Chapter 7: Nice To Meet You

Zake's POV

"You've been quiet since you heard about Henry's estranged daughter."

Derek didn't look up from his phone, his legs was on my coffee table, too comfortable in my office.

"That's either nothing or a disaster." He said. "With you it's always a disaster."

"I'm always quiet." I said.

"You're always controlled, that's different." He looked up now. "What happened?"

I picked up my coffee. "Henry's daughter is arriving today."

"I know that. I also know you've looked at her file four times this week because Lily's assistant told me." He said. "So, what is it?"

I said nothing and Derek waited as always. He was good at waiting, it was one of the things irritating about him.

"I've met her before," I said finally.

He stared at me. "The estranged daughter that Henry hadn't spoken to in nearly a decade?"

"Yes." I said.

"You've met her?" He asked.

"Once, six years ago." I set my cup down. "It was one night. I didn't know who she was."

"Zake." Derek's voice came out rough. "You're telling me that the woman you have to marry is..."

"I know, Derek." I cut him off.

"...is the same woman from the bar." He leaned forward. "The one you looked for and then told me you hadn't looked for..."

"I looked for her briefly." I said sharply. "It was nothing."

Derek tilted his head slightly. "You described her eyes to me."

"I was drunk." I said quickly.

"Oh please, you don't get dunk." He shook his head slightly.

I stood up and moved to the window. Fourteen floors above Midtown, the city running below.

I had spent years building exactly the right life. Henry Carrington had seen that, he had found me when I was eighteen with nothing but ambition and too much to prove, had put me inside the engine of Carrington Financial Group and shown me how it ran, handed me responsibilities that grew until I was the one running the engine while he aged into the role of elder statesman. He'd been more of a father to me than my own father and I owed him for that.

"She won't like it," Derek said from behind me. "When she finds out."

"No." I said. "She won't."

"A marriage clause, Zake. In the twenty-first century." Derek chuckled. "The man had a specific sense of humor."

"He had a specific sense of legacy." I turned from the window. "He wanted the company kept intact. He wanted his bloodline connected to it. He wanted..." I stopped. "It doesn't matter what he wanted. It's what he wrote and what he wrote is binding."

"What if she refuses?" He asked.

"Then she walks away with nothing. The company restructures, everything he built gets absorbed or sold." I said. "She won't refuse."

Derek looked at me. "You don't know her."

"I know enough." I said.

He was quiet for a moment. "Daphne's not going to take this well."

I kept quiet.

"She's been running the company alongside you for years now." He said. "She thought she..."

"What she thought is not something I'm responsible for." I checked my watch. "The meeting is in twenty minutes."

"That's a very cold thing to say about someone who is..."

"Derek." I cut him off. "The meeting is in twenty minutes."

"Fine." He stood up. "But for the record..."

"I know that." I said.

"I haven't said anything yet." He raised an eyebrow.

"You were going to say this I'd going to be more complicated than I think it is." I said.

"You know me too well." He moved to the door, stopped and turned back. "One more thing. Fiona's going to be there."

I went still.

"She insisted," he said. "She has every right, she's still on the board. I know you think it'll make things worse but I couldn't..."

"It's fine." I said.

"It won't be fine." His voice was sharp. "The second Kiera Griffin sees Fiona Carrington in that room..."

"I said it's fine, Derek." I picked up my jacket from the chair. "I'll handle it."

He gave me one last look that said he very much doubted that, and left.

I arrived eight minutes early.

Daphne was already there, in grey suit, composure arranged into something deliberately unreadable.

"Zake," she came up and kissed my cheek. "You're early.

"Daphne." I said and sat down.

Derek looked at me and said nothing.

Fiona arrived two minutes later. She nodded at me once and I nodded back. Across the table, Daphne's jaw tightened slightly and she became very interested in her notes.

The lawyers settled in, got the papers arranged. Water glasses filled.

Spencer Thompson checked his watch. "Ms. Griffin should be here soon."

I looked at the door.

I had been in rooms with difficult people my entire professional life. I had negotiated with men who wanted to destroy things I'd built. I had sat across tables from people who'd tried to take what was Henry's and smiled doing it. I was not a man who lost his composure. I had never been a man who lost his composure.

I had prepared for this. I had filed the information, the bar, the photograph, the six years of occasionally not quite forgetting, and contained it and moved forward. She was an heiress and I was a protégé. We had a legal structure to discuss and a company to preserve and whatever had happened in a hotel room six years ago was irrelevant to any of that.

I was completely, entirely in control.

The door opened.

She walked in. She looked exactly the same and completely different at the same time.

Six years of something I couldn't name sitting just below the surface of her face, making her sharper, more settled, more, real than the woman in the bar who'd been running on heartbreak and whiskey and righteous fury.

She was more devastating now.

Everything I had just told myself evaporated in approximately four seconds.

She scanned the room, the lawyers, Fiona, Daphne, Derek and then her eyes landed on me, and stopped.

I watched it happen in real time, the recognition, the disbelief, the split second where her composure cracked clean open before she caught it and shut it down. Her face went through three things in four seconds and she locked all of them away behind something smooth and unreadable.

But I saw it.

I saw every second of it.

I stood. Extended my hand, kept my face neutral and held her gaze, those dark eyes, wide for just a moment, the shock still burning underneath the surface she was working so hard to maintain.

"Nice to meet you, Ms. Griffin," I said.