Page 55 of Flirting With Forever
“They want a marriage, Sloane. And you are the pretty, yet loose, string that needs to be tied up.”
“You want me to be a trophy wife and collateral to people who’ll what? Use me to keep you in line? Is that it? I’m a person, Noah. Are you kidding me?”
She stared at her brother in horror and noted he had the grace to look ashamed.
“Father has angered more than a few of people over the years, and these guys hold grudges. They want to make sure Father does as he’s told.”
Yeah, she knew exactly how he’d angered them, but…did her brothers know? “Noah, how can you think any of this is okay? Even if I was open to the idea—which I’m not—why would I be okay with marrying someone trying to blackmail?—”
“Keep your voice down,” he said, taking a glance around them.
She forced herself to do as ordered but only because she didn’t want to draw attention to their conversation any more than he did. “Someone willing to blackmail you,” she said. “Do I really mean so little to you? Am I that disposable? I’m your sister.”
“Sloane—”
“No, don’t use that tone like you actually care about me when you’re just trying to save your own skins. Answer me honestly. Do I really mean so little to all of you that you’d offer me up like a-a harem girl or a prostitute? What if you had a family? If they wanted your daughter? Would you just hand her over to them?”
Noah ran a hand over his mouth and face, and she noted the differences between Noah’s soft, well-manicured ones and Gage’s rougher, calloused work hands. To compare them might be ridiculous, but she’d take Gage’s real-life work hands over the dirty softness of Noah’s any day.
“I didn’t say I liked it or agreed with it, Sloane. Father is trying to get out of it, but they have him cornered.”
“Because of something he did.” She was surprised it had taken his clients so long to figure out what was happening or how deep her father’s fingers had delved into their secret coffers. “What was it? What did he do that he’s so willing to sacrifice one of his children?”
Noah shook his head and stared down at her. “I don’t know.”
She arched an eyebrow and gave him a look of disbelief. Could he really not know?
“I have an idea, but I don’t know for certain,” he repeated. “He insists we need you because it’s the only way to fix the issue.”
Noah could be lying. But he also could be telling the truth, and as she stared into his gaze, she realized her brother didn’t seem to know what their father had done, which, if true, left him as vulnerable as she was.
But could Noah be trusted?
She knew the answer even as the question sounded in her head. Noah was all about making their father happy. He was their father’s “fixer” and would do or say whatever he needed to.
Pain seared her. It was one thing to hear that her family needed her where she could pretend it was out of concern or love. Quite another to discover her father planned to use her as a pawn to save his own skin from his underhanded business dealings.
He also used her brothers as well—if they didn’t know the truth—to bring her to heel.
Of her two brothers, Noah was…friendlier. The guy who charmed and won people over. Her brother Jarrett? He was the silent, stoic but short-tempered type.
Maybe she should consider herself lucky her father had sent Noah to try again. Grant Harrington was as manipulative as he was charming, but he was still trying to verbally coerce her through Noah rather than physically force her to return home. At least so far.
Had her father always been that way? Growing up, she supposed she viewed him through a child’s eyes, one innocent of his corporate dealings. The rose-colored glasses had fallen off once she’d been sent to boarding school as a teen and she was exposed to kids who repeated things they’d heard their parents say. Things about her father and his business. His ruthlessness.
But what about Jarrett? When had he changed? She remembered a quiet, too-serious boy when he was young, but on her first trip home after she’d been sent away to boarding school, he’d seemed far more intense than she’d remembered.
What had happened in the time she was gone? What had happened to her brothers to make them…this?
“You know you can’t keep running,” Noah said softly. “You’re only making life harder on yourself. Sleeping in your car? Working as a maid and a salesclerk? That’s beneath you, Sloane.”
The huff that escaped her chest revealed every ounce of her derision. “Feels more like freedom to me. And I’d much prefer the freedom of scrubbing toilets than what you have in mind for me back in Chicago.”
Noah swore softly. “You can’t be serious. What will it take? Huh? Surely there’s a compromise to be had here.”
“Oh, so now we’re, what? Negotiating my forced marriage? Really, Noah?”
“Sloane! Incoming!” a woman’s voice called.
