Page 130 of Best Kind of Trouble
“I’m allowed to bring a guest,” she insists. “If you don’t want us here, then we’ll leave, but we’re either staying or going together.”
He glances at the metal gate protecting Sterling Manor from the riffraff, and it hits me.
“So youdidinvite her bully. Again,” I say.
His gaze snaps back to me as Briar breathes in a sharp inhale.
“Melanie and her father will be coming to dinner,” he says tightly, shifting his attention back to her. “There’s some business to discuss, Briar, business that involves you, so you can understand why your friend here isn’t a good fit for this conversation.”
She gives him a look brimming with betrayal. “Melly’s father, the real estate developer?”
The truth hits me as if it just ricocheted off her. All of this—Briar Boot Camp, giving her the brewery but only a few weeks’ worth of budget, asking Melly to write about it…
He hasn’t been testing her. He’s been trying to push her toward failure.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
BRIAR
I thought my father was only testing me because I’d shown him I was weak. If I passed the tests, if the brewery was successful, he’d be proud of me. Finally, he’d be proud.
But that was never going to happen.
Sometime over the past year, Melly’s father must have brought hi m an offer he didn’t want to refuse…but it happened too late. My dad had already made someone else a different offer. Namely, me.
He’d convinced me to come home by offering me a signed-and-sealed promise to take over the brewery—a decision he’d surely regretted after Melly’s father came to him with a deal. So my dad had tried every manipulative tactic in his personal toolbox to get me to give up. And, when that didn’t work, he’d tried to make me outright fail—so when I did, he could sweep in with his friend’s offer and convince me to sell. My dad would take a “fair” cut, no doubt, along with whatever golden prize he’d been offered in exchange for making the deal happen.
I’m tempted to walk back to Liam’s bike. To let him take over and lead me away from this awful tomb of a house. But I’mnot the weak woman my father thinks I am. Maybe I never was. And right now, I’m angry.
Liam helped me understand that anger doesn’t always have to be a bad thing, something to stuff down until you can scream into a pillow. Anger can be powerful.
“You set me up,” I say coldly. “All this time…you weren’t trying to help me. You were trying to make me fail and trick me into thinking it was my fault.”
Liam presses his palm to my lower back, and I nearly cry. He’s being present in exactly the way I need—showing me he’s my backup but not trying to take over. He knows I have to handle this myself, and he cares about giving that to me.
He cares about me, full stop.
My mother retreats into the house. She won’t want to be part of this conversation, not that she minds my father’s cutthroat nature. After all, she immortalized it in wood and hung it on the wall.
“Of course not.” My father wraps his arms across his chest. “Look, it’s cold out there. Why don’t you come inside, and we’ll talk all this over in a civilized way. Your…your friend can come in too.”
“Great,” Liam says, shoving in past him.
I stare at his back in confusion for a second.
“I need to take a leak,” Liam adds. “I assume Alicia wouldn’t want me to go on the bushes.”
“Go, go.” My father waves him away with an expression of total disdain that Liam probably loves.
Speaking of which…
What the hell is Liam up to?
Maybe he actually needs to use the bathroom, but it seems unlikely.
My father and I stand silently staring at each other untilLiam emerges a couple of minutes later. He heads toward us with easy grace, like he’s completely oblivious to any tension.
I’m sure he knows it’s exactly the sort of thing my father finds most aggravating.
