head on his shoulder, and he put his arm around her.
“I had already started my company when I overheard the two of you talking. But up until that point it had been kind of a cute little distraction. Hearing you and Lydia gave me the impetus to take it to the next level. It started as I’ll show you and it became I showed myself. Who I could be. What I could do.
“I have to confess, this party started kind of the same way. I wanted you to be proud of me. I wanted you to see me at my best. It felt like a lot of pressure to succeed.”
“You achieved all those things, in spades.”
“But something else became much more important to me. I started to look at it differently. I still wanted to show you, but I wanted to show you something else. It became not all about me, but about you.
“How much I appreciated you,” she said softly, “I wanted to thank you for being a single dad, and doing your best all the time.”
She realized her acute appreciation of single dads had a great deal to do with Sam.
“I spoiled you,” Boswell said.
“I know. But it wasn’t spoiling, like oh, I’ll throw some money at her and get rid of her, it was spoiling like I love her so much, and I just want to make her happy.”
“Thank you for seeing that. It means the world to me.”
“We don’t say that much, do we, Dad? I love you?”
He shivered. “I’m sorry. I have an aversion to it.”
Ahh, the things families passed on.
Silence sat between them for a few minutes.
“Your man is a fine man, Shelby.”
“Oh,” she stammered, “I don’t know about my man.” Especially since he’d been avoiding her tonight.
“Well, you better figure it out, because he had the talk with me tonight.”
“I hope not,” she said, trying for lightness. Where was this sense of dread coming from? From Sam ignoring her, certainly, but it had deepened since Boswell said he had an aversion to saying I love you. “The talk is what you had with me when I was eleven.”
“He’s an honorable man,” Boswell said, pleased.
She knew, with sudden clarity, what the talk was. Of course Sam would be bound by tradition. He had done the old-fashioned thing. He had asked her father for her hand.
Where was the excitement? Why didn’t it chase away the dread she had been feeling since she noticed Sam avoiding her tonight?
“Dad,” she said, and her voice sounded as if it was coming from far away, “why can’t I remember Mom?”
Boswell shot Shelby an uncomfortable look. “It’s been such a nice night,” he said, uneasily. “I don’t want to—”
“Tell me,” she said. “Please.”
His discomfort, his uneasiness was already telling her something. That feeling of dread, intensified, shivering up and down her spine.
Her father sighed, took his hand off her shoulder, and knit his hands in front of him between his knees, and studied them.
“She just wasn’t there, Shelby. Maybe that’s why you can’t remember her.”
“What do you mean, she wasn’t there?” Shelby asked. She could hear a funny squeak in her voice.
“There was something wrong with her,” Boswell said, his voice faraway, remembering. “I didn’t realize it until it was too late.”
“What do you mean there was something wrong with her?”
“Even before you, Shelby, there was something in her. Restless and wild. It wasn’t your fault.”
Her fault?
“That she wasn’t like other new moms. She never wanted to hold you, she didn’t want to spend time with you. At first, I thought it was depression. That depression women get—”
“Postpartum,” Shelby said, woodenly.
“Except it never went away. And you were like a little puppy, so anxious for her affection and approval, going to her for it again and again, only to be swatted away.
“She didn’t act as if she was married and had a baby. She went out all the time, she partied hard. I suspect there were other men. That’s all she wanted. The rush, the attention, the altered state of mind.”
Shelby felt as if the cold started at her feet and moved slowly up, freezing her one cell at a time.
Her mother had not loved her.
Had not seen any value in her.
She had not been worthy.
Hadn’t she always known that? Isn’t that why she had chosen to have shallow relationships, easily left behind, before they discovered the truth?
She was not worthy. Even her own mother had seen it.
“The night she died, we had a terrible row about it,” Boswell said, his voice low and tortured. “I always wondered if you had heard it. I’m ashamed to say, I don’t know how you couldn’t have heard. I practically lifted the roof I was yelling so loud.”
And suddenly, she did remember.
She was a little girl, sitting on the stairs, her face pressed through the rails, her dolly clutched to her.
“It was the Beachwood Canyon house,” she said, recalling the ornate wrought iron of the handrail.
Her father shot her a surprised look. “Yes, it was.”
