Chapter Nineteen

Still seething and his gut a block of ice, Will boarded the plane back to Harbor City. The entire drive back to the airport, he’d spent mentally reviewing every single second of the trip, looking for what he’d missed, that telltale sign of Hadley’s true plan. Like some kind of masochistic fool, though, instead of finding the answers he wanted, he kept remembering the softness of her hair, the way she smiled when she didn’t think anyone was looking, and her absolutely hilariously awful drawing attempts during Pictionary.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket before sitting down in seat 3A and called the number he’d found a million reasons to avoid until he couldn’t anymore. Web picked up on the second ring, his hello too happy for what was about to come next, but Will didn’t have a choice.

“Cancel the check to Hadley,” he said without returning his brother’s greeting.

“What check?”

Will’s grip on his phone tightened. Sometimes his brother’s literal-mindedness was enough to send him over the edge, and he didn’t need any help today. “Fine, don’t make the money transfer.”

“Did you get kicked in the head by a horse? Because you are not making sense.”

Of course his brother would think that. He was the fun Holt twin, the funny one, the nice one. It had been that way since they were kids. Why? Because Will cleaned up the ugly so Web didn’t have to see it. This time the only way to make that happen was to pull back the curtain.

“Dammit, Web,” Will said, his frustration peaking and making his voice louder than he meant in the plane’s crowded interior, gaining him some curious looks from the other passengers. Letting out a deep breath, Will lowered his volume. “She’s just in it for the money. Whatever she told you about loving you and whatever she promised, it was a lie. She’s a damn gold digger.”

“Hadley Donavan?” his brother said, disbelief and amusement still thick in his tone even if he wasn’t outright laughing. “One of my best friends, Hadley?”

Will gritted his teeth, willing himself not to yell again. “Yes.”

“One, she’s not a gold digger and two, I didn’t give her any money,” Web said.

“Thank God.” The tight pain in his chest remained, but some of the agony twisting his gut relented a bit. “If it’s just a promise, she doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on.”

“You know who you sound like right now?”

“The brother who just saved you from a gold digger?” The words left a foul taste in his mouth.

“Our grandmother.”

Of all the things Web could have said to him, nothing would have hit home as hard as that comparison. “Bullshit.”

Web scoffed. “You’re obsessed with two things right now: our family money and being right. That sure sounds like Grandma to me. Of course, you’re obsessed with Hadley, too.”

“I was watching out for you.” The roiling in his gut rushed back, worse than before, making his palms sweaty and his chest ache. It was as if his body were revolting, calling him out for being so far off the mark—but he wasn’t. “She’s good. She almost fooled me.”

“No, the asshole who fooled you was you,” Web said. “Hadley and I are friends, just friends. I’ve tried loaning Hadley money so she could leave that job where they treated her like shit and finally start her company. She turned me down every time. My guess is that if she has the money now, it’s because it came from her family. Did you even bother to ask her where it came from, or did you just make an assumption?”

The mental image of Hadley in the cabin flashed in his mind. The way her eyes had gone wide as she flinched back as if his words had struck her. He’d taken it as a sign of guilt, the shock of being caught. What if…

Ignoring the doubt creeping in like Lightning through an open window, Will refused to consider any alternative. “She would have told me.”

“Why? Did you give her the chance, or did you walk in assuming you were right?”

Before he could answer, the flight attendant’s voice came over the plane’s speakers. “We have closed the cabin door. All cell phones must be turned off or put in airplane mode.”

“I gotta go,” he said, glad for once to be flying commercial so he couldn’t continue to use his phone.

“We’ll finish this when you land.”

Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. He knew the truth. He’d known it since the first time he’d seen Hadley; he’d just let himself get distracted. Will hung up and watched out the window as the plane taxied away from the gate.

He was right. Hadley was a gold digger—just like Mia. She was just subtler, so much so that if he hadn’t known what signs to watch out for, he would have missed them.

Or maybe you were just looking too hard.

