TO BE MORE

MACK’S POV

My mother’s steely eyes settled in on Claire standing behind me. Immediately, I moved to obstruct her view of my bride-to-be.

“You didn’t have to come all the way to the airport to see me, mother. I was headed home anyways,” I said gently. She raised a skeptical brow at me.

“Really? And here I was thinking that, with the way you avoided me like a plague, you didn’t want to see me. I thought you had left me with no other choice but to accost you at the airport.” She smiled coyly. “My bad.”

She couldn’t resist then. Craning her long, slender neck, she appraised Claire. Her expression was neutral, but I knew what Laura Allister thought.

“Who’s that?” she asked. I wasn’t expecting her to, but Claire stepped forward, her face smiling and welcoming.

“Hello. My name is Claire Moore. It is nice to meet you.”

I have to hand it to Claire though, she was unmoved despite the hard look my mother gave her. She didn’t even stretch out her hand for a handshake when she introduced herself. And my God! The smile she gave her was gold! She looked so beautiful, I almost lost my mind and resumed what we were doing on the plane.

“Sadie’s here. She just got back from Germany. Her father wants you two to get married as soon as possible.”

I sighed, shaking my head at my mother’s poor attempt to phase me or shock Claire. When neither of us gave a reaction, her eyebrows creased so badly I feared she’d have wrinkles.

“Mother, I’d like to say we should go somewhere to continue this conversation, but I don’t want to prolong this anymore than necessary so I’m just going to say this here. I’m getting married to Claire next week. It’s going to be a grand celebration because I want to show her off to the whole world. I will not marry Sadie or Susan or Melissa or any other woman that you have chosen for me. Now.” I grabbed a hold of Claire’s had and interlocked our fingers. “I am taking my fiancée home. She has had a stressful day and I need her to rest so we can plan our future together.”

My mother was too stunned to even speak, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to come back with a vengeance.

“Sadie sounds like she’s a perfect match for you,” Claire said the moment the doors to the back of the Maybach we were in closed. I turned to face her, a frown on my face.

“What?”

“I mean, she’s obviously mother approved. I still don’t get why you want me instead.”

I didn’t know how best to explain to her the wonderful and exhilarating news I found about her. She was more than the perfect match for me. In every sense, she was incredible. I didn’t think any amount of explanation could do justice to that, so I said, “Liam. I need to marry you because of him.”

We were on our way to my estate. I wanted to marry Claire this very evening, but I needed to give her the time to acclimate to her new home. I didn’t want her to feel suffocated and actually give her the chance to think it over, although, I knew that even if she did change her mind last minute, I was going to make her change it back.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, for starters, Liam is my brother.”

“What?” The shock and disbelief in her voice could not be missed. Her blue eyes widened so much she looked like a cartoon character.

“Well, technically, we’re half-brothers. He’s an annoying little shit, that’s for sure. And, just so you know, I don’t hate him because he was born as a result of my father’s infidelity. I actually liked the little shithead when we were younger, but he has a really nasty personality that makes him almost impossible to keep loving.”

“Are you…” she started, skeptical about completing her question. Her eyes were narrowed as if trying to gauge my thoughts, not wanting to rely on my words for clarification.

“Are you using me as a pawn in your sibling rivalry? Is that why you want to marry me? Because I’m your brother’s ex and you hate him so much?” She didn’t sound pleased at the idea that I was using her.

“Claire, I will not lie to you and say I am not going to relish in the joy this arrangement between us will bring me the moment I see the angry and frustrated look on Liam’s face when I marry you. But I have my priorities, and while making my brother so mad he’ll end up doing something stupid he’d regret for the rest of his life is going to make my day, I will not throw away my ambitions just for that. There are much more important things in life than a silly sibling rivalry, my darling.”

Her perfectly sculpted brows were furrowed so deeply and she had creases on her forehead. I reached out my hand and touched the middle of her face, and almost immediately the creases disappeared. I could tell she was surprised by my touch by the way she looked at me with those beautiful sapphire eyes of her.

Oh, the things I wanted to do to her in the car! But she still had questions to ask, and, not that I cared what people thought of me, but I didn’t want to give my driver a front row seat to see my future wife naked.

“I will not be used as a pawn in your fight with your brother.” I liked how serious and bossy she sounded then. It made it harder to focus on our conversation.

“I do not expect you to be one.” I leaned in closer to her then, making it seem as though I did that to tell her something important that only she was allowed to hear, but in reality, I did that to just be that close to her.

