When I closed the book, my stomach growled, and reluctantly I wound my way back through the walls of evergreen, seeking the kitchen. There was a full-time chef on staff at the Hale house, but I didn’t bother her for dinner. I pulled together some leftovers from earlier in the week and ate alone at the large table, my gaze out on the side garden.
Alice was there, pruning the white roses that bloomed along a trellis. She could have had one of the landscapers do it, but she enjoyed gardening. Her blonde hair gleamed in the golden sunlight, and as she paused to wipe sweat from her forehead, her eyes locked onto me. She waved, but didn’t smile, and went back to work.
Did she know about the deal her husband had made with Royce? How Macalister had bought me for one hundred thousand shares? Macalister was Zeus, but she wasn’t Hera. At least, not in jealousy or fidelity—I’d seen her and Vance together, after all.
I stared down at the wood grain running through the table and tried not to think about it.
At seven-thirty sharp, I peered up at the closed library door, and trepidation twisted in my core. The sensation was becoming familiar. Macalister was already in there because I could hear his heavy footsteps moving around. I filled my lungs with a deep breath, grasped the knob, and pushed the door open.
Awareness ghosted across my skin like a whisper. Something was . . . different. The room looked the same with its bookshelves full of colorful spines, and the smell of leather and oak was as I was accustomed to. The man who stood by the window wore one of his many impeccable suits, not a cufflink or a hair out of place.
But he didn’t have to say a word for me to know something was wrong. The nearly empty tumbler of amber liquid in his hand did.
I’d never seen Macalister Hale drink.
The night of the initiation, he’d toasted with a glass of champagne, but he’d only taken a single sip before handing it off to his wife. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he’d merely pressed the glass to his mouth and faked the action of letting the alcohol past his lips.
He demanded precision in all aspects of his life. I assumed he didn’t drink because he wouldn’t want anything to impair his judgement or make him vulnerable. But there was a bottle of Macallan 1926 on the table that was half empty, and an unused glass rested beside it.
Macalister’s shoulders rolled back, and he straightened to his full, daunting height. His gaze pierced into me while accusation swamped his eyes. “What are you doing here?”
Was I early? I wanted to shrink back into the shadows, but there was nowhere to hide. I bit down on the inside of my cheek to muster the words. “It’s seven-thirty.”
His arm extended out before bending at ninety-degrees, pulling back his sleeve and making the Cartier watch on his wrist visible to him. He checked the time and frowned. “So it is.”
Rather than take a seat at the desk where the chessboard waited for us, he stayed at the window and finished his scotch. Not in savoring sips as it was supposed to be done, but in one huge swallow.
The whole day had been weird, but nothing set me more on edge than the way Macalister looked now. The only emotions I’d seen from him were the hard, shallow ones. Anger. Disappointment. Envy.
This man now was barely recognizable. He looked exhausted.
And utterly human.
I hadn’t taken my hand off the doorknob yet. Like a chess piece, I’d moved but was still considering before committing to it. “Do you want to postpone?”
“No.” He strode to the desk, put down his empty glass and refilled it, then poured a few sips-worth into the other glass. “You’ll join me in a drink while we play.”
It wasn’t a request, and his order made me squirm inside my skin. Sharing a drink with my future father-in-law should have been a nice gesture, and the scotch he’d poured wasn’t an ‘average day’ kind of whiskey—not even for one of the richest men in America. It was far too fine, too expensive.
I didn’t like how it made the evening seem like we were friends. We’d never be friends. He was more than twice my age, and the power dynamic between us was wider than the Atlantic.
“I’m, uh, not a scotch drinker,” I said.
He wasn’t fazed and held the glass out to me. “I don’t remember asking.”
My heart sank. I closed the door and went to him, mumbling a thank you as I took the scotch. At least he hadn’t poured heavy and was only wasting a few thousand dollars on me. Like a gentleman, he waited until I sat before he did. Two months ago, I wouldn’t have warranted this sign of respect from him. For years, he hadn’t noticed my existence.