Resistance (Replica) (17 page)

“Just wait till the press gets wind of the engagement,” he said. “I’ll sound positively flattering by comparison.”

Nadia’s eyes softened with pity. “The poor thing,” she murmured, and Nate felt that damn sneer twisting his lips again.

“This is a better marriage than she could have hoped for in her wildest dreams. And she doesn’t give a shit who she has to walk over to get what she wants.” He’d told her flat-out that she’d be ruining Nadia’s life, and it hadn’t seemed to bother her.

Nadia’s gaze turned positively fierce. “I know you think you’re the greatest prize in the history of the universe, but I can tell you from personal experience that you’re not as much of a prize as you think.”

Nate flinched at the anger in her voice—and at the truth of her words. Recent events had forcefully opened his eyes to how poorly he had treated her over the course of their friendship, of how he had taken advantage of her kind nature—and of the burden of responsibility that made her unable to protest his treatment.

“You haven’t the faintest idea what it’s like to be powerless over your life,” Nadia continued. “I doubt anyone sat down with Agnes and asked her if she’d like to marry a spoiled, selfish, mean-spirited ass who just happens to be the heir to Paxco. No one ever asked
me.
”

Ouch! He couldn’t blame Nadia for being angry at him, not after the direction her life had taken lately. And he couldn’t argue that he hadn’t been spoiled and selfish through much of his life. If he’d grown up as much as he’d like to think, he’d have kept his mouth shut and taken the criticism like a man, but he just couldn’t refrain from trying to defend himself.

“I am
not
mean-spirited.” It seemed like a puny defense against her assessment of his character, but it was the best he could do.

“I wouldn’t have said so before today,” Nadia agreed, crossing her arms and glaring at him. “But without having spoken a word with her, I can tell from across the room that Agnes is painfully shy, and that you’ve been making her miserable. And you just described her as a cow with no personality. I hate to break it to you, Nate, but that’s the very definition of
mean-spirited.
It’s not her fault your father chose her as his instrument of revenge.”

Nate sank a little lower into his seat. “I’m hoping she’ll hate me and try to talk her father out of the marriage.” And if that wasn’t a rationalization, he didn’t know what was. Agnes had already made it clear she had no intention of opposing the marriage, so being unpleasant to her served no purpose. Other than to vent his anger, that is.

Nadia snorted. “You’re so used to getting your own way you have no idea what it’s like to be one of the rest of us. She’s an Executive girl, and from what I understand, she’s not her father’s heir. She’s been raised since birth to believe her purpose in life is to bring more power and money to her family by marrying well. She’ll do whatever she thinks is best for her family, no matter how personally miserable it will make her.”

“It’s not like
I
have a choice in this,” he retorted.

She raised her chin. “Yes, for two or three days, you’ve known what it’s like not to have choices in your life. Obviously, you understand exactly what it’s been like for Agnes and me to live with that our whole lives.”

This was not exactly how he’d been picturing his reunion with Nadia. His head was starting to ache, and his heart was a lead anchor in his chest. “You don’t understand, Nadia,” he said, staring down at his feet to escape the reproach in her eyes. “It’s not just that I have to marry Agnes and that I don’t like her.” His throat tightened, his voice going froggy. “Every awful thing that’s happened to you has been because of me. I was having a hard enough time living with what I’d put you through before, but now…” He sucked in a deep breath, because if he didn’t pull himself together he was going to lose every last scrap of his dignity. And he was sure people were watching, even if he didn’t dare to look up.

Nadia slid closer to him on the love seat and put her hand softly on his back. “Don’t use me as an excuse to be mean to Agnes,” she said. “I’ll agree that everything that’s happened and everything that probably
will
happen pretty much sucks. But it’s all your father’s doing, Nate, not yours. And certainly not
hers.
”

Leaning forward and ducking his head, Nate clasped his hands together between his knees, wishing he could whisk Nadia off to somewhere private where he didn’t have to work so hard to keep himself under control. Not that he was doing such a great job of it as it was, but he really wanted to punch something right now, or maybe to yell out his frustration at the top of his lungs.

