Page 42 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

“That’s not thinking, son. That’s reacting.” He pushed his chair back a little from the table and hooked an ankle over his knee, his features suddenly softening a little. “Your family has had a lot of troubles these last years. I know what you’ve lost.”

“So do I,” I countered. “I was there.”

“If you get Maggie to that altar again,” he said. “I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll give you double what Marcus offered.”

A shiver of unease crept down my spine. “I still don’t want your money, Cliff. This is all truly unnecessary.”

“Perhaps, but do this for us and I’ll ensure the Thayer family sees success in the circles your mother so sorely misses.”

My stomach turned because that was the real offer. Two million dollars was couch change to a man like him. Three, four, five. He wouldn’t miss it. I could make it. Both of us knew that about the other.

Access to the circles we’d been excluded from, however, was a different story. Cliff could give us back a seat at the table.

If it had been only about me, I still would have told him no, but now he’d brought my mother into it.

Cornered and feeling pretty weird about it, I finally stood and started walking around the table. “I’ll do what I can, Cliff. Again, thank you for taking the meeting.”

I gave his hand a quick shake and left, leaning back against the railing in the elevator as it descended and letting my head drop forward. Cliff had the same kind of natural, effortless dominance as men like Alex and Sterling.

Usually, I respected that. Hell, I didn’t even just respect it. I aspired to it, but Cliff had also decided the Thayers were no longer worth knowing when my father had gone to prison. Before that, he’d been a friend, but when my family had fallen apart, he was one of the people who’d looked the other way.

The fact that he was now offering me a way back in left a bad taste in my mouth.

When I got back to my apartment, I was still feeling awkward about the whole thing, but when I opened the door and caught a whiff of roasted meat, garlic, and butter in the air, I shoved the thought aside and replaced the awkwardness with suspicion.

“Hello?” I called. “Maggie, are you here?”

“In the kitchen,” she replied happily. “How was your day?”

I blinked hard, feeling like I’d somehow gotten sucked into a twilight zone somewhere between here and the Pembroke building. “Uh, it was fine?”

Shrugging out of my jacket, I hung it on the coat rack by the door and followed the smell to the kitchen. Maggie stood at the oven in one of my sweatshirts, wearing an apron I hadn’t even known I had, and she pulled out an actual roast when I walked in.

Tendrils of her dark blonde hair had escaped from her ponytail, framing her face in golden waves when she straightened up and smiled at me. I swore I nearly had a stroke.

Between that smile and her wearing my sweatshirt, Isaac had been wrong. This definitely wasn’t going to be fun, but it sure as hell was dangerous. “What are you doing, Maggie?”

“Making dinner.”

“You cooked for me?”

“Yes.” She carried the roast to the dining table and set it down, waving toward a chair. “Come sit down.”

I did what I’d been told without argument, my brain still struggling to catch up to what my eyes were seeing. Frankly, I was stunned. Even more so when I realized she could actually cook.

She moved around the kitchen like she’d been living here for years, bringing over a few more dishes before she joined me at the table. The vegetables were perfectly roasted. The meat was tender.

It took me a minute to regain my composure as it sank in that she was taking care of me. I’d never had anyone do something like this for me before, and after the afternoon I’d had—and the ick I’d gotten from her father—it was probably the most comforting thing I’d ever come home to.

Instead of saying that, however, I looked at her across the table and told her something completely different. “So, uh, I have to go to Chicago for work. I’m sorry I’m only telling you now. It kind of slipped my mind before with everything else going on. I go there every two weeks and I have a flight out tonight.”

“Oh.”

I expected relief or maybe even excitement that she’d have the apartment to herself, rent free, to use for whatever scheme she was cooking up with the whole wedding thing. Or maybe to turn my living room into conspiracy headquarters while I wasn’t here to complain about how her grandfather had probably just been a widower.

This was how I would exit the drama, but instead of any of that, she nodded slowly and then smiled. “I’ll be packed and ready to go within the hour.”

“You’re coming to Chicago?”