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“You are if you let this proposal disappear. You knew this match was good for both families.”

The words shamed me because they were true.

“I knew it,” I said. “And I should have discussed it with her.”

My father’s expression changed, just a little.

“You’ve been spending too much time with that girl. She’s putting ideas in your head.”

“That girl is the woman I wanted to marry.”

“Then marry her.”

“Not like this.”

“For God’s sake, you already intended to marry her. I’m talking about what becomes possible afterward.”

“That’s exactly the problem.”

He stared at me.

“Once you’re married, Paul, things are different. Assets, decisions, responsibilities. You can call them hers and yours all you want, but life isn’t divided so neatly.”

“Then perhaps I won’t marry her.” The sentence hurt before it finished leaving my mouth. It felt like cutting something I wanted to keep.

My father blinked once, then he smiled. “You don’t mean that.”

I wanted not to mean it. That was the miserable truth. I wanted everything back the way it had been a week ago, with Lorrie smiling at me across a table, with my mother happy, Bitsy triumphant and everyone certain of the next steps. I wanted the ring in my pocket to only mean that I loved a woman and she might love me back enough to say yes.

But last week was gone, maybe it had never existed.

“I mean that I won’t marry her under these terms,” I said.

“There are no terms.”

“There have been terms since spring when you found out how many millions the Hale family really has.”

For a moment, something that might have been anger or fear moved through him. Then the office door opened.

My mother stood there in a silk robe the color of champagne, her hair brushed back from her face, her expression composed enough that I knew she’d heard more than she wanted us to think.

“What on earth is going on?” she asked.

Neither of us answered immediately.

She looked at my father, then at me.

“Paul?”

I was suddenly exhausted.

“Lorrie knows about the trust.”

My mother’s eyes closed briefly. “Oh, Paul.”

It wasn’t sympathy. It was disappointment, soft as a hand on the cheek and twice as difficult to shake off.

“She also knows there are problems at the firm,” I said.