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For a second Allyson couldn’t comprehend his words.
She slipped away from him, her entire body tense. How had she managed to forget about the trust fund? Dane had set aside a massive amount of money for her right before the wedding. Having that kind of money at her disposal suddenly made her feel dizzy.
Her husband turned to her, worry etched on his face. “Are you all right? Allyson, what is it?”
Placing a hand on his arm to steady herself, she stared into his piercing blue eyes. His concern for her was comforting. A welcome change from the icy indifference he had seemed to treat her with just moments earlier. “I forgot about the money.” She exhaled loudly, relief gripping her. “Which means everything’s going to be okay. I can help you by giving it back to you.”
His jaw tightened, irritation flashing in his eyes. “You can’t help me.”
“Why not?” she pressed.
“I gave you that money,” he said. “What kind of man would I be if I took it back from you?”
“You gave me that money to do whatever I wanted with it,” she said. “I want to give it to you. It won’t be enough to buy the company back, but it’ll buy shares.”
“And I’m refusing it,” he said flatly.
She frowned. Why was he being so proud and stubborn? He had said that wealth meant more to him than getting Prescott Global back. Now she had found a way to give him that wealth.
Being his wife had made her wonder if she could really help him. Made her wonder if she had what it took to handle whatever crisis came up. Now that her new family had suffered a huge setback, she could actually help.
“What kind of wife would I be if I let you go broke?” she asked, throwing his words back at him.
“This isn’t up to you,” he replied. “You’re going home. That’s final.”
“No, it’s not,” she said sharply. “We’re supposed to be in this together. We’re supposed to be a team. A family, remember?”
“There’s no way in hell I’m letting you get mixed up in all this.” He looked down his nose at her. Dane had just lost his fortune, and yet he was still the picture of aristocratic arrogance.
“I told you earlier this morning that I was going to take on Katherine and Monica,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I meant it.”
“How do you plan on doing that?” he asked in a low voice. “Are you just going to pay them to be nice to you?”
Her chin trembled. The hurt of his words was like a huge crushing weight on her shoulders. It was clear that on this issue her husband didn’t take her seriously. Didn’t think she was tough enough to stand up to their enemies. He hadn’t blamed her for losing Prescott Global to the Handels, but Allyson could still sense him pulling away from her. She squared her shoulders, determination making her stare him right in the eye. Let him try to push her away. No matter what happened, she was always going to support him. Always going to stand by him. “At least take some of the money and give it to your parents.”
He shook his head. “My mother will never accept charity from you. Not after everything that’s happened.”
“So, what do you expect me to do?” she demanded. “Live a life of luxury while you and your parents end up on the street somewhere? Really? That’s what you think of me?”
“It won’t come to that,” he said tersely. “I’ll find a way to get our money back and things will be back to normal.”
She scoffed. “How do you plan on doing that if you’re so ready to just let Prescott Global go?”
“So, now you’re an expert on business, are you?” Bitterness made his eyes narrow.
“I never said I was an expert,” she said, trying to keep her tone even. “But I have worked with you. I know this company. I’m trying to help.” Staring at him now, she almost didn’t recognize him. His blue eyes had lost all their warmth. Now they were like ice. Instead of an easy smile, his sensuous mouth was formed into a harsh line. He seemed taller somehow, if such a thing was possible. His body seemed to take up the entire room. Even the air in the room was colder. It wasn’t the air conditioning that was making his office unbearable. It was him.
Right before her very eyes, her husband had turned cold. Aloof. He regarded her with a cool, disinterested wariness. As if her very presence made him distrustful. Did he blame her? Her own sister had helped to bring him down. Maybe he secretly blamed her and simply wanted to spare her feelings.
“You can’t help.”
“I can,” she insisted. “You just won’t let me.”
“I’m not taking your money,” he said. “And since you don’t understand how these things work, you have no way of helping me.”
“That’s not fair,” she snapped. “You’re the one who wanted me to work at Prescott in a senior position when I had no experience. I told you I needed to learn more, but you still seemed to have faith in me. What’s changed?”
“Everything,” he forced out. “Everything. It was one thing to work with you when Prescott Global was ours. How can we work together when we have nothing? When I’m nothing?”
“You really believe that...” Her voice trailed off. “You’re not nothing. Not to me. You’re the man I love. That’s all that matters.”
His body tensed. “How can you love me when I have nothing to give you but debt and misery? If you give me your money, it’ll be gone in less than a week. The amount of debt my family will have to pay off is staggering. Not to mention the staff we’ll have to lay off. All the properties we’ll have to sell to make ends meet.”
“What the hell, Dane?” She stomped her foot and noted his look of surprise in her tone. “Two days ago, we were on a beach, in love. Now you act like you’ve hit rock bottom and the world is ending. The man I know wouldn’t lie down and give up. He’d stand up and fight.” She took a long breath, letting it out slowly. “Take the money,” she pleaded. “I don’t care if you lose it all.”
“I care,” he hissed. “You might not care if you end up in the poor house, but damn it...I do. No wife of mine is going to be broke.”
He was so proud. So arrogant and hard-headed. Even now. Even now with everything he had ever worked for slipping away. Even now with the hopes of so many generations going down the drain, he refused to admit defeat. Refused to admit vulnerability.
It made her go weak in the knees. Made her body tremble with yearning for him. She had thought that after he admitted his love for her there would never be anything holding him back from her. She had believed that she knew every part of him. Knew him so well that she could always reach him. But she had been wrong.
