Page 138 of Finding Forever

Granger was late.

They’d already been waiting for nearly fifteen minutes by the time his assistant messaged to say that they’d been “unavoidably detained.”

“The same bullshit amateur power play tactics he pulled on my dad and me that weekend we came to his house.”

“The weekend we got married you mean?” Fern reminded archly. She looked relaxed, with one hand neatly folded on top of the other on the table.

Cade grinned at the reminder.

“That very one. Aah, good times,” he intoned on a chuckle and she slanted him a fond look. He was in averygood mood today, despite grumbling about the meeting this morning.

They’d had an amazing night last night. Making slow, sweet love into the early hours of the morning. Fern had had to physically bite her tongue a few times to stop herself from blurting out that she loved him.

Still, despite that one bitter note, it had been one of their best nights together. She was very close to throwing caution to the wind and telling him she wanted to make this arrangement permanent. He cared about her. She knew that, his actions all confirmed that he did. Maybe the love would follow.

Still, was it fair that she settled?

She was so deeply engrossed in her thoughts that she didn’t realize the door to Cyrus’s boardroom had opened until her legal team all leaped to their feet.

Cadehowever, continued to man-sprawl insouciantly in his chair. It was the most aggressive form of passive aggressiveness she’d ever had the privilege to witness.

Granger entered the room like he owned it, his expensive suit hanging off his skeletal frame, his skin pallid, and that sickly, insincere smile that she’d always hated on his thin lips.

His eyes lit up almost avariciously when he spotted Fern—who had also remained seated—but his face froze when he noticed Cade beside her.

“I thought this was to be a meeting with my stepdaughter alone. How am I to establish if she’s being coerced, when thatman is sittingrightbeside her? Possibly intimidating her into giving the answershewants her to give?”

Fern sighed and—despite his still nonchalant pose—she felt Cade tense beside her. Her hand dropped to his thigh and squeezed, begging for restraint and the tension left his body.

“Mr. Hawthorne is here merely as an observer and to lend support to his wife,” Cyrus said. “Please have a seat, if you don’t mind, Mr. Abernathy.”

It was framed like a polite request but it was clearly an order.

Granger slanted the attorney a look of acute dislike—a look that spoke of a history of unpleasant encounters between the two men—and sat down directly across from Fern. A couple of his attorneys sat on his left. And Richard Wilson oozed into the room to take up the position on Granger’s left.

“My dear,” Richard said, the sound of his too smooth voice sending an unpleasant shudder down her spine as it always had. “How lovely it is to see you again. I’ve missed you so much.”

His words made her frown in confusion. She hadn’t shared more than a few dozen words with the man in the past.

“Richard,” she greeted warily.

“Is that bastard really going to stay?” Granger asked, tilting his jaw toward Cade, who sat hand over fist and watching them over the top of his knuckles.

“I’d prefer it if myhusbandstayed, yes,” Fern stated calmly.

“We can’t talk with him here,” Richard said and Fern’s frowning gaze touched on his face again.

“I don’t really have anything to say to you anyway,” she said and Cade made a choking sound in the back of his throat. She threw him a warning glance that he merely returned with a raised brow.

“Fern, I know you’re still angry with me, but this has goneon long enough,” Richard told her in a whispered aside. A whisper loud enough to carry to every pair of ears in the room.

“What?” Fern was completely mystified by his strange behavior.

“Dickie”—Cade snorted at the nickname her stepfather had used and Fern didn’t even bother sending him a quelling gaze this time, because itwasa ridiculous name—“has told me about the argument you two had the night you ran off withthat man, Fern.”

“I’m sorry, what now?” Fern asked in confusion, her eyes on her stepfather’s sly smiling face.

“I admit that I didn’t respond very well to the news of your pregnancy, Fern,” Richard said, his gaze couldalmostpass as sincere and imploring. “But you know I would have come to my senses by the following day. I just needed some time to let it sink in.”

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