Accidental Knight: A Marriage Mistake Romance(79)

Drake returns, the perfect interruption, handing an open beer to Dad and a water bottle to me.

“Where’s yours?” Dad asks him, looking him up and down.

Drake glances at him, his brows lifting, and then at me. “Do you want me to stay?”

“Please,” both Dad and I say at the same time.

He nods, and then shrugs. “Got it. I’ll be right back.”

Skirting around my dad’s earlier question, I ask, “So, uh, where is Mom?”

“Asleep. She went to bed early with a migraine. Something about how she’s having withdrawals because we can’t get a decent meal in this town. I tried to take her a couple towns over to a steakhouse last night, but...you know.”

Yeah.

Unfortunately, I do.

There’s no pleasing her when the whole world doesn’t shift on its axis to her whim. And right now, she’s living upside down every day I don’t just give in and let her plunder Gramps’ legacy.

“That’s too bad,” I say softly. I think I mean it more for Dad than her.

“I didn’t tell her where I was going. She was sleeping.” He takes a long swig of beer and then looks at the bottle like it tastes better than it should. Or maybe better than he remembers.

He takes another good drink as Drake returns and sits down next to me, a matching bottle in his hand.

Dad holds his beer bottle gingerly and leans in. “Look, you may not believe it, Mr. Larkin, but I knew my father. I knew him well.” He waves a finger at Drake and I. “And this, this marriage between you two, is right up his alley. Something he’d orchestrate. It’s not exactly hard to figure out what happened here.”

Drake is dead silent, and so am I.

Neither of us wants to flat-out lie about it, though, so silence is our best option.

“Frankly, I wasn’t surprised when Dad left you everything, Annabelle.” Dad smiles softly, his eyes far off, shaking his head. “I don’t care about the fortune, honestly, not like your mother does...but it scares me. Worries me for you to be in that position at North Earhart. And it scares me to think of the lengths Dad would go to make sure he gets what he wanted, for you to inherit everything and carry out his wishes.”

“He just wanted North Earhart to continue as is. For Dallas to thrive after he was gone,” I say. “It won’t go down that way if...” I stop, not wanting to point out the obvious if Mom gets her way.

He nods. “I know. And I know what he always thought of Molly, too. It was never a big secret.” He takes a slow pull off his beer and sets the bottle down. “When I first told him we were getting married, he told me to think long and hard about it because he didn’t believe in divorce. Did he tell you that when he arranged the marriage between the two of you?”

Nope. Gramps hadn’t said anything to me. I didn’t even know about it.

I just slowly shake my head, taking a drink of water so I don’t have to elaborate.

Dad looks at Drake next. “What about you? I know he had to say something to set this up?”

Drake’s expression doesn’t reveal anything. Neither does the way he shakes his head.

“Well, maybe he changed his mind over the years,” Dad says. “But I doubt it. He wasn’t really the sort of man who changed with the winds or the times.”

My heart starts pounding. I don’t know why, but this eerie calm, this strange, revealing conversation isn’t Dad at all. But it’s not fake.

This is him, coming out, looking for answers. Part of me wants to shrivel up in fear. The rest wants to just walk over and wrap my arms around him.

Drake’s bright-blue eyes meet mine for the briefest second. I give him a look that says, it’s okay. Let him go on.

Dad leans back in the chair and crosses his legs. “I know you loved him, Annabelle, loved him more than anyone. I did too, once, before your mother came along. I still love him. He was a good father. I never wanted for anything, and I know, deep down, he just wanted the best for me...even if he went about it in a damn ridiculous way.”

Wow.

I’ve never heard him say anything like this. Not even close.

“When my mother died, Dad was devastated. She went to bed that night just like every other night and was dead the next morning. A brain aneurysm. Our lives changed in a split second. He was still ranching then and pulling eighty-hour weeks sometimes at Earhart, and I—” He shrugs. “I was expected to take over where she left off. The household and farm chores. I was seventeen, a senior in high school, played every sport, was on the student council...all the things kids that age do. The last thing I wanted was to come home to cook and clean and run after the chickens. We argued about it a lot. I thought he should hire someone to do it, and he thought I should because I was his son. He always had a weird hangup about our home life, insisted it ought to be family only...but I guess that’s another thing he changed over the years. Hiring help.”

Dad nods at Drake.

I can believe what he’s saying because whenever I’d suggest Grandpa should hire someone to help him around the house, he’d tell me I sounded like my dad. Until Drake.

“I knew your mom from school, but we ran in different circles. I’d never even talked to her, until one night. After a basketball game, I was at the gas station, and saw her running down the alley with no coat on. I caught up with her, asked if she needed a ride. She jumped in and told me to drive. Drive fast.”