Chapter Fourteen
The next morning, Tate burst into the kitchens and frantically searched the hot, crowded space. “Where did she go?”
“Where did who go?” Gavin asked from his spot in the corner. He gave some direction to a coworker and motioned to a space outside in the hallway. Tate waited until they were away from the commotion before he spoke.
“Zoe. Where is she?”
Gavin frowned. “I don’t know. She’s not at the site?”
“No.”
“Did you try her office?”
“And her condo.” Tate began to pace. “I went to the site early to see if she was there. When she didn’t arrive, I started asking around.” He stopped and rubbed his hand over his face. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“There has to be some explanation.” Gavin pulled out his phone. “Let me text her.”
“I tried that,” Tate said. “She didn’t answer.”
“Perhaps because she doesn’t want to talk to you.” Gavin typed on the screen. “I might get a different response.” He sent the message and stared at the screen.
“Well?” Tate asked after a few moments. “Did she reply?”
Gavin slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry, man.” He glanced up at his friend. “It could be that she’s busy.”
“She’s avoiding us, I know it.” He started pacing once more. “What am I going to do? I can’t explain what happened if I can’t talk to her.”
Gavin thought a moment before responding. “Let me try email. She might not have her phone on her, but if she’s at a computer, she could be checking her mail.” Gavin started typing on the screen once more.
Tate stopped behind Gavin and stared over his shoulder. “What are you saying?”
“Just that she needs to check in. We’re worried about her.” He tapped send on the email. Immediately, an autoresponder popped up in his mailbox. “Wait a minute.” He took several steps away as he read the screen.
“What is it?” Tate asked.
Gavin lowered his phone.
Panic gripped Tate’s chest. “What?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”
“I mean, she’s left the island.”
“What?”
“It’s only temporary.” He glanced down at the screen. “It seems as if Sadie has her running some errand.”
“Where did she go?”
“London.”
“Where in London?”
Gavin shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t say, only that she won’t be back for a week and to contact her boss if we need immediate assistance.”
Tate frowned. “She’s avoiding me.”
Gavin pocketed the phone. “Seems like that’s the case. If her autoresponder is correct, she won’t be back until the night before the wedding.”
“Damn.” Tate pushed his hair from his forehead. “I need to find out where she went.”
Gavin thought for a moment. “I think I have an answer.”
“You do?”
“I can contact our boss, Carrie, and tell her that I need to talk to Zoe about some food-related issue for the wedding. Carrie hates dealing with details. She’ll give me Zoe’s location. Meanwhile, you can find a flight to London.”
“I’m on it.” Tate pulled out his own cell and started to call up flight schedules.
Gavin nodded. “I’ll reverse-lookup the phone number Carrie gives me and find out where Zoe is staying. By the time you set foot in London, I’ll have an address for you.”
“Thanks, man.” Tate lowered his phone and patted Gavin on the back. “I owe you one.”
Gavin smiled. “Don’t you forget it.”
Tate took several steps back and pointed at his friend. “I won’t.” Turning, he hurried back to his trailer to make preparations. On the way, he texted Alex to say that he was going to be away for a few days. With any luck, he’d be in the air in a few hours and in Zoe’s arms by dinner.
“Hang on, darlin’,” he whispered as he started to pack. “I’m coming.”
…
Zoe let out a long breath as she left the Colorful Horizons flower shop in downtown London. “Well, that was a bust,” she mumbled to no one in particular. She had thought that the florist had done an amazing job in providing alternatives to the coveted “rainbow rose bushes” Sadie kept harping about. Unfortunately, Sadie wouldn’t compromise. She insisted that rainbow rose bushes were real, even after Zoe showed her an internet entry by the inventor that proved the opposite. Zoe had no idea how anyone could be so stubborn.
“Kaleb told me that he had picked his rainbow roses from a real, live bush, and I believe him,” she had said. “He would never say that if it wasn’t true.”
Well, either Kaleb’s fan was a liar, or Kaleb himself was a liar. Zoe didn’t really care which. All that really mattered was that Sadie wanted the impossible, and somehow Zoe needed to come up with a miracle by the end of the week.
