King’s Queen by Marie Johnston
Chapter 4
Aiden
The linesof the mahogany conference table widened and narrowed in uneven waves along the surface. The table matched the mantel around the electric fireplace in the conference room. Did the mantel have the same grain lines as the table?
“Mr. King?”
Or had they picked a slab of mahogany that was more refined for mantels? Did they sell them as matching sets? Here’s a meeting table, and if you happen to have a fireplace in your posh conference room, then do we have a table for you—
“Mr. King?”
“Aiden.” Dad’s voice cut through my pondering and I raised my gaze off the dark lines in the already dark wood.
Shit. I was in the middle of a meeting on next year’s projected expenditures. A key meeting requiring my participation, and I’d spaced out. The monitor positioned above the fireplace was filled with faces of execs from our satellite offices in Wyoming, North Dakota, and the rest of Montana. In the conference room, Dad, Kendall, Phillip, and six more of our department heads waited on me.
“Right,” I said as I scrambled to figure out what the hell to say.
Kendall swooped in for the save. “Why don’t I compile the information and disseminate it? Watch for it in your inboxes tomorrow.”
Dad jumped in with more instructions about the information he expected to reach his desk—information that needed to come from me, but I was too lost to even look at my files and figure out what to say.
It was my second day back after taking a full week off. I couldn’t leave Dad and Kendall to clean up after me any longer. I’d lost my wife. I couldn’t lose this job or I’d have nothing. I also couldn’t cost anyone else their job. In order to do that, I had to be in my office, files in front of me, working like I always did.
“All right, everyone. Have a good weekend.” Dad tapped twice on the table between us. He wanted me to stay behind.
Kendall gathered her tablet and phone and chatted with Phillip as they wandered out.
As the room cleared, Dad murmured, “Can I talk to you in your office?”
I dipped my head and avoided looking at anyone. Dad followed me up to our floor and into my office.
He closed the door behind us. “How’s it going?”
I sat behind my desk. “Oh. You know.” If pondering wood grains in office furniture during important meetings was okay, I’d reassure him I was fine.
I wasn’t fine.
His concerned gaze brushed over me. My stubble was morphing into a full-fledged beard, my hair hadn’t seen more than a finger comb in days, and I was wearing the wrinkled suit that I’d worn the day before my world had been upended. I was running out of laundry and dry cleaning hadn’t occurred to me in the last week.
He sat in the chair across from me. “Have you talked to Kate lately?”
“We’ve messaged.”
He cocked his head. “And?”
I let out a gusty breath. Discussing my impending divorce wasn’t going to help me do my job. “And what, Dad? She wants to know when we should meet and sign the papers.”
Dad’s sigh was quiet but so was my office. It was as loud as a tornado. Guilt snaked through me. He didn’t have time for this, for my lack of attention to tasks only I could do. He had to be swamped, both him and Kendall burning the midnight oil, sacrificing sleep and time together while I’d been useless on my couch, watching the whole damn series of Shameless.
Protecting Dad from overdoing it used to be enough motivation to keep me in the office, especially after his heart attack. But this divorce had blindsided me.
“Have you two actually talked?” he asked.
“I’m afraid we’re past that point.”
“You still have time.”
I didn’t respond. First Beck. Now Dad. But neither of them knew my wife.
“Where’s she staying?”
I shrugged and stared at the black screen of my computer. Kendall had requested even visual notifications be silenced when IT set up my new monitor. “I dunno. Her parents’ place maybe. A hotel.”
“Have you asked her?”
“It’s apparently none of my business,” I said bitterly. Unlike me, Kate normally shared what was going on in her life. If she hadn’t told me, she didn’t want me to know.
Dad let out a long breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Goddammit, Aiden. You’ve mastered everything you’ve done in your life. You made state wrestling. Magna cum laude at college. King Oil wouldn’t be where it is if you sucked at your job. You’re here because you’re the best. Direct some of that energy and determination to your marriage.”
I ignored the part about my job. I was where I was because I was a King. I would’ve been fired years ago otherwise. I shifted my gaze to him and spoke slowly. “She had the papers already drawn up.” Behind my back, which had been easy, since I was never home.
