Chapter 16: A Whole Kingdom

Beside him, Serena was still going, a bright, bubbly stream of strangers' names and other people's drama. Somewhere around Gorman, Myles stopped hearing it altogether. His mind had already drifted back to the woman who used to ride in that seat.

Harper had been quiet. Not dull. Easy. When she did talk, she actually said something. She'd point out a hawk circling over the freeway, or tell him the road they were on used to be a stagecoach route, or repeat something funny her mom used to say at the diner. Somehow it always made the drive go faster.

And she'd known when to stop talking. If he came home wrecked, she didn't pepper him with questions. She just made soup. Put on the playlist he liked. Reached over at red lights and squeezed his hand without a word.

He'd never noticed how considerate she was. You didn't notice oxygen until it was gone.

"Myles. Myles. Are you even listening?"

"Mm-hm."

He wasn't.

A twinge he didn't like went through him. He missed her. Not the questions about the wedding date. Not the flat, cold way she'd looked at him over that canned soup. He missed the quiet. He missed coming home to someone who didn't need to fill every silence.

Then, uninvited, yesterday came back to him. Harper rising from that table, chin up, voice perfectly steady.

We're breaking up.

He almost laughed again. Breaking up. With what? She didn't have a job. She didn't have family. She had a car he paid for, a house he owned, and a bank account he funded. He'd called her three times this morning to remind her about the lunch deliveries to the office, and she hadn't picked up. Fine. She was sulking. She'd be home Monday with something simmering on the stove, the way she always was.

Harper didn't leave. Where would she even go?

He did love her, in a way. He could admit that here, alone in his own head. She was sweet. Loyal. Beautiful in a way that didn't need a ring light.

But sweet didn't sit on boards.

He'd take care of her, of course. A nice apartment. An allowance. A place in his life where she'd be comfortable and grateful and out of sight. That was more than most girls from nowhere towns ever got.

His grandfather had spent seventy years turning a bootlegger's land into an empire, and Myles was going to inherit it. One of the richest men in America. Nobody was going to stand in the way of that, least of all a woman whose biggest dream used to be a swimming pool.

A man like him needed a wife who could hold her own at a state dinner. Who looked good on a magazine cover. Who came from the kind of family his grandfather respected.

Serena was the smart choice.

He'd gone through the list first, naturally. He'd wanted one of the other old-money LA families, a name that would look good next to Crawford on a wedding invitation. But the ones worth having had only sons, or their daughters were practically his aunts. There'd been one more option, from an even older family, but she was heavy, and Myles wasn't going to spend fifty years of photographs pretending he didn't care about looks.

Serena's family wasn't as grand as the others. But she was gorgeous, she was famous, and she could work a room like she'd been born on a red carpet. That had sealed it.

He glanced over. She was applying lip gloss and humming something off-key, utterly delighted with herself.

She's just nervous, he told himself. She'll settle down once she's around the family.

He took the exit.

---

The road narrowed and began to climb. On both sides, golden grass rolled away in long waves, dotted with dark valley oaks. Far off, the mountains stacked up in blue layers, their peaks catching the late-morning sun.

For the first time in eighty miles, Serena stopped talking.

"Wait." She pressed her nose to the window. "Is this still your family's land? All of it?"

"Since before the war." Myles kept his voice casual, which took effort. "Everything you can see. Every direction."

"Shut up."

"The whole family's coming up this weekend. Aunts, uncles, cousins. It's my grandfather's ninety-second birthday."

"Ninety-two?" Serena counted on her fingers, gave up, and blinked at him. "So he's, like, really rich and really old."

"Serena."

"I'm just saying. That's a lot of birthdays to buy presents for."

They rounded a bend, and a stone gate rose up ahead, weathered and moss-streaked, flanked by iron lanterns and a squat little guardhouse. A man in a green jacket stepped out, saw the car, and waved them through without a word.

The road kept climbing, past orchards and long white fences and horses lifting their heads to watch them pass. Then the oaks parted, and the whole compound spread out below.

Warm stone houses dotted the valley floor like a small village, each with a red tile roof and its own walled garden. Beyond them, orchards ran in neat green rows toward the foothills, and red-roofed stables sat low against the slope. At the very top of the rise, where the road ran out and the mountain began, stood the old house: red brick wrapped in ivy, chimneys smoking, every window catching the light.

Serena sat bolt upright. Her hand flew to her chest.

"Oh my God," she breathed. "Myles. It's a whole kingdom."

He smiled, slow and satisfied, and eased the Rolls down the long gravel drive.

For a moment, he forgot all about quiet women and unanswered calls.

This was what mattered. This was what he'd been born for.