Will shoved the errant thought out of his head. No. He was right. He was always right. Hadley was only after the money, no matter how well she’d hid it with denials and smiles and sweet sighs.

You know what assuming does, Mr. Right? It makes an ass out of you and me.

No. Not in this case. Not with Hadley. He’d— Oh, fuck it.

He dialed her number when the flight attendant stopped by his seat. “Sir, please put your phone away.”

“It’ll be quick.” He just needed to hear her voice one last time to quiet the doubts that were starting to scream in his ear.

The phone didn’t even ring a full time before going straight to voicemail. As Hadley’s voice told him to leave a message, he put the pieces together. She’d blocked him.

“Sir,” the flight attendant glared at him. “Do not make me ask the pilot to turn the plane around so law enforcement can have a chat with you.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled and put away his phone.

Well, that took care of that. He had to be right about Hadley’s motives. If he wasn’t, then he’d just ruined the best thing ever to have happened to him, and he was too smart to have ever done that.

…

Hadley’s first instinct once she’d woken up the next morning was to crawl under the bed and hide until she could come up with a decent cover story about why her eyes were puffy enough from crying to use as a pool float. That wasn’t happening, though, for two reasons. One, she was done lying to her family to keep up her perfect image. Two, and more importantly, it was Adalyn’s wedding day and she was due at the main house now to help her sister with her hair and makeup.

Every part of her ached, right down to the scar in the middle of her foot where she’d gotten six stitches when she was twelve, but still she rolled out of the bed that smelled like broken dreams and Will’s soap. What a total fool she’d been. After living the fake-it-until-she-made-it lifestyle for so long, she’d obviously lost her ability not to lie to herself. She’d wanted to believe Will actually cared, maybe was falling for her the way she’d already fallen for him.

Hads, you are an idiot.

But she didn’t feel like a fool. Everything ached too much for this to be about pride. Blowing her nose, stuffed from hours of teary misery, she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and did her best to be bent but not broken. It was her sister’s wedding day. She could pull it together for Adalyn.

After a quick shower, she was back at the main house walking into the bedroom she and Adalyn had shared until Hadley had left for college. Her sister sat on the queen bed that had replaced their two twins on opposite walls. She was still in her PJs, hadn’t showered judging by her wicked bedhead, and was smiling from ear to ear while their mom and Aunt Louise stood there, jaws open and eyes wide with shock.

“What happened?” Hadley asked, hurrying in as all thoughts that didn’t center around Adalyn got shoved into a deep, dark hole. “Is it Derek? Do I need to grab one of Gabe’s shotguns and track his sorry ass down?”

Her sister giggled and shook her head. “Nope, I sent him on his way this morning. I woke up, realized that the life I wanted for me didn’t have him in it.”

Of all the things Hadley had been expecting to come from her sister’s mouth, that was pretty much the last. Looking over at her mom and aunt, she sent out the silent question of what the fuck? Both women just nodded.

Hadley plopped down onto the chair opposite Adalyn’s bed, her brain playing catch-up with what must have been a helluva night. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been more positive about anything in my life.” Even though it didn’t seem possible, Adalyn’s smile got even bigger. “I realized somewhere in my second pint of panic ice cream last night that I love the person Derek could be. That’s just not fair to him or to me. Everyone deserves to be loved for who they are, not who they might be in the future.”

And to think she’d been acting as if Adalyn was still the eight-year-old who needed to be protected. “You just might be the smartest person I know.”

“It’s been an enlightening week.” Her sister grabbed a still-steaming mug of coffee. “So the plan is to go ahead with the reception—well, party now—so that the photographers can shoot it for the wedding venue brochure. It seems a real waste to have everyone home and with all our dresses and tuxes available and not turn this into a win for the business Knox and Weston want to launch.”

“What about you?” Aunt Louise asked.

“I’m twenty-six, newly single, and, according to my sister, the smartest person in the world—”

Hadley interrupted with a chuckle. “That wasn’t exactly what I said.”