She remembered his voice, the rage in it. Why can’t you just say it? Is it so hard? I love you? All she wants is a little bit of your time. All she wants is those words. I think she’d be happy with a pat on the head every now and then when you walked by.
And isn’t that exactly what Shelby had accepted in every relationship? Pats on the head, crumbs of affection, believing, somehow, that’s all she deserved.
But now, she had broken all the rules that that little girl had made that night sitting on the stairs, that terrible night that her mother had died.
She had run down the stairs. Mommy, I love you.
The look on her mother’s face. Pity. Disdain, maybe.
No, horror.
You’re suffocating me, she screamed. Her mother had slammed out of the house, angry. Shelby remembered screaming after her, as if it would solve everything, as if it wasn’t suffocating her at all:
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
Until her father had told her, sternly, sensing hysteria, to stop it. And then, not fifteen minutes later, they had heard sirens and seen flames.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AND SHELBY HAD KNOWN, to the core of her being, that her mother was gone.
She was responsible for the fact her mother and father had fought that night. It was her fault her mother had stormed out of the house, gotten in that car, taken one of the canyon twists way too fast, and sailed off the earth.
Those words I love you had chased her from the house and straight into the arms of doom.
“I don’t know,” Boswell said, softly, “if she’d been drinking that night, or if that’s what she wanted all along. With the drugs and the parties and the men, and finally that. Just to escape.”
A child’s hungry love not enough to hold her, just one more bond she wanted to be free of.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I should not have told you. It’s not a good note to end such a spectacular night on.”
Always he had done what he thought was right, protected her from the pain of the truth.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Really.”
And it was, because every single cell of her, and particularly the ones around her heart were frozen solid.
“Are you going to New York tonight?” she asked. She felt as if she was floating above them, looking down. She could hardly believe that cool, composed voice was her own.
“Yes, a red-eye, for sure.”
As if he was sitting in the economy seats, not able to sleep, and not stretched out in a white leather recliner that went all the way back, with a steward gently covering him with a blanket.
“I think I’ll come with you,” she said.
“What? Just leave?” Boswell cast a look at the mess left in the barn.
“Marcus is here. And...” She couldn’t say his name. It might thaw the ice block around her heart. “The bunkhouse was offered for him and the staff. They’ll look after it. They know what to do.”
“B-b-but why? Is it because of what I just said?”
“No, of course not.” She suddenly remembered what her mother sounded like, and it was exactly like that. That insincere falsetto, that high inflection as if something really exciting was about to happen.
That did not involve a needy child clinging to her, screaming at her desperately.
I love you.
“Don’t you need to let Sam know?”
She took out her phone and wagged it at her father. “That’s what we have these for. I was leaving tomorrow, anyway. It will be way more convenient to take the jet with you. I’ll just go grab my bag and talk to Marcus for a minute.”
Her father looked at her face and it seemed as if he wanted to say something else. But he didn’t. He looked back at his hands.
She got up briskly and moved away.
She suddenly remembered that about her mother, too.
Always brisk. Always in a hurry. To get away.
That was part of Shelby. Half of her, actually. You couldn’t deny it just because you didn’t like it.
How could she do that to Hannah and Sam? It was only a matter of time until her defects became apparent, until she cracked.
Better, so much better, to leave now.
Thank goodness she had gotten wind of the proposal before it happened. How awful that would have been.
How nearly impossible it would have been to do the right thing.
To say no.
It was a near miss, really, for poor Sam and Hannah. He’d been about to pop the question! To the most unsuitable person in the whole world.
She felt a momentary stab of anger at Sam. Why hadn’t he just left well enough alone? Why hadn’t he just let them keep going the way they had been?
Why did everything have to change?
* * *
Sam woke up in the morning and reached for Shelby. Despite trying to keep things from Hannah, he had thought she would sneak into his room when she wrapped up at the barn.
Sneak.
He was so glad, that as of today, that part would be over. There would be no more sneaking.
Love needed to be celebrated. Announced. Not hidden away.
He was surprised to find the bed empty. She’d still been at the function when he’d left at one in the morning. He looked at her pillow, at her side of the bed. He realized she hadn’t slept there at all.
For a moment he felt pure panic.
No, wait, breathe. It hadn’t been a party in New York City where there might be a nefarious person waiting, watching for her to have a vulnerable moment.