Yes, a yelling, screaming, kicking temper tantrum would feel damn good right about now.

“You have to hate me,” he said to his hands, letting his hair and shadows hide his face. “At least a little bit. If I’d listened to you on the night of the reception, if I hadn’t insisted on hooking up with Kurt at a public event just for the thrill of secretly giving my father the finger…”

Nadia sighed and leaned against his side. “I could have just played lookout for you, like you wanted. I didn’t have to choose that particular moment to put my foot down, not after all the other things I’d let you get away with over the years. Besides, we might be blissfully ignorant and safe in our old lives if we’d done things differently, but how many more people would Thea have vivisected by now? We might have screwed up both of our own lives, but we saved a whole lot of other people’s. How can we possibly regret that?”

Nadia was a better person than he. She was right, of course, but he suspected if he had it to do over again, he would have done things differently. Once again, he was showing how self-centered he was, even when he was trying to change his stripes. But then maybe if it had only been his own life he’d ruined, he might have been better able to see the whole picture. It was what his actions had done to
Nadia
that kept him up at night.

Forcing himself to sit up straight and stop feeling sorry for himself, Nate took hold of Nadia’s hand and gave it a fierce squeeze.

“You are the best, nicest person I know,” he told her, “and it’s so massively unfair that any of this has happened to you. But I want you to know that I’m going to fight for you, even if I have no choice but to marry Agnes.” It took a conscious effort for him not to sneer when he said the name, but being cruel to Agnes wasn’t going to get him out of the marriage, and he needed to cut it out. “I won’t let them bury you in some retreat.”

His mind flashed to an image of his mother, lazing her life away voluntarily behind those retreat walls. Maybe his mother had been satisfied with that kind of life, but Nadia would never be, and he would do everything in his power to make sure she wasn’t consigned to such a fate.

“You may not have a choice,” she said sadly.

“I refuse to accept that. And Dante will never be my favorite person in the world, but I’m going to see if I can hire him away from your family so that it’ll be easier for us to work together. Between the two of us, we’ll find a way to get you out, if that’s what we need to do.”

Nadia’s delicate throat worked as she swallowed hard and closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered, but he could tell she didn’t believe him. He wished there was some way he could convince her she had a lifeline available. It would be a lot easier if he had some concrete idea of how to help her.

Nadia opened her eyes, her expression turning composed as she banished her fear and unhappiness and replaced them with compassion. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

He grimaced as a jumble of mixed emotions about his mother fought for supremacy. Anger threatened to win the battle as he wrestled with the knowledge that she hadn’t wanted to see him before she died. Then he felt guilty for being angry at her when she was dead.

“Thank you,” he said, because what else was he supposed to say? “But if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about my mother right now.”

“All right,” Nadia agreed easily. She’d probably known all along he wouldn’t want to talk about his feelings, at least not yet. She’d known him a long time, after all. “How about you introduce me to Agnes instead?”

Nate made a face. “Why would you want me to do that? I wasn’t exaggerating about her personality. She’s about as interesting as—” He shut himself up when he saw the way Nadia was looking at him. He cleared his throat. “Sorry. I, uh … I’ll just go get her, why don’t I?”

She nodded. “Good idea.”

Knowing this whole thing was going to be awkward all around, he went to fetch Agnes.

CHAPTER TWELVE

If
Nate had to accept the condolences of one more person, or hear the words “if there’s anything I can do” one more time, he was going to scream. He wanted to remind every one of his ass-kissing well-wishers that he hadn’t seen his mother in ten years, that she had disappeared from his life long ago. He wasn’t glad she was dead, but he was hardly prostrate with grief, either. But even he, who laughed in the face of Executive rules of conduct, knew better than to say anything like that. He was almost glad his father had demanded a moment of his time before the service started, because at least then he could stop trying to pretend he appreciated everyone’s kind words and sympathy for a while.