“Have you been faithful?”
I rocked forward so suddenly Dad flinched. “Of course I have.” He couldn’t step out of my life whenever it was convenient for him and then charge back in and assume the worst about me when it came to Kate.
“Does she know that?”
I’d never strayed. Never. “She should.”
“All she knows is that you didn’t tell her about something that she thinks was your sole motivation for marrying her. All she knows is that you didn’t tell her she’d get half and so she assumes that’s why you’re still married. Does she know you didn’t give her your mother’s wedding ring?”
I winced. Those rings were Mama’s. She’d never liked me abusing the entitlement I’d grown up with. So ironically, I’d bought a giant ring for Kate. One that she looked at as if it’d grow fangs and bite her. “I bought her a ring that’s her own.”
Dad’s infuriating, steady gaze told me I hadn’t answered his question. “She’s going to question everything. The late nights. The work trips. The hours you spend on your phone or your laptop around her.”
“You do the same around Kendall.”
He ticked a finger out. “One, Kendall works at the company. She knows what I do better than anyone.” Another finger. “Two, I didn’t have a trust hanging over my head with stipulations.” A third finger went up as his gaze intensified. “Three, and this one is the most important, we talk. We talk about how we feel, we talk about work, and we talk about us.”
I clenched my jaw. I lost on all three points. No wonder my marriage had been taken down by a little gossip.
“It’s the talking, Aiden, that’s the most important. When your mother died, I held it all in. I did what felt good and took the pain away. I filled a gaping hole with temporary company and kept it all to myself and it wasn’t until you—” He rubbed his temples. “It wasn’t until it looked like you married Kate for the money that I realized I’d been a piss-poor example of a man.”
This was the first time Dad had acknowledged, to me at least, that his promiscuous behavior had been tied to grief, to not knowing how to deal with Mama being gone and having four kids to raise on his own. He’d had the luxury of getting away, of finding some solace in someone. I hadn’t had that.
The sharpest edge of my resentment dulled. He’d been hurting, and I’d been angry at him for so long, so damn furious, that I hadn’t been able to look at it directly. Instead, I’d focused elsewhere: single-minded determination to secure the fiscal future of all things King.
I was exhausted.
I’d resisted defending myself for so long that it was difficult to form the words on my tongue. “I didn’t marry Kate for the money.” It came out flat and lacking conviction, but it was better than saying nothing. Would he believe me?
Dad scooted to the edge of his seat and pressed his fingertips together like he was in a board meeting. The same move Beck had pulled. “If you want to stop the divorce, then you need to talk to your wife. But first, you need to think about what kind of husband you want to be, and if it’s the kind of husband she’d want.”
What kind of husband I wanted to be? I provided. I could give her anything she ever wanted. Except Kate wasn’t a woman who gave a damn about things. If she did, she wouldn’t have been daunted by the money.
She treasured the people in her life. Her family. Friends. Coworkers. Patrons at the library. I’d used her to land the family treasure and then had taken her for granted. I’d put off talking to her, convinced I’d do it later, that there’d be a better time that would somehow make my lies hurt less.
Later was here and she was gone.
I had succeeded in securing the trust and the company. Could I secure a future with Kate?
No, the question was, could I secure a future with Kate where she knew the real me?
Did I even know who the real me was?
* * *
Kate
It was an unusuallywarm autumn day. I’d made it through two weeks of work, and I’d done it without telling my coworkers I was getting divorced. I hadn’t been able to tell anyone since I hadn’t confirmed with Aiden a time to meet and discuss the terms of the divorce so we could each sign.
It had been two weeks since I’d last seen him or talked to him. Our messages were short and infrequent.
The confusion in his gaze when I’d told him I wanted a divorce haunted me. The way he’d shouted after me as I had left. He never raised his voice. Aiden was steady, restrained. Frustratingly so.
“Katie can do it,” Jason taunted.
