The Tycoon

We need you Dylan. For real. Please email back.

I hit Send and beside me Thelma growled low in her throat.

“Veronica?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“Clayton,” I said. “Don’t you have anything better to do than stalk me around this funeral?”

“No,” he said.

I could smell him in the cool air and took a step away. Thelma practically vibrated beside me.

“My dog doesn’t like you,” I told Clayton.

“Your dog doesn’t know me,” he said.

I wondered in a kind of surreal way if Clayton was a dog person. We’d never talked about that. It seemed like the kind of thing I should have known before agreeing to marry him.

Yeah. Just one of the seven thousand things I should have known before saying yes.

He put out his hand for Thelma to sniff but she bared her teeth. Thelma looked completely ferocious, but she was actually a cream puff.

But I didn’t need Clayton to know that.

Good girl, I thought and scratched her head.

“Have you eaten?” he asked and I nearly laughed. Usually I was a champion stress eater, but today was some next-level stress, and I had the feeling I wouldn’t eat for days. “Here,” he said and handed me a plate. There had to be about ten cheese puffs on that plate, which meant he’d picked them out just for me.

“Thank you.” I took the plate from him and tipped it so all the food rained down on the ground in front of Thelma. I didn’t look away from Clayton’s face while I did it.

He licked his lips and nodded, as if that were his due.

“Did you email your brother?” he asked.

“Yes.” I wanted to say something confident about how Dylan would come riding out of the shadows to help us. But it would be a lie. And we both knew it.

“You’re not hopeful.”

No, asshole, I’m not hopeful.

“Dylan’s made it clear his whole life he wants nothing to do with us.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You can spare me the false sympathy. You got exactly what you wanted.”

“How do you figure?” he asked.

“Don’t.” I shook my head. “Don’t play these games with me. I’m not the girl you knew. And you are far from the man I thought I knew.”

He turned and faced me, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t look away. He was broader than he had been years ago and there was a hint of silver in the sides of his hair. Of course it looked good on him.

“We should talk about what happened five years ago,” he said.

“No. No, we shouldn’t. We don’t need to talk about the past at all,” I snapped. “If you have something to offer on present circumstances, I’m all ears. But the past is dead.”

His jaw clenched, a tic of his I remembered. He was biting his tongue, rethinking his tactics. And I was glad that at least he wouldn’t be making any false apologies.

“Are you out here because of the land? The land Dad gave me?”

He shook his head.

Liar.

“Why did Dad give it to me?”

“It was the land I was trying to get from him five years ago.”

The land he would have married me to get.

“Oh, that’s… diabolical. That’s rare Hank King.” I couldn’t help but laugh and enjoy the fact that he was probably chewing his tongue off. “What is that land?”

“It’s nothing. Twenty acres of dirt with a swamp running through it.”

“And yet?” I grinned. No lie, I was pretty happy. “You wanted it badly enough to marry me. And, right now, it feels like a giant fuck you from a man six feet underground.”

“I don’t care about the land.”

“Yeah, I’m not buying that for a minute. I’ll sell it to you. One million dollars.”

Enough to get Bea out of trouble and I could make a trust out of the rest for Sabrina. For both of them.

“It’s worth about a hundredth of that.”

“Not to a buyer who is desperate. And you…” I twirled my finger in his direction. “Seem pretty desperate.”

“I won’t pay a million, and if you sell it on the open market you’ll get ten grand. Maybe.”

“Well, we’ll see about that.”

“I have another offer.”

“Oh, this should be good.”

“It would take care of your sisters, and you, indefinitely.”

“Let me guess. You’re going to give my sisters a trust. Part of the cash inheritance. And let me have control of my mother’s foundation again.” I had not even thought about the foundation since the will reading. It had been buried under the fallout.

But God…it hurt that my father had handed it over to Clayton. Because I wanted it. I really wanted it. It was all I had left of my mother.

And Clayton could tell. Of course he could.

“You don’t want the company?” he asked.

The company had never been mine to want. Dad had made that clear from the moment I understood what King Industries was. I’d never let myself even dream of running it.