Nate was not in the least surprised that his father wasn’t there yet when he stepped into the intimate little parlor near the front entrance to the building. It was apparently used as a meeting room, where people who were thinking of fleeing to the retreat could meet with the staff and discuss their options. Which meant it was nicely private and had a door that locked. A sofa and chairs clustered around a coffee table, on which lay several stacks of brochures. Nate glanced at the brochures, then snorted softly when he saw all the photos of people smiling as if they’d found heaven on earth. He wondered if any of them actually lived here, or if they were all models.

Unable to sit still, Nate paced the small room, waiting for his father. He’d been glad to get away from the crowd, but now he felt caged and restless. Maybe it was the low ceiling, or the small windows, or the dim lighting, but the room felt close and stifling. Nate tugged at the tie at his throat, wishing he could just take it off and unbutton the collar of his shirt.

He was wound up enough that he jumped at the sound of the door being opened. He hid his embarrassment by tugging on the cuffs of his shirt to make sure just the right amount of fabric was visible beneath the sleeves of his jacket. He stopped in mid-fidget when he saw that his father had not come alone.

Nate had spotted the woman earlier. She was, after all, rather hard to miss. Tall and slender, with a long neck and killer legs, she’d make any straight male sit up and take notice. Ordinarily, Nate would play his role as the charming rake without a second thought, but something about her made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He hadn’t a clue who she was, for one thing. He knew every single person in attendance at this funeral, except for her. Even if she were some kind of visiting dignitary, he should be at least vaguely familiar with her. He’d never been a diligent heir, but he’d always kept up at least a passing familiarity with all the power players in the Corporate States, and she wasn’t one of them. Plus, she was too young to be a real power player.

So what was she doing here?

His father closed and locked the parlor door as the mysterious woman gave Nate a coolly assessing look. She wasn’t smiling, but there was something about her, some spark in her eye, that suggested she found Nate’s obvious puzzlement amusing. Which raised his hackles just a little more.

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking back and forth between his father and the woman. “Who the hell is
she,
and what is she doing at my mother’s funeral?”

He expected his father to reprimand him for his rudeness, but the Chairman settled for giving him a dirty look instead.

“This is Dorothy,” his father said, and for one of the few times Nate could remember, he actually looked … uncomfortable. “Dorothy, this is Nathaniel.”

Dorothy smiled brightly, and there was still that glint of humor in her eyes as she reached out her hand for Nate to shake. “Charmed, I’m sure,” she said. There was no hint that she was even aware of the tension in the room, much less that she shared in it.

The undercurrents had Nate’s nerves on alert, and he declined to shake Dorothy’s hand. She’d spoken three meaningless words so far, and already Nate didn’t like her. In his mind, he heard Nadia’s rebuke about how unfairly he’d treated Agnes, whom admittedly he’d never tried to get to know, but this wasn’t the same kind of snap judgment. He’d disliked Agnes from the start because of what she stood for, because of the harm she was going to do to his life and Nadia’s. He still had no idea who Dorothy was, so there was no practical reason that explained his reaction to her.

“Dorothy who?” he asked, hoping his voice sounded cold rather than shaken.

Her smile brightened, and he was sure that gleam in her eyes held a tinge of predatory glee. “Why, Dorothy Hayes, of course.”

Nate blinked and shook his head. Had his father remarried? Without telling anyone? And to a complete stranger, only days after his wife had died? Nate had a few cousins scattered about on his father’s side, but Dorothy wasn’t one of them.

Maybe the Hayes name was merely a coincidence. There were unrelated people who had the same surname within Paxco, and there were certainly more of them in the rest of the Corporate States.

“I’m so glad to finally have the chance to meet you,” Dorothy continued, but Nate ignored her, turning to the Chairman.

“What the hell, Dad?” He couldn’t remember the last time he had addressed his father as
Dad,
but somehow it had just slipped out.

The Chairman cleared his throat and shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Dorothy is…” He cleared his throat again.

Dorothy looked at the Chairman expectantly. What was wrong with him? He
never
showed hesitation or uncertainty in front of people, considered it a dangerous sign of weakness. But for this one brief, unguarded moment, he looked like he’d been backed into some kind of corner. Then he sealed up his defenses, becoming once again the coldly confident father Nate had always known. And he finally finished his sentence.