Surprise had him swinging around. “Gram? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Is that any way to greet your grandmother?” She stalked into the room, and he wondered what she had to be pissed off about. Her life wasn’t falling apart.
Then Myles saw his dad lingering in the hallway. When he didn’t follow her inside, Gram did an about face and actually grabbed him by the ear to drag him into the room.
“Mother.” He pulled free, rubbing at his reddened ear.
“Hush it. It’s your fault we’re in this mess,” Gram snapped.
Myles glanced from one to the other, then back to Mr. Bondurant, who just seemed embarrassed by the whole proceeding. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m in the middle of a business meeting.”
“Yes. Paying off your investor.” She swung toward Warrick, arms crossed. “Tell him.”
“Tell me what?” Myles ground out.
His father didn’t meet his eyes, looking at Mr. Bondurant instead. “You have the final paperwork, John?”
“Of course, Mr. Stewart.” The briefcase opened with a decisive snick.
Myles stared, his sleep-deprived brain refusing to accept what was obviously going on. “You? You were my investor?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, did the Devil get snowed in and I missed it?”
Warrick sighed. “Given the contention between us, it seemed simpler all around to conduct the transaction via proxies through my shell companies.”
Myles’ world had already been off its axis since Piper left. This just broke his entire world view. His father, the man who’d done every damned thing to try to lure, bully, and drag Myles into the family business, had actually invested in his dream?
“Why would you invest in the paper? You’ve always despised the fact that I went into journalism.”
“I saw an opportunity to help you get this newspaper thing out of your system so you could get back on track.”
“On track?”
“Yes. I figured you’d have a good shot, learn that there’s no future in this business and would come home with a clear conscience.”
Myles’ temper rose as his world tipped back into recognizable territory. “So you pulled funding early, thinking I’d just capitulate.”
“Well, that was the original plan, but then you pulled this whole trust fund wedding stunt and that impressed me.”
“Honestly, Warrick!” Gram snapped, disgust evident in every line of her face.
“That impressed you?” Myles demanded.
“Yes. I didn’t expect you to go after the trust. It was set up so long ago, I’d forgotten about it. But that kind of Hail Mary shows that this isn’t some lark or experiment you’ll drop when things get hard. It shows how dedicated you are to making this paper work. It shows grit I didn’t know you had.”
“Grit,” Myles repeated.
“Absolutely,” Warrick said, with more enthusiasm. “The whole thing made me really look at what you were doing here for the first time. And I realized, you’ve really got something here, son. Against all the current trends and dire forecasts about the newspaper business, you’re turning this paper around. I even thought about calling it off, leaving my investment in place, despite the fact that you don’t need me anymore.”
His whole life, Myles had wanted his father’s approval. The gravity of it settled over him, making him feel like his dad finally saw him as an adult for the first time. The unexpected validation of his life’s dream was sweet, and his immediate instinct was to tell Piper. She’d understand what this meant to him. But the ache at not being able to tell her, at maybe never getting that chance left him with an aching void in his chest. If the cost of all this was losing her, he didn’t want it.
“I went into this on good faith, thinking the investment was legitimate. I worked my ass off building this, and all this time, I was building a house of cards on a rug you were just waiting to pull out from under me.”
Warrick’s eyes widened. “That’s not—”
“You backed me into a corner. I was on a good trajectory with the revitalization of the paper before you sent me into a tailspin. If you hadn’t interfered, Piper and I would have dated like normal people, fallen in love like normal people, gotten married like normal people, after a normal amount of time to build a proper foundation. And instead, because of your Machiavellian scheming, we rushed things to try to save my business, and now I’ve lost my wife.”