“I’m sorry,” Seth said huskily. “I know how hard it is to lose a parent.”
“Thanks,” I said stiffly.
His voice was warm and genuinely sympathetic, which made me remember that he’d lost his only real parent at a very young age.
“So now you can tell me why your mom is a walking self-esteem destroyer,” he insisted.
“She’s never my mom,” I corrected. “She only answers to Mother, and I don’t remember a time when she wasn’t critical.”
“That’s not just critical, Riley. It’s downright abusive. You look gorgeous tonight, and that dress? We won’t go into how elegantly sexy it is. Or how damn much I love every curve of your body. What parent ever implies that her daughter doesn’t look fucking perfect?”
“Mine,” I said with a sigh. “She’s firmly entrenched in her world, Seth. She doesn’t believe in even dipping a toe into anything that might cause gossip about her.”
“So it’s not a game for her,” he concluded. “But she can’t seriously believe that what those people think really matters enough to hurt you.”
“She doesn’t hurt me anymore,” I replied. “I’m used to it.”
“Do you really believe that?” he asked low and softly, his irate tone suddenly morphing into one of sympathy.
“Of course. I’m a grown adult.”
“It matters, Riley. No matter how old you get. My father was a bigamist. We were his throwaway family. Granted, we didn’t know that until we were all grown up, but he was our sperm donor. So it was a slap in the face to all of us. It hurt. Maybe not as much as your mother hurts you, because she raised you. But I’m not falling for the excuse that you’re used to getting mentally beat up all the time. She’s your mother. The one person who should love you unconditionally.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I answered defensively. “My family has never been like yours. Everything in mine was conditional. And nothing was ever good enough. It’s been that way as long as I can remember.”
“Your brothers seem to love you that way,” he observed.
I squirmed in the passenger seat. Talking about my family at all wasn’t something I normally would do. “I love them the same way. But we didn’t really grow up together. My father wanted all of them in boarding school. So they were rarely at home.”
“Jesus!” Seth exploded. “Is that even a thing anymore?”
“Boarding school?”
“Yes.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “For rich people it is.”
“What about you?” he asked irritably. “Did they send you away, too?”
“No.” Admittedly, there were many times I wished I’d gone off somewhere else as a child, but I’d stayed in our home.
“I don’t understand your world,” Seth grumbled.
“It’s not my world anymore,” I said flatly. “And it’s really hard to know there’s any other way when you grow up in the thick of it. Everything was normalized because it was all I knew. Maybe I didn’t go to boarding school, but I was isolated in private schools with students just like me. It wasn’t until I got to Harvard that I realized some people actually do love their children—no matter what.”
“Why do I still think that you’re not okay, even though you don’t circulate in that crowd anymore?” Seth asked.
“It’s a process,” I replied uncomfortably. I hated that he could see me, even though I’d done every single thing I could to hide my insecurities. “I’ve been doing a lot better since I went my own way.”
“I guess I get why you were engaged to a rich guy,” he mused.
“It couldn’t be anything less than a leader in society. I think I got engaged to Nolan to please my mother. I was still looking for her approval back then. According to her, he was absolutely perfect in every way.”
“Was he?” Seth asked gruffly.
“No. He wasn’t. But those things aren’t discussed in polite society, unfortunately. Money talks in that world. And he definitely has a lot of that. Enough to keep anyone from calling him out. Things get whispered about, but never said out loud.”
“So what happened to you two?”
“I broke the golden rule,” I explained. “Not only did I say something out loud, but I screamed it during a very exclusive ball.”
“He cheated on you?” he guessed.
I took a deep breath. “Not only was he unfaithful, but he did it by sleeping with a fifteen-year-old girl.”
I swallowed hard. The dead silence in the vehicle seemed to stretch on and on.
CHAPTER 10
RILEY
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Seth roared, breaking the long silence with a vengeance.
I was relieved that, for the very first time, someone other than my brothers and I was infuriated by Nolan’s disgusting behavior.
“I wish I was,” I confessed. “I caught him with the girl at the ball. In a bedroom. With her clothes half off. She wasn’t fighting it. Her mother thought Nolan would be a good catch if her daughter could steal him away from me. I grabbed her and hauled her out of the bedroom and back to the ballroom. Her name is Penny, and she told me everything. I vented with Nolan near the ballroom floor, which is highly frowned upon.”
“The bastard should be in jail,” Seth growled.
“Her parents refused to press charges. They still hoped she’d eventually marry Nolan.”
“He’s probably old enough to be her father,” Seth answered, sounding disgusted.
“Twenty years older than her,” I confirmed.
“What happened to their relationship?”
I smiled into the darkness. “I convinced her that she needed to be a teenager instead of trying to catch a daddy husband. She comes to visit me in Citrus Beach as much as possible. Penny will be off to Harvard next year. She’s smart, Seth. Yeah, she’s still a little confused, but I think she’s getting her head on straight.”
“With your help?” he said with admiration in his voice.
“Maybe,” I answered. “I couldn’t be mad at her. She was still a child.”
“You’re an amazing woman, Riley Montgomery,” he said hoarsely.
“Not so much,” I argued. “It was the right thing to do.”
“He’s an idiot.” Seth still sounded pissed off. “He had you, for fuck’s sake. What else could a guy want? So you chucked him and coaxed his prey away, too?”
“I did. The whole incident was the catalyst that made me finally make a clean break. I didn’t think I’d ever go back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about all of this, Riley? I never would have forced you back into a situation that had bad memories for you.” His voice was full of regret.
“So are you going to let me out of the contract?” I asked hopefully.
He was silent for a few minutes before he answered. “Not completely. But no more fancy events. If your brothers decide to come on board, I don’t want to take on anybody else.”