“I do not want you to be used by anyone anymore, Claire. You are worth more than anything in this world and you deserve everything you want. That is why I want to help you.”

“Help me? Do what exactly?”

“Be more.”

Our eyes were locked on each other’s. There was a waver in hers as if she was terrified that I had discovered a secret she longed desperately to conceal. Claire Moore was the type of person to let others get a pass on an opportunity while she waited patiently behind for the next one. She always gave people chances, whether they deserved them or not. It was an admirable thing, really, but her inability to decipher when to do that and when to grab whatever opportunity was thrown at her was annoying and suffocating. I assumed that deep down, she only did that because she was terrified of what laid ahead of her. She had become complacent and was comfortable in the position she was in. It was why she didn’t want to take the job in New York. It was why she was friends with Aliana even though she had shown numerous times how unreliable she was. It was why she dated my stupid brother for that long. Because she didn’t know how to move on from what she knew. I was going to change that for her.

“You graduated Harvard Law summa cum laude but you didn’t practice law. When there was a job opening at the top firm in Portland, you turned it down because you thought someone else deserved the position, someone with more experience than you. A few days later they hired Elizabeth, your friend, who also just graduated law school, but not one as prestigious as yours.”

Her eyes darkened then and I could tell her heart rate had increased. She looked flushed, like she was embarrassed from being caught in a lie.

“How…” she couldn’t complete her sentence because I interjected.

“You decided to take a completely different career path than what you went to school for. You became a PR specialist. Fast forward to three years later, a promotion is due and everyone congratulates you for your hard work and is excited for you, but you? What do you do? You turn it down. Why? Because you didn’t think you deserved it.”

“Because I didn’t!” she screeched. Her eyes were glistening with tears. It was far from my plan to make her cry – I really didn’t mean to – but I needed her to understand that she was her number one hater and she needed to stop sabotaging herself.

“I promise you Claire, if the hire ups didn’t think you deserved it, it wouldn’t have been presented to you in the first place.”

“How…how the hell did you know all these?” She looked afraid now and I knew inching forward in that moment was going to make her recoil like I was a snake about to strike, and that would hurt me more than words could describe. So, I stayed where I was and replied, “I know a lot of things, Claire Moore, especially if they are about the woman I intend to spend the rest of my life with.”

“So, you did a background check on me.” It was more of a statement than a question and that scared look she had earlier was gone and was replaced with an annoyed scowl. “Who the hell gave you the right to do so?”

“Claire, this information are more general knowledge. I didn’t need to probe that far to get them.”

“You didn’t need to probe that far to find out where I went to school? What I ended up doing instead of being a lawyer? Who ended up taking my position and the promotion I turned down? Really? You expect me to believe that?”

I didn’t. I knew she was no fool so if she had believed me, my view of her would have been altered immediately. To be honest, I knew way more than I was letting on, but I didn’t want to terrify her more than she already was, so I didn’t say anything else.

“Claire, you have better things to worry about than how I got your information. Aliana.” At the mention of her friend’s name, she seemed to recoil and soon she forgot about my probing into her personal life. “What are you going to do about her?”

I felt the car slow down then and I knew we were getting close to my home. Our home.

“Nothing,” she responded resignedly. It seemed like, even though she had seen the evidence and had probably suspected it all this while, she was still finding it difficult to believe that she was betrayed like that by someone she trusted the most in the world.

“You can’t possibly be serious?” I asked, sounding offended and outraged on her behalf. She shrugged her shoulders and turned to look out the window.

“There must be some kind of misunderstanding. I’ll…I’ll talk to Aliana when I settle down.”

I refused to believe what I just heard. This was exactly what I wanted to help her overcome – this need to want to give everyone a chance no matter how undeserving they were. She didn’t need someone like Aliana around her. People like that only tend to bring you down and keep you from growing.

“Darling,” I called to her, making her turn to face me. Her face was solemn and she looked like she was about to cry. “As you’re about to take my last name, there’s something you should know. Allisters don’t take bullshit. The only opportunity your enemy has to defend themselves is before the accusation has been thrown at them and the evidence already gathered. Anything after that is inadmissible and will not be taken into consideration when thinking of ways to deal with them.”

“That sounds a bit harsh, don’t you think?” she said breathily.

“No darling,” I said, cupping her cheek and wiping the first drop of tear that fell from her beautiful eyes. The car came to a halt then and it felt like it was just us two in the whole world. “That just sounds like how life is. You get only one chance; after that, you deal with the consequences.”