After buying a coffee and sticky pastry, Zoe headed over to Kensington Gardens on the other side of the block to wallow in self-pity. Situating herself on a park bench, she looked out over the landscape and wondered how on earth she had gotten to this low point in her life. Just a few short days ago, things had been going great. She had an amazing relationship with Tate, the wedding plans were almost complete, and her mother was going to receive the care she needed. Now it felt like everything was falling apart and there wasn’t a thing Zoe could do about it.
“Is this seat taken?”
Zoe glanced up to see Tate standing above her. Lovely. She thought that she’d made things clear to Carrie before she left that she didn’t want to be disturbed.
She shrugged and turned away.
He placed something in her lap. “I know that they aren’t rainbow roses, but I thought that they were beautiful just the same.”
Zoe glanced down to see a dozen or so yellow daisies sitting in her lap. She ran her finger over the petal of one, loving how smooth and simple the flower appeared. It was so different from the elaborate roses Sadie wanted, but their bright and cheery color made them no less beautiful.
She curled her fingers around the stems. “If you think that by giving me a bunch of flowers I’ll forgive you—”
Tate held up his hand. “No, I don’t think that a bunch of flowers will do anything. I just saw them and thought of you.” He dropped his hand and looked down at the flowers. “I was hoping that they would buy me a chance to explain.”
“You have nothing to explain.”
“I do.” He covered her hand with his. “Please, Zoe. Just hear me out. If after you’ve heard what I want to say, you still want me out of your life, I’ll go, but at least give me a chance.”
His hand felt warm and inviting. While part of her was still angry, another part of her was tired and missed the strong shoulder she used to lean on when things seemed overwhelming.
“Okay,” she said. “Say what you came here to say, then go.”
“Zoe…”
She pulled her hand away and turned to face him. “You have five minutes before I stand up and walk away.”
“Okay, okay.” He slid back in his seat to give her more room and sighed. “I was born into a wealthy oil family. I’m the last in a long line of heirs to the Carrington fortune, which is well into the billions of dollars.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“Because I didn’t want it.” He turned, facing the gardens. “I didn’t want any of it.”
“You didn’t want all of that money?” Zoe snorted. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Money isn’t a whole hell of a lot if it comes at a price.” Tate took in a deep breath and let it out before continuing. “All you know about my family is what my father wants the public to believe. What really happened behind closed doors was a different story.” He looked down at his hands in his lap. “People say that my father was different when my mother was alive. He wasn’t as hard or unyielding, and his expectations weren’t so difficult to meet.” He dragged his gaze away from the flowers and up to her face. “I told you about how my brother Rob died.”
“Yes.”
“Those fights had been going on for years. Sometimes my brother would get so mad that he’d throw things at my father. Once, he hit my dad in the forehead and he had to get stitches.”
“Wow—I had no idea.”
“No one did. At the time I didn’t know why Rob kept insisting on being so reckless, or why my father was so insistent that he settle down and help him run the family oil company, a business Rob seemed so ill-suited to take over. Now, looking back, I realize that they were both grieving in their own way for a mother I never knew.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Tate shrugged. “It is what it is. Every family has its problems, and we all make mistakes we regret. It was just unfortunate that on that particular night things got so out of control. Perhaps, if they had been more willing to listen to each other, all of the tragedy that followed could have been avoided.”
She shook her head. “I still don’t understand how this has to do with you marrying Gavin’s sister, or building the chapel at the resort.”
“I’m getting to that.” He took a deep breath. “After my brother died, my father put a lot of pressure on me to take over the family business. I was the last heir, he had said. The company was going to be my responsibility.”
“But you didn’t want it,” she said.
“No. I was like my brother in that regard. Neither one of us had much interest in the corporate world. It didn’t matter to my father, however. He insisted that I take lessons in etiquette and marketing, learn foreign languages and basic accounting. He took me out whenever he had some publicity event in town and tried to teach me how important it was to mingle with the people in the towns close to where our oil fields reside. He felt that big oil had a stigma attached to it, and he wanted to show people that we were just like everyone else. Happy neighbors were less likely to complain about an oil drill in their back yard.”
