Meeting Nadia’s eyes across the crowded visitors’ lobby was like a punch to Nate’s gut, made about a thousand times worse when he saw her notice Agnes. Nadia was a pro at hiding her feelings when she wanted to, but she couldn’t hide her hurt and dismay at the sight of the girl who would replace her by his side. Nate cursed his father under his breath for one more act of casual cruelty. Instead of forbidding Nate to visit, or arranging some activity that would prevent Nate from doing so, he had merely declared that Nate and Agnes should spend the day together “getting to know” each other. Nate’s choices had been to bring Agnes along or to not visit at all. He hoped he’d made the right one.
Nadia was sitting with her sister, Gerri. When he first caught sight of them, they’d been leaning toward each other in earnest—and obviously private—conversation. As soon as Nadia noticed him, Gerri followed her sister’s gaze and noticed him, too.
Gerri was like a younger, marginally softer version of her mother. Not quite the cast-iron bitch that Esmeralda was, but plenty formidable nonetheless. Which was only natural, with her being the heir to her father’s presidency.
Nate had always had the impression that Gerri didn’t like him, though he’d never had any concrete evidence to support that impression. She was properly respectful and polite when they ran into each other at social functions or when Nate had attended business meetings with her. There had never been any warmth in their interactions, but then neither had there been noticeable coldness. Until now, when Gerri was glaring at him so fiercely he could almost feel it as a physical slap across his cheek.
Nate’s temper stirred, but he quickly leashed it. Gerri had no way of knowing how the Chairman had managed to force him into this marriage arrangement. Nor did she know that Nate hadn’t brought Agnes with him to the retreat by choice. In her place, he’d have been staring daggers, too, and he was glad at least one member of Nadia’s family seemed to be standing by her. He glanced over his shoulder at Agnes, who had spoken maybe five or six words during the ride over, and those only when absolutely necessary.
“Stay here!” he ordered her, and he had no doubt she would obey. She was very likely the mousiest girl he’d ever met, which made her about the worst match for him he could imagine.
He started across the room, and, as expected, there was no pitter-patter of footsteps indicating Agnes was following. Meanwhile, Gerri and Nadia exchanged a few more words and a hug. By the time he reached the love seat where they were sitting, Gerri was on her feet. The look on her face had not warmed, and Nate was half-surprised his bodyguard hadn’t gone on red alert. He checked over his shoulder to make sure, but Fischer was still standing at attention in the entryway while Agnes stood a little ways off, looking lost and uncomfortable.
“You have some nerve,” Gerri said to him when he was within earshot. She looked like she wanted to skin him alive.
Nadia put her hand on Gerri’s arm. “Gerri, please.”
The soft plea did nothing to calm Gerri’s obvious rage. “It wasn’t bad enough that you ruined my sister? You had to bring that creature here?”
“Gerri!” Nadia said more sharply. “It’s not his fault. And we aren’t alone.”
Nate saw Gerri do a quick visual sweep of the room, checking to see if anyone was watching them. Which, of course, they were. Nate was the Chairman Heir, and when he walked into a room, he could be sure his every move was being observed.
Gerri shook her head and lowered her voice. “You never deserved her. And she deserved way better than you.”
Once again, Nate had to wrestle with his temper. He was the Chairman Heir, and people just didn’t talk to him like that. Not only that, the words fucking hurt. Nate tried very hard to swallow that hurt, because Gerri was more right than she knew. And until now, he’d never really appreciated just how lucky he had been to have a friend like Nadia.
“I know,” he told Gerri in a tight voice.
She blinked in surprise, but otherwise made no response. She gave him another contemptuous look, then brushed past him, bumping his shoulder on the way by like a pissed-off guy might do. Nate ground his teeth and took it without complaint, watching her stride angrily away from him. She paused for a moment to give Agnes a sneer, making the girl’s face turn a mottled red; then she left the room.
Nadia sighed. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Obviously, she doesn’t know the whole story.”