“Close enough.” Adalyn grinned at her. “So the opportunities are endless. Who knows, maybe I can get a job as the chief financial officer for this up-and-coming charity consulting company I’ve heard about.”

“That would be amazing.” And Hadley meant every single word of it.

Adalyn hopped up from her bed at the same time that Hadley bounded up from the chair, and they met in the middle of the room and hugged in one of those mind-meld events that only sisters could have when you said about a million things without uttering a single word. By the time they broke it up, they were both happy crying and, looking around at their mom and Aunt Louise, they weren’t the only ones.

“The photographer is going to be here in a couple of hours,” Adalyn said, wiping away a tear. “Go get dolled up in your bridesmaid dress. We have a party to kick off. Be sure to tell Will that we wear cowboy hats with tuxes around here.”

Every single champagne bubble of happiness filling her chest popped at once and Hadley flinched. Looking at the hopeful faces and smiles, she almost gave in to that little voice that told her to make up some excuse as to where Will was, to keep the perfect image intact. However, those days were gone.

Releasing a deep breath, she let the truth out. “Will’s gone.”

“Where did he go?” Aunt Louise asked.

“Back to Harbor City.”

“What happened?” her mom asked.

Bringing her family up to speed wasn’t fun, but it was so much better than feeding them a bunch of excuses. By the time she told them about tossing the rental car keys to Will and telling him to get lost, there was no doubt from the grim expression on the other women’s faces that they were most definitely in agreement that she did the right thing.

Of course, the only problem was that she still hurt as if there was a gaping hole in her chest where Will used to be. For the past year, he’d been a constant—driving her nuts, teasing her, turning her on, making her laugh, surprising her, and yes, showing her the man she’d finally fallen for so hard that she’d never even realized it was happening until it was too late.

“Well, I sure called that one wrong,” her mom said once the true story was all out in the open. Then she pulled Hadley into a hug. “I’m sorry. I thought he really cared about you.”

“Me too. I mean, not at first, but with everything that happened and—” Emotions clogged her throat, making it next to impossible to talk and the tears that in the past she would have held in to keep her family from seeing the real her fell free.

“So it’s an independence party tonight,” Adalyn said, joining in on the group hug.

Aunt Louise wrapped her arms around as much of the trio as possible. “Yee-fucking-haw.”

Their mom gasped. “Language, Aunt Louise.”

“Some days call for water and some call for vodka, Stephanie.” Aunt Louise squeezed harder. “This is a vodka kinda day.”

Their mom squeezed her girls a little harder, too. “Yee-fucking-haw.”

The shock of hearing their mom cuss—let alone drop the F bomb—was enough to make everyone burst out in laughter. And by the time Hadley was headed back to the cabin to change into her bridesmaid dress, her steps were lighter, if still dogged by heartbreak. It wasn’t until she walked inside and saw Will’s black cowboy hat on the floor that it hit her like a Mack truck and she forgot how to breathe again. Then the absurdity of the situation came to her in a whoosh of hot fury. She hadn’t done anything wrong beyond falling in love with the wrong man. She’d learned her lesson. She wouldn’t ever let that happen again.

Fuck him. He’s an asshole.

Will fucking Holt really was the evil twin and the absolute worst. She swept the cowboy hat up off the floor. That was coming with her tonight. No doubt there’d be a bonfire, and this was going to go right in the middle of the flames.

By the time she was done up in full makeup, her hair pulled back in an updo, and wearing her bridesmaid dress, the tears had stopped but the pissed-off remained. She swiped the hat off the bed and walked out the door, ready to have the time of her life with her family because that’s what the Donavans, the Martinezes, and the Donavan-Martinezes did—whatever it took to support one another because they were family and that was pretty much the most awesome thing there was.

…

Three days later, Hadley was back in Harbor City and once more sharing a bedroom with her sister. Last night, Fiona had welcomed Adalyn into their cramped apartment with a hug and a beer.

