“Nope.” He swatted it back to me.
I could tell another fib so there’d be a towering mountain of lies. But one nudge and it would topple and I’d be surrounded by a steaming pile of fabrications.
“It’s about money.” Devyn gave me a what the fuck look, but I charged ahead. “For your operation.”
Maybe it would have been easier to tell him Devyn had a wolf inside him and Dad might have fainted like me. Gods, I was a horrible person wanting my father to collapse under the weight of information that might kill him.
Dad glowered at Devyn. “Are you bribing my son to marry you? And if he does, you’ll pay for my surgery?”
Devyn shrank under my dad’s gaze. “Nope,” he whispered. “It’s not like that.”
“Explain it to me.”
I blurted out the deets about me asking Sebastian for money and him agreeing but for a price. Devyn took up the story, saying his family was forcing him into an arranged marriage.
“Forcing you?”
“It’s a long story.” Devyn sank lower on the seat. Any further and he’d slip under the table again.
“The short version is we both agreed, never having met the other person, but we bumped into one another near Dean’s motel and not only did we fall for one another, but we put two and two together and discovered we were each other’s intended.”
Whew! It was good to get that out.
“Sounds like a soap opera to me.” A man in the next booth commented to his companion.
“Perhaps we should take this outside,” Dad agreed.
When we were in the car, Dad said, “And if Sebastian or Devyn’s father found out you not only knew one another but were happy to get married, they’d what? Call the wedding off?”
Good point. How did I admit that we wanted to mess with their heads? That wasn’t a good look for either of us.
“Sebastian was acting squirrely when I saw him some days ago. Something isn’t right and I was keeping the deets close to my chest.”
Dad said nothing but I could almost see his mind churning. “And the plan was to never let on? Just get married.”
“We hadn’t thought that far ahead,” my mate admitted.
“So, there was no plan? Just you two fumbling your way through this?”
We both nodded.
Dad went on to say he needed time to digest what we’d told him and asked to go home and rest. Devyn drove us home in silence until I pointed out my car was at the hospital, but we got Dad settled in bed with his oxygen tank beside him and the phone and remote on the nightstand.
While I couldn’t see into Dad’s head, he wouldn’t be happy with the big pretense. He hated fibbing, even though this was lying by omission. And then there was the money issue. Discovering Sebastian would pay for his surgery, I’d expected him to give a flat out no as he had done when I’d originally brought it up. Maybe he’d given up on me finding another avenue of finance. Or perhaps he was so ill he no longer cared that the man who replaced him in Father’s life was his savior.
“What do we do now?” Devyn pulled up behind my car.
“Wait until I speak to Dad. But we need to ferret out more details about your brother and Sebastian.” I’d get in contact with some of Father’s former business associates and see if they’d heard anything about Sebastian, who was supposed to be the managing director extraordinaire.
“Whatever happens, we’re getting married next week.”
“Should we mate before or after?”
“Before. That’s binding. No one can take it away, whereas a marriage can be dissolved.”
I promised to call him later and jumped in my car, wondering what the next week would bring.
Chapter 26