Right now, her husband was a mystery to her. Something indescribable flashed across his face, making his eyes darker than the storm clouds outside. She trembled again underneath his gaze. Because there really was a storm raging inside him. He was fighting it, doing his best to hold it back and control himself. Allyson wondered what it was like to make love to him when he was like this. When a cold, icy storm raged just beneath the surface of civility he had cultivated all his life.
She suspected that if she was to give in to her primal desire and give herself to him now, neither of them would ever be the same.
“And no husband of mine is going to face this alone,” she said, with far more confidence than she felt. The truth was, she had no idea how to help him. Not just because he was hell-bent on refusing her help, but because she wasn’t prepared to deal with a crisis like this.
Before she dated Dane, the stakes in her professional life had never been this high. If she made a mistake at work she could simply reschedule a meeting, or send a gift basket to smooth things over. With this sudden change of fortune, billions of dollars were at stake. The entire Prescott empire was in danger of being lost. Permanently.
And she hadn’t been a Prescott for very long. The pain of the loss was so much worse for Dane and his parents.
“Have you tried calling your parents?” she asked.
“What good would that do?” he asked harshly.
She flinched. Dammit, she probably sounded so hopelessly naïve to him. So completely out of her depth. She wracked her brain, trying to come up with a plan to solve their problems. If she could just be useful to Dane, maybe then he would let her in. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so cold and distant.
He must have seen how upset she was because the expression on his face softened. “I’m sorry. This is all coming out wrong.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I just don’t want to stress my parents out right now.”
“Of course.” She nodded. “Your father can’t deal with this kind of stress while he recovers. And your mother has enough on her plate trying to take care of him.”
“My mother has been with my father through so much,” he said. “Prescott Global’s early years weren’t exactly easy for them. I thought that now, with my dad semi-retired, they could finally rest. Finally slow down while I dealt with the hard stuff. But I’ve just made everything worse.”
Her heart ached for him. Obviously, he blamed himself. But it wasn’t his fault. The Handels were ruthless. Ruthless enough to take advantage of his father’s illness for their own gain. Plus, her jealous sister had stabbed her in the back.
If anyone was to blame, it was her. She hadn’t wanted Dane to fire Katherine because she had thought placating the Handels was the right strategy. Welcoming them into the fold had seemed like the right thing to do in the wake of so many scandals and lies. Scandals she had been at the center of. Lies she had told.
Hard as it was to admit now, guilt at using lies and manipulation to get the merger deal with Handel and Company had been the driving force for her not wanting to see Katherine fired. Faking a marriage to Dane had brought so many problems for Prescott’s financial standing. Which put pressure on the entire company.
Now they were married for real, and it seemed that once again their love had created many unforeseen problems. Dane had decided against firing Katherine because of his love for Allyson. That love had now destroyed his company. Ruined his dreams.
“There’s enough blame to go around,” she said softly. “My sister convinced the board that you had health problems. I convinced you not to fire Katherine because I thought it would backfire and make her brother and father angry. I should’ve been wiser. More cutthroat. Like your mother. Or Katherine.”
“You want to be like them?” he asked. “All Katherine has done is cause misery. My mother is barely better.”
She swallowed hard. “Maybe, but all your life you’ve been surrounded by women who get things done. Who fight for their families no matter what. They don’t give in to fear or guilt.”
“So, you want to be like them?”
“I want to be the type of woman they don’t see coming,” she said defiantly. “Katherine doesn’t think I have what it takes to stand up to her. She isn’t scared of me. I want her to be.”
Before he could respond, his cell phone rang. He reached into his jacket pocket to retrieve his phone. “Looks like one of the senior managers,” he said with a frown. “Probably calling with more bad news.”
Answering the call he turned his back to her, speaking in hushed tones.
It stung that he obviously didn’t want her to hear. Clearly, he didn’t think she could handle what was going on.
A pang shot through her heart. Over and over he had assured her that she belonged in his world. That she was just as good as all the heiresses he had dated. Somehow, she doubted any of his blue blood exes would have been so caught off-guard by what the Handels had done. His own mother had warned that Katherine and Monica’s scheming was a test she couldn’t fail. But she had already failed.
Her eyes slid to her husband as he spoke desperately to the senior manager. She couldn’t make out what Dane was saying, but whatever was going on he was clearly angry about it. Never had she felt so helpless and useless. An awful thought flashed in her mind. Dane would be better off if he had married a woman like Katherine Handel.
Dane got off the phone and turned back to her, forcing her to push her awful thoughts aside. The expression on his face had hardened again.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Katherine’s going to lay off half of Prescott’s workforce,” he said, his tone grim. “That’s part of the reason the board agreed to let her take over as CEO. If she can downsize the company by that much, we’ll have record profits.”
“At the expense of thousands of people.” Her heart sank like a stone. The horrible finality of what the Handels had done shook her.
“And I thought I had money problems.”
Her eyes narrowed. They had spent all morning feeling sorry for themselves while the fate of thousands of people was now up in the air. She knew that Dane’s wealth was important, but the only way to save Prescott’s staff was to set aside the desire for wealth and take back control of the company. Allyson crossed the room to grab her designer handbag from Dane’s glass-top desk. “I have to go.”
“Thank you, Allyson. I’ll call the car to take you home. I’m sorry about all this.”
If he thought she was going to roll over and let him handle the fallout all alone, he was wrong. Allyson wasn’t an heiress. She had never learned to navigate a high-stakes world like this. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t learn now.
“No, I’m not going home.” she said coolly. “I’m going to see the business manager to figure out what we need to do next. Maybe you don’t think I can help. Maybe you don’t want my help. You can come with me, or you can stay here and lash out at everyone who tries to help you. Either way, I’m not going home to hide. I’m going to figure out a way out of this.”