Nate turned back to Nadia and took a really good look at her for the first time. She was as beautiful as ever, though the powder-blue uniform leached much of the color from her face and he thought she might have lost a little weight. A glance at her hands showed she’d been chewing her nails, a habit she’d broken long ago, and there was a hint of a slump to her usually proud shoulders. She was not flourishing here at Tranquility, and everything she was suffering was because of him.
Guilt ate at him as he enveloped her in a hug, wishing he were smart enough to think of a way to fix things.
“I’m so sorry, Nadia,” he murmured into her hair, and to his shame his eyes were burning. “You know I had no choice, right?”
Nadia hugged him harder. “I know. And we both should have seen it coming. Not that seeing it coming would have helped any.” She tried to end the hug, but Nate wouldn’t let her go. She probably hadn’t had a proper hug since she’d set foot in the retreat, Gerri being too reserved to be so demonstrative in public. He refused to think about the possibility that Dante had laid hands on her.
“Cut it out, Nate,” she protested, pushing against him. “Your fiancée is watching us.”
“Fuck her,” he snarled, still not letting go. He was being an ass, and he knew it. He couldn’t count how many times he’d chided Kurt for swearing around Nadia, and here he was doing the same thing. But there was so much anger coursing through his blood, and he had nowhere to turn to let it out.
Once upon a time, Nadia had been reluctant to criticize him with any real heat. Not because he didn’t deserve it, but because she thought letting things slide—or being excessively subtle in her criticism—was part of her duty as his presumed fiancée. Things had changed between them since the death of the original Nate Hayes.
“I don’t know who you think you’re impressing,” she said crisply, “but it definitely isn’t me. Now let go and show a little class.”
“Bossy,” he teased, though he doubted there was much humor in his voice. However, he’d created enough of a spectacle already, and Nadia was the one who would have to live with any consequences. He suspected gossip was like a national pastime at an Executive retreat—even more so than it was for Executives in the public eye. What else was there to do in a retreat, after all?
Reluctantly releasing Nadia, he took Gerri’s recently vacated seat and patted the spot beside him. Brow furrowed, Nadia looked across the room at Agnes. Their eyes met for a moment, and Agnes turned that particularly unattractive shade of mottled red Nate was already growing accustomed to. He felt his lip curling into an involuntary sneer as Nadia slowly took the seat beside him.
“I take it you and Agnes aren’t like this yet?” Nadia asked, crossing her fingers.
Nate snorted. “I’d rather marry Jewel, and you know how much I hate Jewel. But at least she has a personality, however loathsome.”
“And she’s prettier than Agnes,” Nadia said, and though he heard the tone of reproach in her voice, he chose to ignore it.
“I’ve seen cows prettier than Agnes.” He crossed his arms over his chest and slouched more comfortably into the love seat. “Even her name sounds ugly.”
“That sounds like something Jewel would say,” Nadia pointed out, the reproach in her voice growing sharper.
He was sure Jewel and her bitchy friends had said worse about Agnes already. As far as he could tell, Agnes’s only redeeming feature was that she was the daughter of a Chairman, and that would buy her very little slack with the Executives of Paxco. Particularly the teenage ones, who had such a propensity for playing games of one-upmans
hip anyway.
“Just wait till the press gets wind of the engagement,” he said. “I’ll sound positively flattering by comparison.”
Nadia’s eyes softened with pity. “The poor thing,” she murmured, and Nate felt that damn sneer twisting his lips again.
“This is a better marriage than she could have hoped for in her wildest dreams. And she doesn’t give a shit who she has to walk over to get what she wants.” He’d told her flat-out that she’d be ruining Nadia’s life, and it hadn’t seemed to bother her.
Nadia’s gaze turned positively fierce. “I know you think you’re the greatest prize in the history of the universe, but I can tell you from personal experience that you’re not as much of a prize as you think.”
Nate flinched at the anger in her voice—and at the truth of her words. Recent events had forcefully opened his eyes to how poorly he had treated her over the course of their friendship, of how he had taken advantage of her kind nature—and of the burden of responsibility that made her unable to protest his treatment.
