Rival Hearts

Chapter Two: The Man Her Grandmother Won't Stop praising

I got home a little past midnight, expecting silence, and found my grandmother in the kitchen instead, sitting at the counter with a cup of tea going cold in front of her. Wide awake. Waiting up on purpose, most likely.

"There she is." Odette set down the newspaper she wasn't really reading and looked me over, head to toe, a habit she had kept since I was small enough to sit on the counter beside her. "You look tired, darling."

"Long flight." I dropped my bag by the door and took the seat across from her, grateful for one person in this house who wasn't going to ask me about business projections before I had even unpacked.

"Long flight," she repeated, unconvinced, but she let it go and reached over to pat my hand instead. "Well. You're home now. That's the important part."

I wasn't sure I agreed, but I nodded anyway.

"You'll never guess what happened to me this afternoon," she said, and the pleasure in her voice told me I was about to hear this story whether I wanted to or not.

"Tell me."

"I was at the market, getting far more than I should have, because I always forget I'm one person now and not cooking for your grandfather anymore." She waved a hand before I could say anything comforting about that. "Anyway. I had my arms full, and I mean full, bags everywhere, and this young man just appeared out of nowhere and asked if he could help."

"That was nice of him."

"Nice doesn't begin to cover it." She was smiling now, the kind of smile that made her look twenty years younger. "He carried everything to the car without being asked twice. Wouldn't take a dime for it, either, though I tried. And he made conversation the whole walk, real conversation, not the kind young people do now where they're checking their phones the whole time."

"Sounds like a nice guy."

"He was more than nice, Wren, he was..." She paused, searching for the word, and settled on, "Solid. The kind of person you meet and think, that one was raised right."

I smiled into my tea, half-listening now, thinking about my own night and how far from solid it had been. "Did you get his name?"

"I didn't, and I've been kicking myself over it all evening. He helped me into the car, said something about needing to be somewhere, and was gone before I thought to ask." She sighed, dramatic as only she could manage. "I was going to invite him in for dinner. I wanted you to meet him."

"Grandma, you can't just invite strange men to dinner because they carried your groceries."

"I absolutely can. I'm eighty-one. I've earned the right to invite whoever I want to dinner." She pointed a finger at me, mock-serious. "And I mean it. If I ever see that young man again, I'm bringing him home whether he likes it or not. You could use someone like that in your life."

"I don't need you setting me up with a stranger from the parking lot."

"I'm not setting anything up. I'm simply saying." She picked her tea back up, satisfied with herself, and I let the conversation drift somewhere else, glad to have a few minutes where nobody in the house was talking about my future.

It didn't last.

My father found me in the hallway not long after, still in his work clothes despite the hour, exactly as I would have predicted before I ever landed. Desmond Ashcombe didn't believe in stopping at a reasonable time, not even the night his daughter came home after five years away.

"You're back," he said. It counted as a greeting, in this house.

"I'm back."

"Good flight?"

"Fine." I shifted my bag on my shoulder, already reading the room, already sensing this wasn't going to be a simple welcome-home conversation. My father had a particular stance he took when he wanted something from someone — feet planted, hands loose at his sides, already decided on how the conversation would end, just waiting for the other person to catch up. He had that stance now.

"Your mother and I want to talk to you tomorrow. Properly. About the company, and about—" He paused, and for a man who rarely hesitated over anything, the pause felt deliberate. "About some other arrangements we've been making while you were away."

"What kind of arrangements?"

"We'll discuss it tomorrow."

"Dad." I stopped him before he could walk off, because I knew that tone, and I knew it meant he would tell me eventually whether I pushed or not, but I wanted it now, not tomorrow, not on his schedule. "What arrangements?"

He studied me for a moment, weighing something, and when he finally answered, his voice had the careful, rehearsed quality of a man who had said the words before, maybe more than once, to people who weren't me.

"You know the Voss family."

"I know of them. Tech money, north side. We don't exactly run in the same circles, do we?"

"We do now." He said it simply, like it explained everything, and started to turn away.

"Dad." Something cold moved through me, faster than I could name it. "What does that mean?"

He stopped at the end of the hallway, and when he turned back, there was nothing rehearsed left in his voice at all — just plain fact, delivered with the same flatness he used for every other business decision he had ever made without asking me first.

"Julian Voss and I have been discussing a partnership for some time. A significant one. It involves the company, and it involves you." He held my gaze, steady, like he expected an argument and had already decided not to have it tonight. "You'll be marrying his son."