Chapter 1
“Because I realized I should be.”
It was such an ordinary answer.
After eighteen months of extraordinary silence, ordinary honesty felt almost suspicious.
Colin cleared his throat. “For whatever it’s worth, Hayes, I wasn’t attempting to start an international incident beside a painting called Unresolved Grief.”
I looked at the title card.
“That’s really what it’s called?”
“It is now,” Colin said.
Despite myself, I nearly laughed.
Declan did not.
But something in his expression changed.
Not jealousy exactly.
Pain.
It vanished so quickly I wondered if I had imagined it.
“Mr. Mercer,” Declan said, “could Nora and I have a moment?”
Colin looked at me, not Declan.
That mattered.
It was the first time in a long time that someone in Declan’s world had treated my preference as the deciding factor.
I nodded.
“I’ll find Tessa.”
Colin stepped away without argument.
Declan waited until he was gone.
Then he said, “You look beautiful.”
I stared at him.
Of all the things he could have said, those four words were so unexpected that my carefully assembled anger briefly lost its footing.
“You've seen this dress before.”
“No.”
“It’s been hanging in my closet for eight months.”
“That isn’t the same as seeing it.”
My throat tightened.
I hated that he could say one decent thing and make me feel eighteen months of disappointment all at once.
“You don’t get to arrive now and pretend this is normal.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to suddenly notice me because another man did.”
“I know that too.”
I blinked.
Declan Hayes did not concede arguments.
At least not in any version of him I had known.
He looked toward the tall gallery windows. Outside, Chicago glittered beneath a fine autumn rain.
“I handled this badly.”
“This?”
“Our marriage.”
There were conversations I had imagined so often that they had become private rituals. In some versions I shouted. In others, Declan apologized beautifully. Sometimes I left him speechless and walked away.
The real conversation felt much smaller.
More fragile.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means I believed distance was the most honorable thing I could give you.”
I actually laughed.
It came out sharp.
“Distance?”
“Yes.”
“You gave me an entire continent.”
His jaw shifted.
“That was never my intention.”
“You live twenty yards away from me.”
“I know.”
“You communicate with me through staff.”
“I know.”
“You know my schedule because Donovan sends it to your security office, but you didn’t know Tessa’s last name.”
Declan lowered his eyes.
That hurt more than if he had defended himself.
“Tessa Bell,” he said quietly.
I frowned.
He continued. “She studied at the Art Institute. She met you during a charity auction three years ago. She prefers terrible coffee, has a brother named Michael in Milwaukee, and once convinced you to spend six hundred dollars on a ceramic bird that you later discovered was supposed to be a lamp.”
My mouth fell slightly open.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I listen.”
“You don’t talk.”
“No.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“I’m beginning to understand that.”
Before I could answer, Tessa appeared near the back room and gestured discreetly toward me.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Nora.”
I stopped.
Declan looked almost uncertain.
It was strange to see uncertainty on a man whose presence usually reorganized entire rooms.
“I won’t make you leave,” he said. “Stay as long as you want. I’ll wait.”
“For what?”
“For a conversation you should have had eighteen months ago.”
I walked away before he could see how much that sentence affected me.
Tessa dragged me into the little office behind the gallery.
“What,” she whispered, “is happening?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“Your husband appeared looking like a Renaissance painting of suppressed emotion.”
“That is unfortunately accurate.”
“And Colin Mercer?”
“Apparently finds emotional metaphors in abstract art.”
Tessa stared at me.
“You have strange taste in men.”
“I don't have taste in men. One was assigned to me by a territorial agreement and the other happened to be standing near a painting.”
“That sentence is exactly why I worry about you.”
I smiled weakly.
Then I noticed a small wooden box on her desk.
“What’s that?”
Tessa’s humor disappeared.
“Actually, that's why I was trying to get you back here before your husband arrived.”
She touched the box.
“Colin brought it.”
My stomach tightened.
“For me?”
She nodded.
“He said he wasn't sure how to approach you without making it seem suspicious, so he came tonight because he knew I'd be here.”
“How does Colin Mercer know you?”
“He funded the restoration project upstairs.”
Of course he did.
Chicago was apparently a city of three million people in which everyone except me knew everyone else's secrets.
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know. He said it belonged to your mother.”
I stopped breathing for a second.
My mother had been dead for seven years.
She had been soft-spoken, stubborn, endlessly curious, and capable of making my father abandon a business dinner because she had decided the four of us needed to drive to Wisconsin for pie.
After she died, my father had packed away almost everything that belonged to her.
“You’re sure?”
“That’s what Colin said.”
I reached toward the box, then stopped.
“Why would he have something of hers?”
A voice came from behind me.
“Because his mother and yours were friends.”
Declan stood in the doorway.
I turned sharply.
“You knew?”
“Not until six months ago.”
Tessa looked between us.
“I’m going to stand approximately five feet away and pretend I'm reorganizing invoices.”
She moved to a cabinet.
I faced Declan.
“Six months ago?”
He nodded.
“And you didn't tell me?”
“I wasn't certain what Mercer had.”
“That has never stopped anyone in this family from keeping information from me.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
His expression tightened.
“Fair.”
Tessa suddenly became deeply interested in a stapler.
Declan stepped inside.
“Colin contacted me in February. His mother passed away last winter. While settling her estate, he found correspondence between our families.”
“My family and his?”
“Your mother and Evelyn Mercer.”
I knew the name vaguely. Evelyn Mercer had been involved in several charitable foundations before disappearing from public life years ago.
“What kind of correspondence?”
“Mostly about art education.”
I looked at the box.
“My mother never told me.”
“She might have planned to.”
There was something in his tone.
“What aren’t you saying?”
Declan looked at Tessa.
She raised both hands.
“I can leave.”
“No,” I said immediately. “Stay.”
For once, I wanted someone else in the room. Someone whose presence belonged entirely to me.
Declan seemed to understand.
“Your mother created a fund,” he said. “A private one.”
I stared at him.
“For what?”
“For you.”
The room became very quiet.
“My father handles the family trusts.”
“This one wasn't created through your father's office.”
“Why?”
“That is what I've been trying to determine.”
“Without telling me.”
“Yes.”
My frustration rose again.
“You keep talking as though secrecy is some kind of kindness.”
“It isn't.”
“Then why?”
Declan looked toward the hallway.
“Because the fund is connected to our marriage agreement.”
My hands went cold.
“What does that mean?”
“The contract our fathers negotiated contained a financial guarantee from your family. I discovered several months after the wedding that the guarantee appeared to have been secured against assets your mother had intended for you.”
I stared at him.
“My father used my inheritance?”
“I don't know whether he understood the restrictions attached to it.”
“You knew for more than a year?”
“I knew there was a problem. I didn't know its origin until recently.”
Tessa quietly shut the office door.
My thoughts raced backward through eighteen months.
The courthouse.
The signatures.
My father's exhausted face.
Declan's expressionless silence beside me.
“Was that why you married me?” I asked.
May you like
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