“Sneaky.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Every outing we went to, every person we met, was part of his agenda. We were either making contacts to expand our business or forming friendships with lobbyists on Capitol Hill so they would push our agenda.” He shook his head. “It was all a game to him, and when he talked about it with me, his face would light up with excitement. I just never felt the same fire that he did. I wanted to. I think things would have been much simpler if I did.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. Everything seemed too fake for me. I didn’t know who I could trust, or when I could be myself. It was exhausting trying to remember everything. When the opportunity came up to help design and build the new headquarters, it was such a relief.”
“It’s a beautiful building,” Zoe said. When he flashed her a questioning look, she added, “I saw a picture online.”
“I see.” He glanced down at his hands in his lap. “That building changed me. I think in creating that structure, I realized that there was a life outside of the oil company and my father. Once I got a taste of it, I didn’t want to give it up.”
“So you walked away?”
“Sort of. I told my father that I enjoyed building with my hands more than running a corporation. Needless to say, he was upset. We got into a heated argument, one that would have rivaled the ones he used to have with my brother. He told me that I wasn’t thinking clearly, that I wasn’t strong enough to make it on my own. I come from a family of oil tycoons, he had said. Running the company was in my blood. He told me that if I stayed on with him, the job would grow on me and I’d develop my own passion for oil in time.”
“But you didn’t want that.”
“No. Looking back, I think he was afraid of losing me like he lost both my mother and brother, but back then, back in the heat of the moment, I just wanted to prove him wrong.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “When it was over, he came to me with a deal.”
“A deal?”
Tate nodded. “He said that he’d give me five years to pursue my love of building. Five years to build my company and prove to him that I could do things on my own. If during that time I couldn’t make ends meet, if I had to dip into my trust fund in order to survive, then I would prove him right. I would admit that I wasn’t strong enough to make it on my own and come home.”
“Where you would run the company with your father.”
“Yes.”
“But you dipped into your trust fund to help me.” She shook her head. “Why did you do that, knowing that when you did, it would be like admitting to your father that he was right?”
“You are important to me, Zoe. You were hurting and I wanted to help.”
“But touching that money—”
“Touching that money was my decision.” He squeezed her fingers. “Being with you has shown me how childish I’ve been. Yes, my father wanted me to run the company, but not for the reasons I had originally thought. He didn’t care about the family legacy, or making money. He only wanted to share his passion with me.”
“So you’re going to go back to him?”
“Yes. I need to show him that we have other things in common besides the family business. There are other ways for us to bond and be close.” He squeezed her fingers. “For example, we both fell in love with strong women who made us want to be better people than we were.”
Zoe turned her hand and laced her fingers with his. “When are you going to see him?” she asked.
“As soon as I can convince you to come with me.”
She blinked. “What?”
He squeezed her fingers. “I want to face this, but I can’t do it alone. I was wondering—I was hoping that you would come back to Texas and talk to my father with me.”
“But this has nothing to do with me.”
“It has everything to do with you. Don’t you see?” He let go of her hand and brushed a stray hair from her face. “You are the woman who convinced me to stop running away from my family. You are the one I want to spend my life with.” He cupped the side of her cheek. “I know that once he sees you, once he sees us together, he’ll understand.”
Zoe studied his face for a long moment before replying. “We’re not so different, you and I.”
He dropped his hand and took hers. “How so?”
She looked down at their entwined fingers. “You say that all of your life you’ve been running from your family responsibilities, but I’ve also been running from mine. I used the excuse of this job to keep from visiting with my mom. Seeing her is painful, almost too painful sometimes.” She squeezed his fingers and looked up to meet his gaze. “I will go with you to face your father, if after the wedding, you will go with me to visit my mother.”
“It’s a deal.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers. As he did, Zoe’s heart soared. Tate had put his future happiness in jeopardy, in order to help her. Perhaps there was hope for their relationship after all.