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“I fail to see how that impacts this completely irrational idea you have all dreamed up for me.” Taylor replied dryly, still trying to compose herself.
“You see, Derrick has worked very hard to prove he has matured.”
Taylor snorted at that. Derrick had never been mature, and as far as she knew, in recent years he had rarely been sober. Simon gestured at Taylor’s response, “You see? Even you doubt. But he has been unable to sway public and business opinion of himself away from a party-going, spoiled, uninterested heir.”
“And you think if he gets married, people will suddenly see him as Mr. Wholesome?” Taylor guessed, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
“Not think, Taylor. Weknowit will. There have been polls.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Taylor said, raising her face to the roof of the plane.
Simon continued, “Polls show if Derrick settled down, got married, and had a family, he would be taken more seriously.”
Taylor looked back to Simon, then at Derrick, who had now taken an intense interest in the toe of his shoes. “So marry him to someone else. Find him someone. Find him a poor someone and pay her off,” Taylor offered dramatically, spinning for flare. “That would be a true Cinderella story: Derrick saves Lady Jane from her life of poverty. I can see the stock margin rising now! Hell, I’ll be the flower girl.”
Taylor saw Derrick’s mouth twitch up at the corners as she took each man in, but still he kept his eyes on his shoes. The three older gentlemen just shook their heads. “It would never work, Taylor,” Todd remarked, “and you know it. Payoffs don’t guarantee silence. And once the deal is done, the girl in question would just go and get more money spilling the deal to the press and anyone who would listen.”
“So find someone the old-fashioned way. That way you don’t have to lie,” Taylor said. Four sets of eyes looked at her likeshewas now the crazy one. “What? It happens. It happens all the time!”
“Not to men set to inherit a net worth of close to two billion dollars,” Simon pointed out.
Taylor rubbed her hands over her face. She needed more ideas, she needed help; she needed something.
Then she turned to the uncharacteristically silent Derrick, “Why are you all for this?” she questioned him. “Don’t you think this is stupid? Don’t you want to get married your own way?”
Derrick looked to Taylor, “I think—”
“No, see, that’s the problem,” she said in a high-pitched, hysterical voice, gesturing to all present, “nobody is thinking here. Nobody has any idea what they are saying.” she paced back and forth across the large cabin, which was feeling more and more confining by the second. “I am abducted from my home, forced to come here, and you guys tell me all these things. Is Ashton Kutcher trying to bringPunk’Dback? Huh? Because this one could win Oscars.”
Taylor stopped pacing and stood in front of Simon, “Now, let me guess. The deal is I marry Derrick, and you’ll help the company?”
“Yes,” Simon replied, sounding relieved that Taylor was finally seeing the light.
“Well, forget it. I’ll give you a high-interest repayment. I’ll give you fifty percent shares. I’ll give you all our property in Abu Dhabi. But I am not doing it.”
“I don’t want or need those things, Taylor …”
“No. Of course you don’t. You need a wife for your son, the one who can’t even say anything for himself,” she said, pointing at Derrick.
“Taylor,” Charlie said hesitantly, interrupting her tirade, “there is one more thing.”
Taylor whirled around. “What?” she hissed. “What else could you possibly want from me? Do you need me to give birth to a unicorn too?”
Taylor heard a bark of laughter and turned to see Derrick biting his bottom lip to keep from laughing out and his father sending him a stern glare.
Charlie went on, rubbing his neck with one hand and jingling change in his pocket with the other. Nervous movements, this was bad. “The decree about the business being run by a Preston—” he said as if trying to refresh her memory about something she could never have possibly forgotten about. He was stalling, Taylor realized.
“What about it?” she said through her teeth.
“It was written a long time ago. Many, many years ago,” Charlie continued. Taylor raised her eyebrows, conveying she was waiting but her patience wouldn’t last much longer. “It was a different time then, things were run by men …”
“You have to be married before you can take over the company,” Todd butt in, obviously irritated by Charlie’s stammering.
Taylor gaped at them. She could not speak. When she did regain movement, she made her way to the jet bathroom and slammed the door. Sitting on the lidded toilet, Taylor listened to the thrumming of her heart. It felt like it would beat right out of her chest, so she took some deep breaths to try and calm herself. She pushed her dark tight curls out of her face. She needed air, and having all the hair in her face was only making her more anxious. Her scalp was sweating and itchy too.
Taylor pulled at the thick brown curls and removed the wig from her head, allowing the blond hair she had tucked under it to cascade down. She sighed in relief to be free and in the air again. But the fresh air only made her brain work faster, and it didn’t make anything she just learned any better.
She was backed into a corner. There was no way out.