I tipped my head up, straightening in the lawn chair I reclined in on the porch Randall had built off the back door of the house. It took up a quarter of the small yard, but when it was nice out, my family used it like another living room. Jason circled his oldest boy, Caleb, on the brown lawn. We’d gotten a dusting of snow earlier in October but the last of it had melted two weeks ago.
The grass crunched as they circled. Caleb, a lanky twelve-year-old, would lash out with his hands, trying to capture his dad’s legs for a takedown or get a collar grip on his neck. Jason would dance out of his way.
“Stalling,” I called.
“Told ya,” Jason said to Caleb. “She knows what she’s talking about. Who do you think Mattie and I practiced with?”
Caleb shot me a disbelieving look.
With Mattie, I wouldn’t have called getting my face ground into the carpet practice. That had been his excuse when Mom had yelled at him to leave me alone. Jason had been serious about the sport and having someone similar in age and size—until he’d had a growth spurt—to work on takedowns with anytime of the day had been convenient.
Randall chuckled from the other side of the deck. His curly black hair was trimmed short with shoots of gray through it. “Caleb doesn’t believe you.” He gave me a sidelong look. “You should prove him wrong. Dust off those moves.”
How long had it been since I’d messed around in the backyard with my brothers? I had been older than Caleb’s twelve, but by the time I’d left for college, I had left all the roughhousing behind. During holidays, my nephews usually defaulted to wrestling until their mom or mine got after them. I’d always sat out. Then I’d married and missed more holidays than I cared to think about.
I stood and toed out of my canvas slip-ons. “Those moves were more impressive when I wasn’t an adult facing off with a twelve-year-old.”
“Aunt Katie?” Caleb straightened, forgetting his dad. He didn’t think I’d follow through.
I shed my silver hoodie and tucked my Under Armour T-shirt into my black yoga pants. “If you can wrestle a grown woman, then you won’t bat an eye when you face off with someone who dehydrated themselves into your weight class.”
“Told ya,” Jason repeated as he backed away, his hands held in surrender.
I windmilled my arms as I crossed to Caleb. Cool, dry grass crunched underfoot. Randall kept a healthy lawn. It’d be perfect to practice on in the summer if it weren’t for the grass stains. All I’d be after this was gritty.
I adopted the same stance as Caleb, knees and arms bent, and circled him.
The screen door from the house slammed shut. “Holy crap,” my other nephew, Corbin, cried. He was ten years old and just as stunned.
“Door.” Randall’s reprimand was absentminded. After all, he’d been saying it for over twenty years with three different doors. “The glass is going to shatter one of these days.”
“Sorry, Grandpa.” Corbin strode onto the lawn and waited by his dad. “Aunt Katie wrestles? I thought it was just Uncle Aiden.”
“Aunt Katie wrestles.” Jason’s mouth quirked.
The screen door squeaked again. I didn’t look over my shoulder, but Matt said, “Maybe if Katie wrestled Uncle Aiden more, she wouldn’t be here.”
I shot him a glare, and nearly flipped him off like we were kids again, but his grin was unrepentant. When Caleb lunged for me, I knew that had been Matt’s intention: throw me off. I had Matt’s support with my divorce—but he was still my jackass brother.
I shuffled away from Caleb’s scrawny arms, keeping just out of reach while looking for an opening like Randall had taught me.
Both of my brothers had rallied around me. Jason’s wife, Sophie, had brought me a few pints of ice cream and given advice that was similar to Mom’s. Fuck him. Matt’s girlfriend had sent memes every day to make me laugh.
“Neither boy has seen you wrestle, Katie,” Randall said as Caleb and I returned to facing off. Was the kid seriously advancing on me? “That means it’s been over twelve years. Don’t hurt yourself.” His deep chuckle only told me he was doing the same thing as Matt: trying to psych me out.
Caleb was half my size and probably didn’t wrestle nearly as dirty as his dad had. I could take him.
Billings hadn’t had much for girls wrestling when I was growing up. Mom would’ve gone head-to-head with the wrestling club if I’d wanted to officially hit the mats, but I had been an odd duck already. I couldn’t be the girl who wrestled with the boys. It wasn’t unusual now, my seven-year-old niece wrestled too, but I hadn’t been a trailblazer.
