The Billionaire's Temporary Bride (Scandal, Inc #3)(50)

"By the time I was a kid, he had retired. He had a stroke in his early seventies, but he had mostly recovered by the time I was old enough to remember. After retirement and the stroke, he took up birdwatching, channeling his energy into cataloging every bird that flew through this marsh. He had this boardwalk built, and he would come out here for hours every day. He liked to say that this was the most beautiful place on Earth."

Charlotte looked around the frosty path as Jack gestured with his hand. To her, it just looked frozen and deserted.

As they turned another corner and the sun came into view over the water, Charlotte gasped. The frost and the ice crystals on the tips of the elephant grass shimmered in the morning light, sparkling as the wind swept them back and forth like waves. It was beautiful. The sun was rising higher over the water now, and Charlotte felt its warmth on her face and watched its reflection in the water.

Jack handed her the binoculars. While everything else about the moment felt like it could melt away in an instant, the binoculars felt solid, like they were built to last a hundred years. She pulled them up to her face and looked out over the scene, studying the minute details of the ice crystals waving in the breeze. On the far end of the marsh, she saw a flock of geese starting to take flight. Opposite them, a few ducks swam in circles. All around them, the marsh was teeming with life, even in the dead cold of a New England winter.

"Thank you for letting me see this," she said.

"That wasn't the only reason I asked you to come here," Jack said. "There's something I need to tell you about myself, and this is the only place where I can do it. I feel like if you can just see it how I see it, maybe you'd understand why I am the way I am.

"Every Saturday morning, my mother would pack me a bagged lunch and send me off with my grandfather into this marsh. We'd head to his favorite spot and birdwatch silently for hours. He'd built a bird blind that we used, but my mother had it torn down after my father died. While my brother and my sister were free to sleep or watch TV or do whatever they wanted, I was sent along with my grandfather, because I was the only one who wouldn't complain about spending hours at a time with the old man, waiting for my grandfather to check off another box in his bird ledger. I couldn't tell you the difference between a wren and a titmouse, but I know that it made him happy to be out here with his grandson, and I was happy to be here, too. If you want to know why I resent them, it's because they almost never care about anyone but themselves, and they miss out on so much because of it."

"Have you told them this?" Charlotte asked.

"I've tried," Jack said. "They don't listen. They'd rather go on about how I've wronged them by taking responsibility for myself and for the legacy my grandfather built. He'd be ashamed if he saw the state of this family."

"That's not true. He'd be proud of you and everything you've done. He must have been proud of your father and your uncles as well."

"You don't get it," Jack said, "I remember when I was probably twelve years old, my grandfather explained to me how his father used to beat him with a belt."

"That's awful," Charlotte said.

"That's not the worst of it. He told me he was grateful for what his father had done for him. He said he was too soft on his kids, that he had indulged them too much, that he had been a terrible father, more interested in his fortune and power than in his own sons, and he was right, Charlotte. He was right about being a terrible father. I'm not saying he should have beaten them, of course, but he was right that his children were all spoiled, and that their children were worse. Do you have any idea what it's like to have your grandfather tell you that you're the only hope your family has at redemption? How am I supposed to change any of that? I didn't realize it then, but he was telling me that someday I'd have to choose between what I wanted and what was right.


"When my father died, he left me in charge of a multibillion dollar trust. When my grandfather died, he left me this pair of binoculars. Ask me which one means more to me."

"Your father must have thought the world of you if he left you in charge," Charlotte said.

"He knew I'd toe the line, that I'd do the job. Sometimes, I wish I could just give it all away. I'm the only person fighting for this family's name."

He reached out for the binoculars from Charlotte and held them up to his face for only a moment.

"You can see every ice crystal, every ripple in the far-off water, all of it. I keep these binoculars at the house. They belong here. Sometimes I feel like I belong here, and other times I can't stand to look at this place for another second."

"Jack," Charlotte said, pulling off a glove to touch his cold cheek. Looking back out at the marsh, instead of a beautiful field of light, all Charlotte could see was what Jack saw: a legacy he alone could protect and a burden he had held for years.

"Charlotte," he said, "you're the only person I've ever told that story. I never knew how to tell my parents or my siblings. For years, I had hoped he was wrong, but he wasn't. We've all been terrible and irresponsible and selfish, even me."

"What about your parents?"

"My dad was the worst of all. He was terrible to my mother. She likes to think he was a saint, but he wasn't. If only she knew what he was really like, if only any of them knew," Jack said. His nostrils flared, and his breath came out in clouds of hot steam. "It's just not worth the effort. They won't listen to me, regardless of what I have to say."