“I come from a family of seven kids,” she said as she helped haul one of Adalyn’s five suitcases up the four flights of stairs to their place. “Three people in one home is nothing. Trust me.”

This morning, the two of them had taken off for a tour of the neighborhood—aka Bloody Marys at Medusa’s Grill and Adalyn’s first trip ever to a bodega—while Hadley stayed behind and tried to figure out how in the world she was going to take her charity consulting firm from a box of business cards under her bed to a real live business.

She needed two things: a plan and clients.

Harbor City had more billionaires per capita than any other place in the world, so there were definitely people with money who wanted to do good, or at least get a write-off on their taxes and some positive PR. She preferred to work with the first group, but the money from the second still helped fund the food kitchens, children’s cancer wings, and adult education efforts throughout the city, so she wasn’t about to be a snob about it.

Staring at her open document on her laptop, she exhaled a deep breath and started typing.

Possible Clients

Then she sat back. The only billionaires she knew were both verboten. Brokenhearted and now without a best friend, since she wasn’t going to force Web to make the awkward pick between her and his brother, she allowed herself a moment of self-pitying sniffles. Each day was a little bit easier when it came to getting out of bed in the morning, but the nights were still long, sleepless, and too full of memories and hopes of what could have been if Will Holt hadn’t turned out to be such a dick.

The knock on the door pulled her from staring blankly at the computer screen while trying not to remember the past week. Figuring her sister and Fiona were back early, she walked over to the door, pulled it open, and then her heart stopped beating.

Will stood in the hall wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a smile, as if the past week had never happened. Her breath came back in a whoosh and she was ready to shut the door in his face when she noticed the mole. The person waiting on the other side of the front door wasn’t the last person she expected to see, but he was next in line.

“Web,” she said, not sure what else she could say at the moment as her adrenaline rush began to slow.

“So since you’re not answering my texts, I had no other choice but to bring brunch to you.” He lifted a large bag with the Medusa’s logo on it. “While there, I spotted your roommate, who glared at me and then flipped me off. Did I do something to piss Fiona off or did she think I was Will?”

“Will.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, that happens more than you’d imagine.”

“Web, you don’t have to.” She waved at the bag, unable to come up with the words. “He’s your brother. You have to stand by him. I understand.”

“You understand that I’m not my brother or that I’m just as annoyed with him as you are?” He took a closer look at her puffy eyes and probably still red nose. “Okay, maybe not as much, but I have sustenance—including a carafe of Bloody Marys that I had to promise never to tell anyone I got them to let me take off the premises.”

As if the Harbor City cops were going to arrest a Holt. “You own the restaurant.”

“True, but liquor laws are liquor laws.” He walked in and headed straight toward the bistro table in the tiny kitchen and started to unpack the bag.

“Why are you here, Web?” Quite frankly, she couldn’t take another breakup from a Holt.

If Web was aware they were about to have a friendship breakup, he didn’t act like it. “To feed you and ply you with spicy liquor until you agree to do me a huge favor.”

“I’m not talking to Will.”

“Me either.” He grabbed two clean glasses from the drying rack next to the sink and poured the Bloody Marys. “No, this is for the Holt Foundation. I have a last-minute job, and I know you probably have other clients already lined up, but I’m desperate. We have an event on Friday to raise funds for the Best Buds organization and need someone to talk to potential donors about why it’s such a great opportunity.”

“That was the charity I recommended we work with before I got fired.” It paired shelter animals with kids newly adopted from foster care who helped to take care of them, the end result being that they bonded and it made the transition easier for both kids and animals.

The people at her old job felt the charity was too “downtown” and had opted to stay with their current projects of building hospital cardiac wings and adding libraries to university campuses.

“It was? Imagine that.” Web took a long drink of his Bloody Mary, looking anything but surprised. “Anyway, we’re not working with your last employer anymore and could use an innovative consultant to make sure we’re doing the most with our donations and the funds we raise at events.”

