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Chapter Seventeen

J ed leaned his arms over Rey’s stable door and smiled at the sleepy expression on her face. She’d been brilliant today as they’d chased down the British Polo Championship title, but the Castle Kings only scraped in third.

It wasn’t bloody good enough. Troyden didn’t pay him a huge salary to be satisfied with third place. It was just another in a series of fuck-ups lately. Jesus.

‘Brooding, Jedson?’

He turned his head to look at Troyden, hands in the pockets of his grey-and-black checked pants. His white shirt had a frayed cuff, but his cufflinks were, he thought, turn of the century and by Fabergé.

‘Dad,’ he murmured, dropping his arms and rubbing his jaw. ‘Sorry about today.’

Rey stuck her nose over her stable door and nuzzled Troyden’s shoulder. He instinctively hooked his arm around her neck, leaning into her. His eyes didn’t leave Jed’s face. ‘You only call me Dad when you want to make appoint or when you are feeling particularly sorry for yourself.’

He shrugged, not able to deny the charge. Sorry for himself, flat, lost, at sea. Any of the above worked. But bottom line… ‘You pay me to win. I didn’t do that.’

Troyden jerked his head, and Jed followed him to the bench outside the tack room door. Troyden sat down, crossed his legs and Jed sat down next to him, his arms on his thighs. ‘Do you think your only value to me is that you win?’

Jed rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t want to say yes, but couldn’t say no. As much as he wanted to think otherwise, he still believed love was conditional and tied to what he could offer. But he couldn’t tell Troyden that.

‘You pay me a huge salary. You deserve to have your team win.’

‘And it does, more often than not,’ Troyden replied. ‘God, you worry me, Jed.’

Jed jerked. ‘How?’

‘When are you going to stop believing that you have to earn your right to be a part of this family?’ Troyden demanded, obviously frustrated.

‘I—’ How was he supposed to answer that?

Troyden linked his hands around his knee and leaned back. ‘Of all my children, you were the most challenging, Jed. I made bigger mistakes with you, and they caused deeper wounds. I regret that so much.’

What was he talking about? ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t think I realised, until recently, how much you were affected by your mum telling you that you had to make yourself indispensable if you wanted to be accepted… or something like that.’

Jed frowned at him. ‘You knew about that?’

Troyden’s jaw hardened. ‘I did, and your mum and I had such a fight about it. Man, I lost it.’

He did? ‘Why?’

‘Why?’ Troyden shouted. ‘Because you were a kid, and no one, especially not your mum, should’ve put that much pressure on you. And here’s an answer: because it was fucking bullshit!’

Jed’s eyes widened at Troyden dropping an f-bomb. He was properly upset. ‘My love for you was never dependent on what you did or how you acted, and I’m gutted to think that you still believe that you have to prove your worth.’

He could deny it, but that would be yet another lie. ‘I don’t want to believe it, Dad. It’s just… there.’ He sighed, every atom of air leaving his body. ‘Do we have to talk about this?’

‘Yes, I think we do. Explain it to me, Jedson.’

Did he have to? And how? But because this was Troyden, he’d try. ‘I believe love comes with expectations and risks, and I’m terrified of not making the grade, of failing. Of being rejected and being left behind.’

He stared at the stable floor, his vision a little wavy. He felt Troyden’s hand on his back and it steadied him. ‘Love is conditional.’

‘Not in this family, Jedson.’ It was a relief to hear the determination in his voice, the power. The ‘ I’ve got this so you can relax ’. Troyden kept his hand on his back, the slow circles reassuring. ‘I failed you, Jed.’

Jed frowned at him, shocked. ‘Don’t be absurd!’

Troyden shook his head. ‘You were always so adult, so damn responsible. And as you grew into adulthood, I let go of the reins and let you take over, mostly because I’m a lazy, selfish git.

I pick up young women and let them use me because I knew that you wouldn’t let it go too far.

I knew that you’d put your foot down, so I didn’t need to.

You are the family backstop, the one everyone turns to…

when it should’ve been me. I abdicated responsibility and you picked it up out of some misplaced sense of emotional debt. ’

Well…

‘Well, it stops. Right here, right now.’ Jed raised his eyebrows at the determination coating his words. ‘Let me make it very clear… you are not responsible for us, Jed. We… I love you, no matter what you do or do not do, or achieve. My love for you is not conditional.’

Until he heard the words, he hadn’t realised how much he needed them, how he ached to believe them. Shards of hard cement and bits of steel dropped off his heart and crashed to the ground, splintering. He felt raw, but free.

