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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.”
Simon’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because our trust funds came with an additional stipulation—if we didn’t marry by the age of thirty-eight, the fund would be divided between our siblings. Travis and his wife, Hope, want his share of mine. To them, Vienna is in the way of that. They tried making her doubt my feelings for her by telling her about the trust fund. She already knew about it, so that didn’t get them anywhere. Travis’s attempts to poison her mind about me failed.” Dane’s gaze cut to Melinda. “Which is no doubt why he went to you.”
Simon looked at her. “Travis spoke to you?”
Melinda nodded, but her eyes were on Dane. “He made it sound like you only married Vienna so you could access the trust fund,” she said, not sounding convinced that it wasn’t the case. “I wouldn’t have believed him. But when he mentioned you’d lose access to it if you didn’t marry by the time you turned thirty-eight—which is less than a year away …”
Simon’s gaze sharpened and then narrowed in suspicion. Shit.
Dane pursed his lips. “My guess? Travis hoped that if he could poison all your minds against me, then you’d get between me and Vienna in a way that he wasn’t able to do. I’d say he’s counting on you to encourage her to leave me. You may in fact intend to, despite what I’ve told you tonight. If so, he did his job well.”
“Dane didn’t pressure me to marry him in Vegas,” I told my family. “He asked. I said yes.”
“You can see why it looks suspicious,” said Wyatt, a little belligerent.
“Depending on what angle you look at it from, yes, it does,” Dane conceded. “But I don’t need my uncle’s money. I’ve never wanted to need or rely on it. If I had, I’d have done as Travis did and married at the age of eighteen just to get my hands on it.”
