Impulsion (Station 32 #1)(95)

“Clever bastard,” Memphis said.

“How so?”

“Well, he’s making sure his daughter’s with the man he wants her with, telling her he knew all along this deal with her and Collin was B.S. and telling his wife to shove it at the same time.”

“And using Wyatt as the weapon,” Easton rebutted.

“No,” Memphis said as his dark eyes moved over Wyatt. “He just wanted you to stand up. Nothing more.”

“I think I need to give Harley a heads up,” Wyatt said, doubting Garrison and his own mother’s advice.

Memphis busted out laughing. “A heads up? You got no game. What? You want her to tell your kids that you gave her a ‘heads up,’ then she faked a surprise in front of her family and friends?”

“He’s got a point,” Easton said. “There’s already enough bullshit in this game. Play it real, shock the hell out of the girl.”

“The second she sees me, she’s gonna think that I’m about to break redneck up in this joint.”

Memphis and Easton both bellowed a laugh.

The next nine hours were going to be the longest hours of his life—he was sure of it.





Chapter Twenty-One



Harley and Collin were both dressed and downstairs at nine the next morning. Harley had asked to see her father ten times over, and Donald kept telling her that he and Conrad had breakfast guests and that her father said he would see her at lunch.

Her mother had tried to pull her aside three times, no doubt to tell her exactly how to react to Collin when his time to speak came, but Collin saved her every time. In a way, they were both protecting each other; his mother couldn’t talk to him either, and she’d tried to pull him away more than once.

“You keep hovering, and this growing apart thing is going to make no sense,” she said to Collin, easing away from his arm which was around her waist.

Collin barely noticed. He was on his phone, trying to get Quinn to respond to him. “I’m going to kill my father,” he said under his breath.

“Do you think he’s up to something?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it’s almost a game of who can be more ballsy in our family. He may have something up his sleeve. I’m more worried about Quinn.”

“What could he have said to her that you haven’t?”

“Nothing. I told her every detail. She knows every dark corner, knows what they are expecting today.”

Harley felt her insides fall.

Feeling her tense next to him, Collin whispered, “What?”

“Wyatt didn’t know. I just told him about the break up. Not what they were expecting.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. You have been with Quinn a year. She knows everything, you tell her everything. Wyatt—I still keep things from him.”

“You just left a detail out. The end result is going to be the same. You told him what you were doing, not what your mother was expecting— simply semantics.”

Harley looked all around her, at the decorations, the marble floors, the wait staff in their tux uniforms. She felt the cold, the lack of personalization, she felt the weight of words and reputations, things that really didn’t matter on your dying day.

“I’m just going to tell him. If they push us to the last minute, the second you say whatever, I’m going to tell them it would have never worked with us because I’m in love with Wyatt, always have been.”

“Harley, just let me take care of this; this one last thing.”

“No,” Harley said with more boldness than she had ever used in her family’s home. “That woman shamed the hell out of me for being tan. This morning she told me I looked exhausted, told me I need a new trainer, that I was too tone, that I needed a tender frame. She has made a career out of belittling me, and I’m going to have the last say.”

“And she will make your life hell.”

“No, she won’t. I will see my father when I want, and when he passes I’m done.”

“You have an inheritance. A family name.”

“I don’t care.”

Before Collin could dispute that, the doors to the sunroom opened. “There they are. We’re gathering your fathers, come now,” Silvia Grant said, leading Collin into the room as she said something to him that he didn’t respond to.

“I see you found the greatest accomplishment and her charming escort. Now where is the guest of honor?” one of the men in the room said. Harley didn’t know his name but was sure he had sat on the same board with her father for years.

The entire room only had twenty or thirty people within it, but there was not a face in that room that Harley’s mother had not strived to shine in front of, a face that she had not competed with.

Everyone had drinks and was mingling around hors d'oeuvre trays. Her father was nowhere in sight and stayed that way for the next half-hour, then all at once he came in from the poolside doors with Conrad at his side, both laughing at something one of them had said, looking as if they had no idea they were almost an hour late—and even if they did, they didn’t care.

Her father stopped as this inner circle all clapped, then like the gentleman he was, he walked around and greeted each one, passing some comment or story that earned a laugh. He saved Collin and Harley for last, and when he reached Harley he put his hands on her shoulders and leaned back as if he wanted to take her all in. “Always so ravishing, isn’t she, dear?” he said to Claire Tatum, who smiled and said, “Absolutely. Of course, we know where her beauty comes from.” That earned a laugh from the crowd.