Page 36 of The Disputed Legacy

Before I could leave, I had to stop in and check on my father.

He noticed me smiling, and like Sloane, he guessed that it was because of a woman.

“What’s in the air?” he asked sarcastically. “Your brothers, and now you, too?”

I sat with him, glad that he was with it and not showing any sign of distress or confusion. “Can’t a guy just be happy for the sake of being happy?”

“No. You look content. That’s different.” He lost his smile and frowned instead. “I recall trying that on when I married your mother.”

And there it went. Downhill. Anytime Beatrice was mentioned or he thought of her, he was more upset. No one would blame him. My mother had ruined his life with her affinity for cheating. She’d nearly gotten my brothers killed, too. That was the price he’d paid when he let a woman into his life.

While I’d grown up jaded, assumingallwomen were like that and wouldn’t be true to their husbands, I was coming around to seeing how the opposite could happen too. That women—like my brothers’ wives—could be loyal, loving, and honest.

I saw that in Willow already, but until I knew the reason for her guardedness, I couldn’t be sure how much I’d be able to trust her. To trust her with my heart and also my life. Being this high up in the family, I had to live with the fact that someone would always want me dead. That leverage could become a point of danger in a marriage. Like it had with my parents.

“You were content with Beatrice?” I asked him.

He shrugged, getting that vacant, faraway look on his face. He was reflecting and thinking back, but still lucid. “I wanted to think that I was. At first.”

“But you and Beatrice married to see through an arrangement,” I reminded him.

“True, but she was still my wife. We’d both gone into that arrangement reluctantly because we had to. It was expected of us. But in those first few weeks, I started to become deluded with the possibility that something real could grow between us.” This time, he hung his head and sighed. He didn’t stay morose for long. Lifting his head to face me, he gave me the start of a smile. “I’ve held that anger with me all my life. How she’d cheated on me and went to other men. How she was so stuck in her fantasy of having other men that she’d sacrificed your brothers. But as I’ve watched your brothers find their wives and as my grandchildren enter the world…”

I smiled, knowing he was just as changed as I was in the process of becoming an uncle and gaining sisters.

“It changes your perspective,” he concluded.

“It does.”

“I’m grateful they’ve found their love, and I am eternally optimistic that you will too.”

I think I already have.

Hopefully.

“So if you’re smiling and looking pleased with yourself because you’ve been sleeping around like usual…” He smirked. “Whatever. But if you’re on the path to settle down with a special woman who has come into your life, I’ll be happy for you, Son.”

“Thanks, Father.”

I didn’t need his blessing or encouragement, nor did I want his pep talk to push me into settling down.

I’d already chosen the woman I wanted. I had no clue whether I could trust her, if it would last, or if she’d take forever to warm up to me.

Willow was the one I wanted, and nothing would make me change my mind, not even her strict resistance to dating anyone.

Patience was a virtue, and with her, it would be a skill I’d employ as necessary.

15

WILLOW

Saul asked me if I was playing games with him when I suggested that we be friends, then kissed his cheek.

He’d put me on the spot, wanting to know why I was sending him mixed signals like that. I wasn’t. I hadn’t intended to give him a confusing contradiction.

But he was no better.

He vanished for a week, then returned to sear me with those smoldering looks before leaning in to kiss me.