Rix didn’t let Alex go and watched this carefully.
Alex gave him an I’m all right squeeze and shifted away.
So he released her.
He continued to watch until he saw Alex was all good.
He then turned to Jamie.
Jamie didn’t miss this and raised his brows.
Rix gave a short shake of his head.
They made small talk until Dru suddenly said, “Incoming, so we’re outgoing,” and then, hooked to Alex, they took off, Dru muttering dramatically, “Blake’s bridesmaids. No bueno.”
And before Rix could react, they were lost in the crowd.
He sensed them, like if there were birds anywhere near this place, they’d all immediately take flight, and locked eyes on a trio of three gorgeous women dressed to show bodies they were very proud of, staring off toward where Dru and Alex disappeared.
Though one of them was drinking up Rix.
He turned his shoulder to them and gave Jamie his attention.
“I talk to my son,” Jamie declared. “I know.”
Rix sucked in a breath.
“Full disclosure, Chloe and Dru talk even more frankly, and we’ve got our orders. Things have been rough going for you two, and we’re to make sure you both don’t get bitten to shit in this viper’s den.”
Straight up.
He loved this guy.
“Tell me,” Rix demanded.
“Helena?”
Rix nodded.
Jamie shook his head.
“I don’t know her. She spends more time in England than here. Though she’s well-heeled and well-connected, she’s not well liked.”
“No surprise. The dad?”
“Honestly?”
Rix nodded again.
“I like Ned. Quite a lot. I was growing up in Texas while he was growing up here, but the lore of the Bernhard-Sharps is legendary. Both sides of that family, for generations, all the same. There was a man he was meant to be, and if as a boy he didn’t show signs of being that man, he was made into that man by any means necessary. Ned became that man.”
Another nod from Rix.
“That said, the last five years or so, he’s mellowed. I think because Helena is mostly out of the country and not driving him insane, something she spends a great amount of time doing. And Blake began to have her own pursuits which stopped including doing everything she could, most of it not good, to get his attention. He was able to be who he is or just stop dropping out to escape their games or bolstering his defenses to withstand them and actually start enjoying his own life.”
“And his youngest daughter?”
Jamie watched Rix closely as he said, “He talks about her. A lot. Even before Hale got involved with the work you do. And not just because our kids worked together. He’s proud of her. I think he misses her. I think she was the only sanity he had in his life.”
Jamie got closer and kept going.
“Rix, you should know, she’s out here because of Ned. He found out she wasn’t in the wedding party, and saw the guest list and that she hadn’t RSVPed. He asked why. When Blake made some excuse about how her invitation must have been lost in the mail, he asked why she was getting an invitation rather than wearing a bridesmaid’s dress. And since he’s not only paying for her wedding, he, alone, controls both their trust funds—”
“Holy fuck.”
That was news.
Jamie dipped his chin. “Yes, until they’re thirty-five. He can cut them off. He can reinvest. He can donate. And he can invoke, that being invoke clauses that would mean one fund would absorb the other, like Alex would get Blake’s. Or it would be absorbed back into the family estate. My guess is, he cited the clauses and Blake asked Alex to be in the wedding. But my sense is, the bottom line in all of that was that he wanted an excuse to see his youngest daughter.”
“Did planes stop flying westward?” Rix asked. “He get banned from his own home, which we spent last night and most of today in and we haven’t seen him at all? That is, when we weren’t waiting at a restaurant to have lunch with him, but he didn’t show.”
“Ned’s a complicated man, Rix. In New York, for the last century and a half, his family hasn’t only been one of the most prominent, they’re also one of the most important. He employs a lot of people. He wields a great deal of influence. He takes both seriously, and as far as I can see, he handles them fairly. But that amount of responsibility takes time to manage. I’m not saying this in his defense. I just think, in his own way, he loves his girl. I always thought that, but when pictures started surfacing of her and you, and he knew I knew you, he was the one who told me a lot of this.”
“He feel you out about me?”
“Absolutely.”
“So that’s why I got friendly Ned, we’re buddies. Because you talked me up.”