“You haven’t the faintest idea what it’s like to be powerless over your life,” Nadia continued. “I doubt anyone sat down with Agnes and asked her if she’d like to marry a spoiled, selfish, mean-spirited ass who just happens to be the heir to Paxco. No one ever asked me.”
Ouch! He couldn’t blame Nadia for being angry at him, not after the direction her life had taken lately. And he couldn’t argue that he hadn’t been spoiled and selfish through much of his life. If he’d grown up as much as he’d like to think, he’d have kept his mouth shut and taken the criticism like a man, but he just couldn’t refrain from trying to defend himself.
“I am not mean-spirited.” It seemed like a puny defense against her assessment of his character, but it was the best he could do.
“I wouldn’t have said so before today,” Nadia agreed, crossing her arms and glaring at him. “But without having spoken a word with her, I can tell from across the room that Agnes is painfully shy, and that you’ve been making her miserable. And you just described her as a cow with no personality. I hate to break it to you, Nate, but that’s the very definition of mean-spirited. It’s not her fault your father chose her as his instrument of revenge.”
Nate sank a little lower into his seat. “I’m hoping she’ll hate me and try to talk her father out of the marriage.” And if that wasn’t a rationalization, he didn’t know what was. Agnes had already made it clear she had no intention of opposing the marriage, so being unpleasant to her served no purpose. Other than to vent his anger, that is.
Nadia snorted. “You’re so used to getting your own way you have no idea what it’s like to be one of the rest of us. She’s an Executive girl, and from what I understand, she’s not her father’s heir. She’s been raised since birth to believe her purpose in life is to bring more power and money to her family by marrying well. She’ll do whatever she thinks is best for her family, no matter how personally miserable it will make her.”
“It’s not like I have a choice in this,” he retorted.
She raised her chin. “Yes, for two or three days, you’ve known what it’s like not to have choices in your life. Obviously, you understand exactly what it’s been like for Agnes and me to live with that our whole lives.”
This was not exactly how he’d been picturing his reunion with Nadia. His head was starting to ache, and his heart was a lead anchor in his chest. “You don’t understand, Nadia,” he said, staring down at his feet to escape the reproach in her eyes. “It’s not just that I have to marry Agnes and that I don’t like her.” His throat tightened, his voice going froggy. “Every awful thing that’s happened to you has been because of me. I was having a hard enough time living with what I’d put you through before, but now…” He sucked in a deep breath, because if he didn’t pull himself together he was going to lose every last scrap of his dignity. And he was sure people were watching, even if he didn’t dare to look up.
Nadia slid closer to him on the love seat and put her hand softly on his back. “Don’t use me as an excuse to be mean to Agnes,” she said. “I’ll agree that everything that’s happened and everything that probably will happen pretty much sucks. But it’s all your father’s doing, Nate, not yours. And certainly not hers.”
Leaning forward and ducking his head, Nate clasped his hands together between his knees, wishing he could whisk Nadia off to somewhere private where he didn’t have to work so hard to keep himself under control. Not that he was doing such a great job of it as it was, but he really wanted to punch something right now, or maybe to yell out his frustration at the top of his lungs.
Yes, a yelling, screaming, kicking temper tantrum would feel damn good right about now.
“You have to hate me,” he said to his hands, letting his hair and shadows hide his face. “At least a little bit. If I’d listened to you on the night of the reception, if I hadn’t insisted on hooking up with Kurt at a public event just for the thrill of secretly giving my father the finger…”
Nadia sighed and leaned against his side. “I could have just played lookout for you, like you wanted. I didn’t have to choose that particular moment to put my foot down, not after all the other things I’d let you get away with over the years. Besides, we might be blissfully ignorant and safe in our old lives if we’d done things differently, but how many more people would Thea have vivisected by now? We might have screwed up both of our own lives, but we saved a whole lot of other people’s. How can we possibly regret that?”
