“You’re right, I do know who you are.” I glare at him, heart racing, head dizzy with shame and rage. “Why are you back, Kellen? What do you want with me? All I’ve done is keep to myself and now you’re making my life harder.”
“Just by sharing some wine with you? I didn’t know I had such power.”
“Stop it. What do you want?”
“You,” he says quietly, leaning closer. “I want you, Tara.”
“I’m not for sale.” I shove back from the table and stand up, but he yanks me back down. I let out a gasp as he pins me to the chair, staring at me with a vicious smile the whole time.
“I forgot to mention something,” he says, his grip tightening. “My new trust fund comes with a string attached. It’s an annoying string, but one I think we can untangle together.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I need to get married to access the money.”
I stare at him for three fast beats of my heart before I laugh in his face.
He sits there and takes it. I know what he’s going to say—I can see where this conversation is going from a mile away—and no, absolutely no, there no way in hell I’ll ever, in a million years, willingly get closer to this psychotic asshole.
The idea is so absurd, so sick and twisted, that it makes me want to vomit but instead I just laugh and laugh.
I twist away from him and finally get to my feet. He lets me walk across the room, catching my breath, wiping tears from my eyes.
“It’s not happening,” I say finally once I’m somewhat under control. “If you’re about to say we should get married, it’s just not happening.”
He looks at me, face utterly calm, and says, “I’ll give you the manor.”
I stop short and stare at him, my mouth hanging open.
Hayle Manor is a gorgeous, massive house on ten acres of land. I know every rock, every bush, every blade of grass in this place. I’ve been working it for seven years, and in that time, I’ve dumped my heart and soul into making this garden the most gorgeous place I can given the desert conditions. This is my land as much as anyone else’s and I feel closer to the outdoors in this place than I do to anything else in the world.
When I’m out there, it’s like I can be a real person for once.
The idea of actually owning it, really, truly owning it, makes my soul ache to the very core.
“You’re fucking with me,” I say quietly.
“I’m not joking. The trust will give me fifty million dollars which will be plenty to fund whatever fight I have to go through to wrestle control away from Hugh. But more than that, marrying you will give me access to what you know. It’ll also have the added benefit of making me respectable.” He says that last word with a sneer.
“You’ll never be respectable,” I say, though I’m barely paying attention now. I’m imagining bulldozing that monstrosity of a house and ripping out all the unnatural and invasive species I’ve been forced to plant over the years because the Hayles think they’re pretty and turning this place into an oasis of local shrubs and flowers and whatever else is natural to this ecosystem. I could make it public, run tours through the gardens, teach people about native plants—
All I’d have to do is marry a man I hate.
“There’s money too, if you want it,” he says, sipping his wine. “A few million plus the manor, which is worth even more. Live in the place, burn it down, I don’t care. So long as I’m in control of the Hayle family, you can do whatever you want.”
“Is this forever?” I meet his gaze and my hands are shaking and I’m practically salivating at the idea of owning this place myself. I’ve stayed working the gardens here for a bunch of reasons, but mainly I’ve fallen in love with this landscape. This place is magical somehow, the rocks and the dirt, the trees and the bushes, the gnarled wind-swept shrubs and the scrubby patches of grass and the tall cacti. It’s in me somehow, like working the ground with my own hands knitted me to this place so tightly that I can’t seem to unwind my connection anymore.
It’s calming, being out there in the heat with the wind blowing down my bare skin, the sun beating down like a hammer. It’s clean, like it can tear away the demons that still plague me from all those years ago. This landscape is everything to me, it’s my salvation and my retreat, and I feel like I can taste it now, right on my tongue, sliding down into my core.
“It doesn’t have to be forever,” he says quietly. “Nothing about the trust suggests our marriage needs to be permanent.”
“And you’ll really give me the manor? And all the land around it?”
“Whatever you want.” He’s smiling now, the bastard. He knows I’m tempted. I walk over, snatch my wine, and throw it back, drinking it down. My heart’s racing and my cheeks are still flushed and I glare at him, trying to push away the memories of Cait he resurrected, the memories of shooting up and lying around strung out and fucked up out of my mind, the horrible memories of a life I thought I escaped. I want to replace them with better memories of taking care of this land.
He’s offering me a future, something I’ve always dreamed of but only sideways, only carefully, never willing to fully commit to that dream because it was impossible, until now.
This can be mine. The cottage, the gardens. The land around it. All of it can be mine.