Loved.

He might be the captain of his country’s polo team, an ace carpenter, his siblings’ protector, but he was also a son, a brother… someone who sometimes needed to lean, finally safe in the knowledge that everything he’d worked for and valued wouldn’t be taken away because he wasn’t enough.

Yet, according to Troyden, he was. Enough. More than, as it turned out.

He pushed his index finger and thumb into the corner of his eyes and sniffed. He wasn’t crying, but, shit, it was close. Troyden patted his back. ‘Now that we’ve got that sorted, what are you going to do about Eden?’

He sighed. ‘I have no bloody idea,’ he admitted. He clasped his hands together and bit down on his bottom lip. ‘I didn’t believe her, stand up for her, and that’s on me.’

‘Yet you still haven’t apologised. It’s not like you to avoid a problem,’ Troyden commented. ‘So why are you ignoring her?’

Ah, shit, this was hard to admit. ‘Because if I don’t do anything, if I leave it, then, in my head, we are still together. By talking to her I risk losing her.’

Troyden shook his head, but his face was full of love. ‘You, my boy, are a bloody basket case.’

Well, he wasn’t wrong. ‘She doesn’t need me, Dad,’ he whispered.

‘Jed, that’s the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard you say.’

He huffed out a laugh, but it was hollow. ‘It’s true. She’s brilliant and strong, and—’ He swallowed, his chest aching. ‘She was fine before me. She’ll be fine after me.’

His father’s eyes softened. ‘Yes, maybe she will be. Maybe you’ll both be okay. But has it occurred to you that fine isn’t the same as happy?’

* * *

Eden skidded into the kitchen and winced when she saw the family sans Jed (he was still avoiding her) gathered around the table in the kitchen.

They could afford to have a leisurely breakfast, but it was the day of the charity polo match, and she had a million things to do. Breakfast was not on the list.

‘Sit down, Eden,’ Diana told her, her stocky frame enveloped in an apron embroidered with I’m gorgeous and I can cook across her ample chest.

Eden shook her head. ‘No time, Di. I’ll just take a cup of coffee in a travel mug.’

Diana pointed her spatula at the open chair next to Mick. ‘Sit. Stay.’

Damn, she wasn’t a goldendoodle. ‘Okay, but only for five minutes.’

Diana dumped a hefty amount of bacon onto a slice of home-made white bread as big as a doorstop and slid the plate in front of her. She slapped another slice on top and expertly cut it in half. ‘Eat.’

‘Not exactly a gourmet breakfast, Di,’ Mick said.

‘Do you want food?’ Diana retorted. When Mick nodded, chastised, she turned back to the stove. ‘Eden has a long day ahead of her and needs the energy. Eden, you said you were in a hurry, the sooner you eat, the sooner you can go.’

Right. Okay, then. Eden lifted the sandwich to her lips and took a huge bite. God, it was good. A bacon butty was the food of the gods.

While she chewed, she took in the family sitting around the table.

Mick was dressed in tailored shorts, a pink camisole under a thigh-length jacket, and stiletto ankle boots, Justin in a gorgeous white linen shirt and Alistair in a grey suit.

Troyden rocked the eccentric billionaire look by wearing old brown cords, an untucked white, collared shirt, a bright red silk scarf and a pink baseball cap.

Eden’s gaze hopped from face to face. They were so different, but they looked like a family.

They were her family. Obsessed with his spreadsheets, constantly-on-his-phone Alistair, fun-but-astute Justin, her soul-sister Mick, and Troyden, the closest to a father figure she’d ever have in her life.

But the picture was missing its centre: it had a big Jed-sized hole.

She didn’t know if it would be filled or not…

Her roiling emotions, her anger at being disappointed by him, had faded to more manageable levels, but she knew they needed to have a conversation in order to move forward.

Since she was the one who’d shut down their lines of communication– so stupid!

– she had to approach him and hash it out.

Whether moving forward meant walking side-by-side, she still wasn’t sure.

Trust was imperative, and if Jed couldn’t give her that much, they were doomed from the start.

They’d needed a little time, some distance, so she’d put off walking down to his cottage to talk to him for a couple of days, then a couple more.

The urge to find him and beg him to give her a chance to redo their last conversation had been overwhelming at times, but that was quickly swamped by the thought that if she confronted him, there was an excellent chance he’d call it quits and dump her.

She was terrified she’d blown her chances and preferred to keep them in a state of suspended animation rather than risk him breaking up with her.

Cowardly? Absolutely.