Her closing the door behind us doesn’t bode well for me. I set my computer bag on the desk and hit the button to open the shades. My office is best described as austere. Steel. Glass. Leather chairs. Other than Penny’s bed, this room isn’t designed for comfort. If somebody wants to lounge on a couch, they can go home and do it. I’m here to work.
“It’s unlike you to be out of the office so much,” Taylor says.
It’s more than a simple observation. There’s something else she wants to say, and whatever it is, it’s making her uncomfortable. I know she’s not carrying news of some kind of hostile takeover of my company. Every person in my company who has the power to even think about it is somebody I trust implicitly. But there’s something going on.
“Just say it,” I urge, giving her a smile to remind her she’s free to speak her mind in this office. I pull my phone out of my pocket and toss it on my desk before settling into my chair.
“I’m not sure exactly what you’re doing back in New Hampshire, but I know it’s personal.” She shrugs. “The people who don’t know what little I do know are afraid you’re sick. Or that somebody in your family is sick. And some are concerned you’re thinking about moving the company up there.”
I hadn’t considered that. “Nobody’s sick, and I don’t want them worrying about their jobs. Not only is that bad for morale, but I don’t want them hunting for new jobs with some other firm.”
“That was my thought, yes. But I can’t lay those concerns to rest without giving them something.”
“I’m getting married.”
She laughs for a moment, but when I don’t laugh with her, her amusement dies off pretty quickly. “Are you really?”
“I am.” I lean back in my chair. “I’ll be marrying Cara Gamble on the twenty-ninth of this month, in Sumac Falls.”
She sits in the leather chair across from me without invitation. “Cara Gamble. Like the Gamble property? Hayden, what the hell are you doing?”
Taylor is probably the only person in the world who can speak to me like that in this office and get away with it. She’s also one of the few people who know one of the goals I set for myself was buying that house.
“I know it looks bad,” I say, holding up my hands. “But we dated in high school and we went to dinner and sparks reignited and…we’re getting married.”
“Must have been quite the dinner.”
I ignore that and try to shift the focus back to the business at hand. “I’ll probably be splitting time between here and New Hampshire for a while, but you can reassure everybody that neither this company nor their jobs are going anywhere.”
“Good.” She looks at me for a few seconds, then smiles and shakes her head. “Married. I know you well enough to know this isn’t like you and you’re probably up to something. But you also told me about the girl you left behind once, so maybe I’m wrong.”
I neither confirm nor deny. “It’ll be a private ceremony in our hometown, if anybody asks. I don’t want it to be a whole thing around here, though of course I want you and your husband to be there.”
“Understood. Will you be needing my assistance with the planning?”
“Definitely.” I break down the basic terms of the prenup and NDA, and ask her to draft the documents in the simplest terms possible, so Cara can understand them. “Obviously, I need those ASAP.”
“So this wedding won’t be changing your intention to buy the house?”
“No.” The word sounds curt, even to my own ears, so I force a smile. “Gin will be selling the house to Cara and me, as a married couple.”
Her eyebrow shoots up. “But you want it in the prenup that you’ll pay her half the value of the house you’ll have already given her mother full, fair value for?”
More than the fair value, actually, but I zip it. Taylor already doesn’t believe me.
I look her in the eye. “We will be buying her mother’s house, so obviously in a divorce, it would be joint property. But hopefully the prenup will never be relevant, and I’ll be a married man with a house and a company to run and the best dog ever.”
Taylor looks at Penny, who’s lying on her bed watching us. “And what does Penelope Louise think of the other woman in your life?”
“Believe it or not, she loves Cara. She even chooses to curl up with her over me sometimes.”
“Really?” Taylor smiles, and for the first time, she relaxes and looks genuinely happy for me. “Isn’t that interesting.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cara
Mel calls me Saturday afternoon, just as I’m closing up the shop. When the phone rings, I think it might be Hayden, who has sent me many emails from Boston, and I squash the pang of disappointment when I see my best friend’s name on the screen.
