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“Come on, man. I saw you two looking at each other all evening. I asked you to handle the situation until I got back. I didn’t mean sleep with her. What if I’d wanted to marry her? What if I’d really liked the idea of us starting our family together? You would’ve screwed it all up for everyone.”
“Like that would’ve ever happened. You were only proposing because Dad was making you. And besides that, you never would’ve been in this situation if you hadn’t gone to that party pretending to be me. She went there looking for me, not you. So don’t try to act all innocent and put out. If anyone swooped in and stole anything, you tried to snatch Kat away from me.”
“Yeah, well, now you have your shot. I’m off the hook with Dad and she’s all yours.”
Sawyer narrowed his gaze at his brother with contempt. “No matter what you do, you always seem to get away with it.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I’ve never met someone so reckless, so irresponsible, and yet you never get what’s coming to you. You never pay the price for your actions. Somehow you always get off the hook. You don’t have to marry the mother of your child. You didn’t have to pay when you wrecked Tom’s motorcycle. Dad smoothed things over when you got in trouble in school. No matter what happens, you never have to clean up your messes. You always get one of us to handle everything for you, and then you have the audacity to get irritable with me because I happened to fall in love with the girl you’re supposed to be with?”
Finn opened his mouth, but stopped short of answering. His angry retort seemed to deflate inside him. He looked at his brother for a moment and shook his head. “Are you serious? You’re in love with her?”
Sawyer clenched his jaw in irritation with himself for letting that slip. He and Finn didn’t have the kind of relationship many twins had. They didn’t share intimate details of their lives. Sawyer didn’t want to hear about Finn’s shenanigans and Finn was bored by most of what Sawyer did with his time. So this was a big moment for them both. An awkward one, too.
“Yes, I am,” he said, turning away and putting the engagement ring box on the edge of his desk.
“And what the hell were you going to do if she accepted my proposal? Mope until the end of time?”
“I’m sure your marriage wouldn’t have lasted that long,” Sawyer quipped.
“Very funny,” Finn said. “I’m being serious.”
Sawyer shrugged. He hadn’t really thought that far ahead. “Maybe moping. Maybe working myself into a bout of middle-aged hypertension. If she accepted your proposal, maybe I would’ve asked to take over in Beijing, and disappeared for a while. I thought she wanted to marry you. I wasn’t going to interfere, no matter how I felt.”
“Why not? You’re always interfering in my life when you think I’m doing the wrong thing.”
“Because...nothing was going to change the reality of the situation, and that was that Kat is having your child. Whether I loved her, whether she hated you. That’s still your baby and I couldn’t get in the way of that.”
Finn dropped down into the guest chair and considered his brother’s confession for a few minutes. “Does she love you?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Sawyer followed suit and flopped down into his own desk chair with a heavy sigh. “We never really talked about it.”
“But you said that she did want to marry me.”
“I thought so. That’s what she told Jade and Morgan on the Fourth of July.”
“And yet, just a few short days later, she turned me down and made me look like an idiot in front of the whole family. I’d say she did some hard thinking since then. She’s got to be in love with you. That’s the only reason I could fathom.”
“Because there’s no way a woman wouldn’t want to marry you otherwise?”
“I’m a catch, damn it. And so are you. I say she’s in love with you.”
Sawyer sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Even if she is...what about your daughter?”
Finn paused and looked at his brother with surprise. His mouth dropped open as he scrambled for words. “She’s... Kat’s... We’re having a girl?”
“Oh.” Sawyer sat up straight, alarmed at letting that slip. “I didn’t realize she hadn’t told you yet. I’m sorry. The whole family knows. Morgan turned the yacht pink when we sailed on the Fourth.”
Finn shook his head. “We didn’t really get to chat about much, with everyone there. A daughter...wow. A daughter is exciting news. Perhaps a little bit of karma for me.”
“Perhaps.”
“And despite what you might think, I plan to be a part of my daughter’s life. I might be a shameless flirt with commitment issues, but I’m not a deadbeat dad. Kat and I can work out the details, but I’ll be involved with the baby. As for the mother...” His voice trailed off. “She obviously wants you. She should be with you.”
Finn cupped the ring box on the edge of the desk and slid it across the smooth wood to Sawyer, who reached out and caught it before it could fall to the floor. “Take that,” Finn said. “Give it to her. Hell, you’re the one that picked it out, anyway. You knew what she would like. I’m sure she’d appreciate it a lot more coming from you.”
“No, you should return it.”
