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You’re not the Peach Queen anymore and Daddy wanted a newer model.
I wish I could remove that moment from my brain, forget the way Lucie paled as her daughter spoke.
I’m not sure what it is I thought happened between her and her husband, but it wasn’t...that. Because who the fuck cheats onLucie? How the hell does anyone get lucky enough to wind up withherand choose someone else instead?
I see her later that evening, swinging her feet off the dock’s edge. From a distance, she doesn’t look all that different from the girl she once was, the skinny kid who’d sneak down to the dock at night, all wide-eyed and uncertain, and whisper her secrets to me as if she couldn’t stand to hold onto them a moment longer. I’d only seen her here a few times before she admitted her dad was Robert Underwood—and then it started to make sense, that uncertainty of hers. Because even among tech CEOs like my dad, Underwood was a big deal. And I already knew he was the type of guy who wouldn’t hesitate to ruin someone who stood in his way.
“He wanted my mom to get an abortion,”she’d said on one of those nights, her slender shoulders hunched over.“My mom says she would have, if she’d known how cheap he was gonna be.”
It was the kind of shit no kid should ever know about their parents, but especially not at her age. And when her mouth trembled as she tried to force a smile, I felt sick, and helpless. I wish, now, that I’d done something for her, though I still don’t know what I could have done.
My feet hit the dock and she turns, unsurprised to see me here, and raises a brow. “Did you wait until nightfall so my daughter wouldn’t pepper you with personal questions?”
“Yes, I’ll be doing all my boating and sunbathing between midnight and five a.m., henceforth.”
That only wins me half a smile.
“I guess nothing about that incident made you decide you like children.”
I drop down beside her before swinging my legs over the dock’s edge for the first time in a decade. “I don’t activelyhatekids, you know. I just think they’re monsters who require an unreasonable amount of care while offering you very little in return.”
She leans back on her hands. There’s something gentle in her eyes. “They offer you everything in return. But it’s...intangible.”
“Excellent. You enjoy your intangible benefits. I’ll enjoy keeping all my free time and expendable income to myself.” This wins me a full smile at last.
“If you need anything,” I add haltingly, “money for a lawyer or something, let me know.”
“Thank you. I’ll be fine. Though it would be amazing if you could stop witnessing my most embarrassing moments.”
“You do seem to have quite a few of them, if we’re being honest.”
It’s the joke you’d make to a friend, not an employee, andeven though she laughs, I probably shouldn’t have said it. It’s dangerous, how familiar she feels. How easy it is around her. “And about the job—”
She waves me off. “It’s not your fault. I was told three months at the start. I just thought it was a standard probation thing, not a firm end date.”
“I’ll keep you on until you find something else.”
“You don’t have to—” she begins and I cut her off. I know I was a dick last week. I wish I could explain why.
“Lucie, you’re doing an amazing job. If TSG’s financial situation was different, I’d think you were the hire of the century. So stay as long as you need to, but don’t blow all my money on stupid shit.”
Her eyes crinkle. “You mean stupid shit that lets your employees know you care?”
“I pay them,” I argue. “Why do I need to pretend I care too?”
She grins. “I mean, it would be better if youactuallycared.”
I laugh quietly. “I prefer all my relationships remain transactional, if possible.”
She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “I look forward, then, to meeting your mail-order bride.”
Mybride. Eventually she’s going to ask where the hell Kate is. I should probably just tell her, but...it seems safer not to, somehow. It would have been safer not to walk down here in the first place, actually.
I climb to my feet. “You’re settling in okay, aside from my insistence on firing you?”
“I could still use a tour. I’m trying to figure out where I can put a climbing wall.”
“I’ll make sure you continue to not get a tour, then.”