Nadia was a better person than he. She was right, of course, but he suspected if he had it to do over again, he would have done things differently. Once again, he was showing how self-centered he was, even when he was trying to change his stripes. But then maybe if it had only been his own life he’d ruined, he might have been better able to see the whole picture. It was what his actions had done to Nadia that kept him up at night.
Forcing himself to sit up straight and stop feeling sorry for himself, Nate took hold of Nadia’s hand and gave it a fierce squeeze.
“You are the best, nicest person I know,” he told her, “and it’s so massively unfair that any of this has happened to you. But I want you to know that I’m going to fight for you, even if I have no choice but to marry Agnes.” It took a conscious effort for him not to sneer when he said the name, but being cruel to Agnes wasn’t going to get him out of the marriage, and he needed to cut it out. “I won’t let them bury you in some retreat.”
His mind flashed to an image of his mother, lazing her life away voluntarily behind those retreat walls. Maybe his mother had been satisfied with that kind of life, but Nadia would never be, and he would do everything in his power to make sure she wasn’t consigned to such a fate.
“You may not have a choice,” she said sadly.
“I refuse to accept that. And Dante will never be my favorite person in the world, but I’m going to see if I can hire him away from your family so that it’ll be easier for us to work together. Between the two of us, we’ll find a way to get you out, if that’s what we need to do.”
Nadia’s delicate throat worked as she swallowed hard and closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered, but he could tell she didn’t believe him. He wished there was some way he could convince her she had a lifeline available. It would be a lot easier if he had some concrete idea of how to help her.
Nadia opened her eyes, her expression turning composed as she banished her fear and unhappiness and replaced them with compassion. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
He grimaced as a jumble of mixed emotions about his mother fought for supremacy. Anger threatened to win the battle as he wrestled with the knowledge that she hadn’t wanted to see him before she died. Then he felt guilty for being angry at her when she was dead.
“Thank you,” he said, because what else was he supposed to say? “But if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about my mother right now.”
“All right,” Nadia agreed easily. She’d probably kno
wn all along he wouldn’t want to talk about his feelings, at least not yet. She’d known him a long time, after all. “How about you introduce me to Agnes instead?”
Nate made a face. “Why would you want me to do that? I wasn’t exaggerating about her personality. She’s about as interesting as—” He shut himself up when he saw the way Nadia was looking at him. He cleared his throat. “Sorry. I, uh … I’ll just go get her, why don’t I?”
She nodded. “Good idea.”
Knowing this whole thing was going to be awkward all around, he went to fetch Agnes.
CHAPTER TWELVE
If Nate had to accept the condolences of one more person, or hear the words “if there’s anything I can do” one more time, he was going to scream. He wanted to remind every one of his ass-kissing well-wishers that he hadn’t seen his mother in ten years, that she had disappeared from his life long ago. He wasn’t glad she was dead, but he was hardly prostrate with grief, either. But even he, who laughed in the face of Executive rules of conduct, knew better than to say anything like that. He was almost glad his father had demanded a moment of his time before the service started, because at least then he could stop trying to pretend he appreciated everyone’s kind words and sympathy for a while.
Nate was not in the least surprised that his father wasn’t there yet when he stepped into the intimate little parlor near the front entrance to the building. It was apparently used as a meeting room, where people who were thinking of fleeing to the retreat could meet with the staff and discuss their options. Which meant it was nicely private and had a door that locked. A sofa and chairs clustered around a coffee table, on which lay several stacks of brochures. Nate glanced at the brochures, then snorted softly when he saw all the photos of people smiling as if they’d found heaven on earth. He wondered if any of them actually lived here, or if they were all models.
Unable to sit still, Nate paced the small room, waiting for his father. He’d been glad to get away from the crowd, but now he felt caged and restless. Maybe it was the low ceiling, or the small windows, or the dim lighting, but the room felt close and stifling. Nate tugged at the tie at his throat, wishing he could just take it off and unbutton the collar of his shirt.