Damn. The tears were back. Sucking in a deep breath, Hadley stared extra hard at the kitchen cabinets to the left of Web. She didn’t want to turn down the chance to help Best Buds, but there was no way she could work with the Holt Foundation, not after what Will had said. Then she would just be using him, maybe not as a gold digger, but it was close.

“Web, you don’t have to—”

“But I do.” He took her by the shoulders, looking her straight in the face, his green eyes so similar to Will’s but not the same. “We only work with the best at the Holt Foundation, and that’s you. Please. I’m asking as a friend. I need your help.”

The sincerity in his words hit her right in the feels. Damn it. Why was it so hard to do the right thing when it came to the Holt brothers? “I don’t know what to say.”

“Tell me you’ll do it so we can toast with these Bloody Marys and then trash talk my idiot brother.”

“Yes.” The agreement came out before she had a chance to stop it.

Web, knowing he’d won, handed her a glass and clinked hers in a toast before they both took a big drink to seal the deal.

“He misses you, you know,” Web said a few minutes later. “I just wanted you to be aware that he knows he was an asshole. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up on your doorstep. Of course, I’m not going to interfere in what happens with you two next. I’m not that type of guy. I let people take care of their own lives, and I stay out of it.”

Even with the extra-strong Bloody Mary starting to hit her system, Hadley knew bullshit when it was flung her way. “Web, what are you up to?”

“Absolutely nothing.” He pushed a to-go container of food and a set of plastic utensils across the table to her. “Come on, these eggs Benedict aren’t going to eat themselves.”

Hadley wasn’t fooled, not even a little, by Web’s protests, but the food from Medusa’s smelled too good to argue about it—at least at the moment. It could wait, because no matter how much she still thought about him, she was done with Will Holt. Period.

There was absolutely nothing that would change her mind.

…

Will hadn’t slept more than two hours at a time since he left the ranch, because every time he closed his eyes, he saw Hadley. It was like his subconscious was determined to make him relive every moment with her until he lost his fucking mind. Well, he was damn close. So much so that he was actually beginning to consider he might—might—have been wrong about her motives.

Pacing the length of his sixtieth-floor office, the high-rise-dotted skyline of Harbor City outside of the floor-to-ceiling windows, the unfamiliar sense of uncertainty crept up his spine like ants he couldn’t flick away. Had he been wrong? Had she been telling the truth the entire time? He’d spent his life imagining the worst, prepping for disaster, knowing before anyone else in the room what was going to happen next. It was the only way to protect himself and Web from a chaotic world where no one answered why. Bad shit just happened, end of story. He couldn’t have gotten it wrong. Not this time. Not when it mattered this much.

Then why can’t you sleep at night, dumbass?

“Damn, you look like shit,” Web said as he walked into Will’s office like he hadn’t been ignoring his twin for the past week.

“What, you’re talking to me again?” Will asked.

Web shrugged and plopped down in one of the two leather chairs in front of Will’s desk. “I figured you’ve had enough time to sit and marinate in your own idiocy and were ready to go grovel to Hadley.”

Grovel? Why in the hell would he do that?

Because you were a class-A dick.

“And to think people consider you the nice one,” he said.

“There’s more to me than a pretty face and my naturally charming personality.”

As if he wasn’t well-aware of that. While the rest of the world saw this one-dimensional nice-guy version of Web, he knew his brother too well for that. Their parents’ death and how their grandmother raised them had left their marks on Web, too—he was just better about hiding them. Will, however, knew his twin’s control-freak, manipulating ways all too well.

“You know, one of these days, your natural inclination to be way too interested in things that are not your business is going to get you in trouble.”

“Maybe, but not today,” Web shot back. “Hadley is my best friend. You’re my brother. And I know where she’s going to be tonight.”

All week, it had taken everything Will had not to go to Hadley’s apartment—yeah, he’d done a Google search—drop in to check on her, get another look at that smile…or more likely hear her curse him out. He’d even gone so far as to have a cab drive him down her street. Pathetic? Fuck yes, but he wasn’t himself without her, and that was the real truth of it.

