Page 33 of Her Counterfeit Christmas
Maybe work tonight isn’t just work, but a distraction from the possibility of her death?
“Why do you want to marry for more money?” I ask, honestly curious. “You and your father are partners in the firm. You have plenty of money. When will it be enough?”
“There is no such thing as too much wealth.” His shoulders straighten as his focus returns to his computer. He’s transformed back into the man I know and dislike. “Unlike Grandmother, I’ll give my children an inheritance they can take pride in.”
I swallow bile at the idea of Spencer having children with Layla.
“I’d rather take pride in my accomplishments than my bank account.”
“Spoken like a true povo,” he mutters.
That makes me lean back. “Povo as in poor?”
He stops typing and looks at me. “Owen, I’m busy. It’s obvious you have a crush on Layla, and I get it. She’s gorgeous. Intelligent. Talented. Independent. But I have something that you can’t give her because you’re too prideful to accept your inheritance: the freedom and safety wealth offers. She’ll make the perfect wife for a lawyer. She’s not meant to be the wife of a day laborer.”
“What about love?” I ask.
He shrugs. “What about it? We’ll build a life together that anyone would aspire to. Even you.”
“Layla deserves so much better than a loveless marriage.”
He throws his head back and laughs. “You’re delusional. Love causes people to do stupid things.”
“Lack of love causes people to be miserable.”
He speaks clearly, as if I won’t understand otherwise. “Let me prove my theory that people do stupid things for love by using an example from your own life. You threw away your law career to go home to be with your dad when he was in a coma. He didn’t even know you were there. If you’d been smart, you would’ve waited until the end of the merger. You leaving early destroyed your future, but made no difference to him.”
“It made a difference to me,” I say quietly. “And to my mom and Brady.”
In a way Spencer is right. After his stroke, Dad was in a coma for eighteen days. Not finishing the merger got me home a week earlier, but he never knew I was there. He never woke up.
I’m ashamed to admit that the person I was eight years ago might have stayed through the negotiations if Grandfather had shown a modicum of compassion. Instead, he ridiculed my family and gloated over my dad’s hospitalization. As if Dad deserved the stroke for stealing his daughter from him when he’s the one who disinherited her and pushed her from the family for being disobedient to his demands.
Spencer sounds just like him.
Does Layla know what kind of man she’s marrying?
The callousness of this family still infuriates me, and for a minute I can’t speak. I’ve seen what love looks like with my own parents. I want the love that grows stronger in health and in sickness, in poorer and in richer. What Layla has with Spencer is not that.
He has no idea what he’s missing out on in his pursuit to accumulate more money.
Grandmother is right—get rid of the money because wealth like the Ecclestons hoard distorts reality and brings unhappiness in the long run.
LAYLA
“You’re wrong,” Owen says.
“About what in particular?” Spencer sounds annoyed and tired of this conversation.
Through the crack in the door, I see Spencer sitting at a large desk. He’s focused on whatever is on his computer screen and doesn’t seem to pay his cousin much attention by this point. I can’t see Owen, but his voice keeps me outside in the frigid cold. I blow on my fingertips. They sting painfully.
“You’re wrong about everything,” Owen says. “Going to my dad was the right decision. Leaving the law firm was the right decision for me and my mom and brother. Life is about more than accumulating money.”
I need Owen to stop talking and go away. The more I hear of this conversation, the more I sympathize with him and not Spencer. My secret fiancé is wrong in so many ways, especially about Owen’s dad. He was in a coma and Spencer believes Owen should have stayed to finish a business deal? No. Owen’s priorities are sound; Spencer’s are honestly embarrassing.
It’s a harsh reminder that any children Spencer and I have will come in second place to the law. Not an appealinginsight, but what am I supposed to do? Not even an hour ago I paid Brock Pine Home every penny I could access. The only thing that’s keeping me moving forward is knowing in a week I’ll have fifty-thousand dollars in hand. It’s so much, but to Spencer, it’s so little.
The wordstwenty million as an inheritance? Doubled when we’re married? Pathetic,cycle through my mind. I’m worth twenty million dollars to Spencer. How can he believe that amount is paltry?
