Brave Enough(24)

Her sparkling amethyst eyes are begging me to save her, even though I doubt she thinks I can. And I want to. Damn, how I want to.

That’s when it hits me—how to solve all sorts of problems in ten short seconds. If only Weatherly will go along with it.

There’s risk in doing it this way, but risk has never mattered to me. What’s worth having that isn’t worth taking a risk for?

So I go for it. Because that’s just who I am. I am my father’s son.

“You can speak freely in front of me, Mr. Stromberg. My fiancée and I have no secrets.”

I’d swear I could hear a pin drop all the way down in Enchantment.





ELEVEN


Weatherly

I’m so stunned at first that I just stare up into Tag’s handsome face, wondering what the hell is happening behind his winsome smile. My mind stutters along. I was still in a sluggish stupor from Tag’s loving when I came down to find Michael in the foyer. All I wanted to do was turn around and go back upstairs, back to the sore yet satisfied place I woke to.

“Weatherly?” comes Michael’s questioning voice. When I don’t answer, he becomes more insistent. “Weatherly!”

That brings me to razor-sharp focus for some reason. He sounds so much like my father, that chastising tone all but ordering me to pay attention, do the right thing, make the right decision. For the family. Always for the family.

It’s for that reason that I cling to the life preserver—or at least the time extender—that Tag threw to me. The lie springs easily to my mind and pours quickly from my lips, too quickly for me to have second thoughts.

“Michael, I’m sorry. I was going to tell you. That’s why I came up here. I knew I had to get some things straightened out. Figure out what I’m going to do.”

“You mean to tell me that you’re engaged to this man?”

I nod hesitantly, wondering now what the hell is happening behind my winsome smile. Only I’m not wearing a winsome smile. I imagine I’m wearing something closer to a hideous cringe. Dear God, what have I done?

“Since when? Why didn’t your father tell me?”

“Probably because he doesn’t know.”

Michael’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “And I’m supposed to believe this?”

That strikes a nerve. I struggle to keep my voice calm and well modulated, like a good O’Neal would. “Why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you believe that, after a lifetime of following to the letter rules set over my life that I had no say in, that I’d want to do something rebellious? That I’d want to have something of my own, that my family had nothing to do with, no knowledge of? Why is that so hard to believe?”

I’m satisfied that I held on to my cool with both hands, yet still let Michael know in no uncertain terms that I’m not going to be walked all over this time.

“Because that’s something a silly girl would do, and you are no silly girl.”

“No, I’m not, am I? I never have been. Not even when it was acceptable, expected even, to be a silly girl. I’ve never been able to just be myself. I’ve always had to be what everyone else wanted me to be.”

“Until you met me,” Tag says quietly from my side. In my impassioned debate with Michael, I’d almost forgotten he was there. The man who is, at once, offering me the means to save myself and hang myself, depending on which way this goes.

But he’s right about one thing: He hasn’t wanted me to be anything other than what I showed up here being. Not once. He only wanted me. Just Weatherly.

“Until I met you,” I reply softly.

“Well, it will be very interesting to see what your father has to say about this when he gets here.”

My heart pumps blood that now feels like cold concrete throughout my entire body, cementing my muscles and freezing me where I stand. “My father is coming?”

“Yes. He wanted to surprise you.”

Oh, I’m surprised, all right.

“How did he know I was here?”

Michael’s gaze shifts from me to Tag and back again. “Maybe he knew of a reason you’d come here.”

That might make sense to Michael, but it doesn’t to me. This engagement is all of three minutes old. There’s no reason for my father to think I’d come here. Although I have always loved it, I haven’t been to Chiara in years.

“I don’t suppose I’d be entirely surprised. That man seems to know everything,” I say, my tone more than a little dry. All my life, there was no escaping the all-seeing, all-knowing eyes of William O’Neal. It appears that, in all these years, nothing has changed.

The silence that follows drags on until it swells and surges through the room, threatening to drown me in an ocean of unsaid things.