“I’m not interested in that information.” Desperate for it was more likely.

Web threw back his head and let out a big, full-throated, oh-my-God-you’re-a-jackass laugh. “You’re full of shit,” he said once he finally stopped being so loudly amused.

“Fine.” Will ground out the word, admitting if not in so many words that lying to his twin was impossible but he had to try anyway. “Let’s pretend I don’t know my own mind, that she hasn’t blocked me, and that for once you’re right—where is she going to be?”

“A Holt Foundation fundraiser. One of us has to be the smart Holt brother and that sure as shit hasn’t been you lately, so I hired her because she’s good people and fucking fantastic at her job.”

All the hot air and desperate denial making Will spin his wheels instead of go after the woman he loved whooshed out of him. “You think I was wrong about Hadley.”

“I know you were and so do you.” Smug didn’t begin to describe the look on Web’s face. “That’s the magic of twin-o-vision.”

Because pride was a helluva drug, Will was about to tell his brother that he had no fucking clue what he was talking about when a sharp knock sounded on his office door. “Come in.”

His assistant, Barry, walked in carrying a box. “The delivery instructions said you were waiting on this, and I was supposed to deliver it right away.”

“I don’t—” Will took the box, looked down at the return address, and made a quick verbal left turn. “Thanks, Barry.”

He carried the box over to his desk and opened it using a combination of poking a pen through the shipping tape and sheer determination. A note sat on top. Will picked it up and flipped it over to the side with the block letters printed on it.

Time to cowboy up.

PawPaw

A bit of black was visible underneath the balled-up copies of the Sandhills Senior Living Village weekly newspaper. Will reached in and pulled out his black cowboy hat. It still smelled of wide-open spaces and what could have been. Just seeing the black brim had him picturing Hadley when she’d teased him by trying on the hat. It had looked so damn good on her. Hell, everything did.

Holding the Stetson instead of her was a punch in the gut. It made him want. It made him need. It made him realize that of all the things in the world that he could buy with his money and power, Hadley’s love wasn’t one of them.

For a man who’d been so cluelessly wrong about her being a gold digger, he’d never wished so hard that he’d been right. Then she’d be his. Now, she never would be.

He started toward his office door, a little weary from a lack of sleep and deficit of food, his days-old beard starting to itch and his tie feeling more like a noose than anything else. “I gotta get out of here.”

Web fell into line beside him, harder to get rid of than a matchmaking socialite’s mom. “I know exactly where you need to go.”

“I know where the best bottle of scotch in town is, too.” At his penthouse. It was outrageously expensive and impossibly rare. He was going to drink the whole damn bottle as fast as possible so he could forget about Hadley and pass out so his dreams wouldn’t be haunted by her.

Continuing to bulldog his steps, his brother followed him into the executive elevator and glared at him. “You’re not going to find Hadley?”

“It’s too late for that.” It had been too late the moment he’d seen her at the rugby game. He’d fallen and he’d fought it anyway, made every excuse to push her away until he finally did—at least physically. It was too late to really get her out of his head, though. She was a part of him, just like the ranch was a part of her. They could fight it all they wanted, but it wouldn’t change. They were who they were supposed to be, even though it didn’t feel like he was whole without her.

Web yanked Will to a stop as soon as they walked off the elevator and out into the bustling lobby. “You’re a giant chickenshit. You have to go fight for her.”

If only it were that easy. It was too late. “Fuck off, Web.”

Will didn’t wait for a response; he just walked out of the lobby. He didn’t turn right to go out the door where his driver would be waiting. He turned left and went out the Sixth Avenue entrance. The best bottle of scotch might be in his penthouse, but there was no way he could stand to be there right now. The views felt too crowded, the kitchen too quiet, and the bed too big since he got back. So instead he walked into the first door with a neon beer sign and bellied up to the bar.

The bartender gave him a slow up-and-down, pausing to stare at Will’s hat as if he’d never seen one in real life before. “What’ll it be, cowboy?”