Caleb reached for one of my legs halfheartedly. I’d have to make him take this seriously. Take me seriously.
I snaked my arms out, catching him behind one leg. Muscle memory kicked in and I executed a flawless single-leg takedown. His back hit the ground and he didn’t have time for a sprawling defense before I was on him.
His training kicked in. He bridged and twisted, his slight weight straining against my hold. I’d have plenty of time to take it easy on him. First, he needed a lesson.
I rolled over him, using my size as an unfair advantage. After all, my only experience had been with my brothers and fairness didn’t count when it came to siblings.
Jason hit the ground on his knees and slammed his hand on the ground. “That’s a pin for Katie.” He laughed.
I let Caleb up. He shot to his feet and dusted himself off. “That wasn’t fair. She’s bigger than me.”
“But you’re not going to underestimate me again, are you?”
Caleb puffed his long bangs out of his face. “I didn’t.”
I stood and clapped him on the shoulder. “You did too. You were thinking ‘there’s no way this old lady can take me down. I might hurt her.’ ”
Pink brushed across his cheeks. “Did not.”
“Did too.” I ran my hand around my waist to make sure my shirt hadn’t gotten tugged out. “Again?”
His little-kid grin warmed my heart. “I ain’t going soft on ya.”
I loved spending time with my nephews. I hadn’t done enough of it beyond spectating at their matches and games, going to plays and music performances. The last two years, I’d slacked off. Facing the inevitable “Where’s Aiden?” had caused more anxiety than it was worth. I’d avoided the family that had always had my back no matter how much I’d tried to be different from them.
Never again.
I grappled with Caleb. He was a strong kid, but he hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet. My body remembered all the moves. How to breathe so I didn’t get tired out. How to roll and twist in a way that wouldn’t hurt him, but would give him enough experience to make it worthwhile.
“I’m next. I’m next.” Corbin danced around us.
I took turns between the boys. I wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow after pulling half the muscles in my body. My workouts until now had been as pointless and lonely as my marriage. The gym in our house—Aiden’s house—had all the amenities, everything but other people. It had seemed wasteful to join a gym when I had all the same equipment under my roof and twenty-four-seven access to any group fitness class I could stream. I had thought of taking up swimming just so I could justify the cost that I had no problem covering in order to be around other people.
I’d have to factor going to the gym into my budget and my time. Same with being with my family.
My distraction cost me. Corbin took after his dad and the little bugger tickled me during one round.
“You little shrimp,” I gasped between giggles. Jason used to do the same thing when he got tired of practicing. “I’m going to make you pay.”
“I’ll save you, Corb!” Caleb jumped in and I had to summon all my rusty knowledge to keep from being pinned and tickled by both of them.
The screen door squeaked. Had Mom come out to watch? My niece Violet?
“Kids,” Jason said. “That’s enough.” Why wasn’t he egging them on? That was more like him.
They didn’t listen. I barked out a laugh as Corbin tried to roll on top of me, as if his slight weight could pin me.
“Boys,” Jason barked.
Caleb heaved off me first, hearing the warning tone in his dad’s voice. Corbin tried to get in a last armpit tickle, but I hooked my arm around his neck and put him into an illegal headlock with his arm cocked and immobile in the air.
I was raking my knuckles over his scalp for an auntie noogie when the way Jason said, “Um, Katie?” made me stop.
I puffed my hair out of my face and twisted around. My heart hammered once. Twice. The guy standing next to Jason was the hottest, sexiest, most mouthwatering man I’d ever seen. Tall. Built. His long-sleeved Henley hugged his torso like it had been sculpted onto his biceps and abs. Powerful legs filled out worn blue jeans. What rocked me wasn’t the unruly cowlick that hadn’t been ruthlessly shellacked into place with hair gel, but the rugged scruff covering his strong, square jaw.
He was all things masculine. He oozed sex appeal. And he looked at me like he’d never seen a rumpled mess of an aunt wearing dried grass clippings and a shirt twisted around her stomach.
Air whooshed out of my lungs. “Aiden.”