I can’t help my smile back. “Let me find a spouse. Then we can announce. Nothing matters without the inheritance, anyway.”
Aiden winces before he leans over to clap a hand on my shoulder. “Of course. Take the time you need. I’ll be here.”
I nod, my chest warm at the bond between us. I can survive a marriage. For this family, I’ll do anything.
3
TRISTAN
By midnight, Katie and her staff have shut the party down. I breathe a sigh of relief and slip onto the terrace. It’s warm for the second week of May, and I’m sweating under my tuxedo. I need an escape.
I need just one moment of normalcy before the world ends.
There’s a slight form leaning against the low wall that separates the terrace from the formal garden. She’s clad in all black and her smartwatch illuminates the faint frown on her face. My shoulders lower. Katie. I knew she’d be out here, and yet I still feel that relief drip through my veins. With her, I’m not the spare. I’m just Tristan. She takes no shit and she always makes me laugh, and right now I could really use some laughter.
I missed her. I think I just realized how much.
My shoe scrapes over the stone and her head jerks up.
“Hey, killer,” I say, my voice husky.
“Hey, sunshine,” she says with a small smile. She pushes off the wall, and we fall into step over the terrace, then down the stairs into the formal garden. It’s blessedly silent andcool. The ocean is a steady roar in the distance. By silent agreement, we head for my house on the property. All my siblings have houses on the massive estate, but mine is the best one—closest to the ocean, with a perfect view of the sunrise every morning.
“Sunshine, eh? You change the code names while I was gone?”
Katie slides me a look. “Someone kept bitching about being called Alpha Two.”
I chuckle, but my heart is lighter now that we’re treading familiar ground. “Not sure I like sunshine any better.”
“You didn’t like the colors I picked either.”
“You have shitty taste in colors. I wanted to be something fun, like magenta. Not brown.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. Something eases in my chest. When Katie came to Crownhaven, she never smiled. Her eyes were grave and sad and she tugged at my heart.
She looks different now, and part of me is realizing just how much. Not her clothes or her hair, though I don’t remember her wearing shirts that were this tight two months ago, but her demeanor. She’s confident. Not twenty-three anymore, but a twenty-six-year-old who has seen way more of the world than most twenty-six-year-olds.
Katie looks innocent, but she can shoot a man with alarming accuracy from fifty yards. She has full pink lips and an upturned nose scattered with freckles. She manages to look pouty and annoyed most of the time, from her high cheekbones and the slant of her mouth to the way she considers people from under her lashes.
I can’t stop darting glances at her.
“What?”
“You grow while I was gone?”
She lets out a breathless little laugh. “Fuck off, Tristan.”
I stop her on the steps of my house with a hand on her shoulder. “Bailey, I’m serious. I think you did grow. Come here.”
I’m one step below her, and her annoyed face is level with mine.
“Totally taller.”
She glares, her thickly lashed eyes narrowing on my face, her full lips pursing. The moonlight catches on her bottom lip. I don’t remember it being that…plush. My pulse trips.
I reach around to tug on her braid. “Want to play chess?”
“Did you get any better while I was gone? Winning is getting old.”