Fuck the scotch. He needed something more like bare-knuckle boxing than golf on the highlands. “The biggest, highest-proof shot you’ve got.”

The bartender didn’t ask twice; he just reached for a bottle of clear liquid on the bottom shelf and poured a double. “Woman or family?” he asked as he set the shot down in front of Will.

“Both,” he said before downing the liquor. It left a burning trail of fire from his tongue to his gut, and he couldn’t wait to have another.

“Well, don’t look now,” the bartender said. “But I’m guessing the family just walked in.”

Will looked over his shoulder and there was Web. His brother must have followed him, and he was in too much of a fog to notice. Web sauntered over and sat down on the stool next to him.

“I’ll have what he’s having.” Then Web turned to Will. “So you really fucked this up, huh?”

Will lifted his empty glass in the universal sign for one more. “You really have to ask?”

“Not judging by how shitty you look.” Web sniffed the single shot the bartender put down in front of him and then downed it.

“Is that your new thing, telling me how crappy I look? You do realize we look exactly the same.”

“Maybe, but at least I’m wearing shoes that match, and I look like I slept sometime in the past twenty years.”

The bartender didn’t say anything, but the look he slung at Will when he dropped off another shot—a single this time—pretty much yelled he’s right. Will scoffed and slammed back the liquor. Whatever was in his glass tasted like radioactive poison, but that was fine. It’s what he deserved.

“Why don’t you go home,” he snarled at his brother. “Just leave me alone.”

Web laughed as if he were having the time of his life. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can. You just take a cab and bam, you’re there.”

“You aren’t going to figure out how to fix this on your own. You’re fucking it up even more than you already have by wimping out.”

Fury and whatever he’d been drinking had him up off the stool on the inhale, then grabbing his brother by the shirt collar and hauling him up on the exhale. “Don’t tell me what I’m doing. I know what I’m doing. I’m walking away because she doesn’t want me.”

Web didn’t flinch. “Or is it because you just can’t stand to admit you were wrong about her, about how you feel, and about what’s really important?”

Important? Will had always known what was important. He’d been protecting his brother practically since he was born. That’s what older brothers did. They watched over the younger ones. They protected the family fortune. They made sure that they always won, they were always right, that nothing bad ever happened. Like their parents dying. Like going to boarding school when they were so young. Like falling in love with the woman he’d thought was out for his brother’s money and then accusing her of being a gold digger to cover up his feelings.

Fuck.

He let go of Web and slumped back onto his stool, realization like a million-pound weight on his shoulders.

“I failed at everything. I’m sorry.”

“My God, you’re an idiot. You’re one of the most successful people I know, but you can’t control everything. Anyway, you’re my favorite brother.”

“I’m your only brother.”

“What can I say, I have low standards.”

But Hadley didn’t. “How do I make this up to her? Diamonds? That’s what our grandmother always wanted.”

Web grimaced. “Oh yeah, nothing shows affection and esteem like sparkly things.”

“That was about as close to a nursery rhyme as she ever told us,” Will said, covering the shot glass with his hand when the bartender held up the mystery bottle again.

He’d spent his entire life thinking that buying someone’s affection was normal, and then he met Hadley. Seeing her with her family was like stepping into another dimension. For them, it wasn’t the money that mattered but time and togetherness. Even with all his money, he couldn’t buy that. Hell, even if Hadley had his money, she’d probably spend it on helping her family’s new business, charities, and getting out to see them more often.

Something settled in his chest, a certainty that he knew what he needed to do next.

“I gotta get to that fundraiser,” he said. “I have to get Hadley back.”

“Finally.” Web held up his car keys and jingled them. “Let’s go.”

The Porsche logo on the key fob caught the light and on the next heartbeat, Will knew exactly what he needed to do to show Hadley he understood exactly how wrong he’d been about her. The chances of it working might be slim, but as a space cowboy once said, never tell him the odds.

Fuck the odds. He had to believe this would work.