“It’s for Titan. I think she’ll like it.”
“What is it?” I took it in my hands before I placed it off to the side.
“Luxury driving gloves. Made of premium leather from my favorite Italian designer, they’ll be perfect when she hits the open road again. I also had her new last name etched into the material.”
It was a thoughtful gift, so I felt like an ass for being annoyed by it.
“What?” Brett picked up on my mood.
“You know how I feel about reckless driving…”
“Titan isn’t a reckless driver. She’s always in control of her destiny. She just got herself out of a difficult situation and lived to tell the tale. You don’t need to worry about that with her.”
“And it might make her more anxious.”
“She’s gotta get better sometime. Now she has something to look forward to.”
“And the last name…not sure about that.”
“What do you mean?”
“We haven’t decided if she’s taking my last name or not.”
Brett chuckled like it was a joke. “I can’t see you giving her a choice in the matter.”
“I don’t want to give her a choice…but you know how she is.”
“Not a pushover?” he asked. “I thought that was why you liked her.”
“Love her,” I corrected him. “And it is…I just don’t want that to apply to me.”
He chuckled. “Of course you don’t…”
I would like her to take my last name, but I understood why she would be apprehensive about it. All of her life’s work was tied to her last name. Even Thorn called her Titan on a daily basis. Not only were her businesses tied to that name, but it was also an essential part of her identity.
Could I really ask her to change all of that for me?
When we had kids, they weren’t taking her last name. That was something I wouldn’t compromise on. She wouldn’t want to have a different last name from her kids, so that wasn’t something she would enjoy.
It would be a difficult conversation, but one that was necessary. “How are things with Vincent?”
He shrugged and took a long pause before he responded. “Better. With such a dramatic change like this, it’ll take time before it begins to feel normal. But he asks me to lunch once a week, and we talk about cars and sports…nothing too heavy.”
“That’s good.” When Brett had walked into that restaurant to join us for dinner for our engagement celebration, I knew everything would be okay. Brett was a lot more forgiving than he let on. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever see him as a dad, but…”
“You can still be family.”
“Yeah, I guess.” He shrugged again. “I think Mom would want that, you know?”
I nodded. “Definitely.”
“And he seems genuine about starting over. He’s not the kind of man that apologizes just for the sake of doing it…”
“He’s not.” My father rarely apologized, so if he did, he meant it.
Brett adjusted his leather jacket before he rose to his feet. “Let me know if Titan likes the gift.”
“Why don’t you give it to her yourself?”
“I don’t want to bother her.” He walked up to my desk and gave me a fist bump. “When she’s better, we need to have that engagement dinner.”
“We will. I know she’ll get excited about it.”
He gave me a thumbs-up before he left my office.
Less than two minutes passed before Thorn called my cell.
I answered immediately, knowing he might have something important to say. He was running an empire that would jointly belong to me shortly, and he had an intimate relationship with the woman I loved. I would always share her heart with him, but I was okay with that. “What’s up?”
“She told you about Bridget?” he asked bluntly.
“Yeah.” It’d been a few days since we last spoke about it. Titan was clearly uncomfortable with the subject, and she shut it down the second she finished telling me about it. She wanted to bury it and move on.
“The woman looked just like her, man.” He sighed into the phone. “It’s her.”
“You think so?”
“It was like looking at Titan in the future…”
I stared at my computer screen without reading the email I was halfway finished with. The brightness of the screen irritated my eyes, so I shut the laptop. “She doesn’t want to know.”
“Yeah, I picked up on that.”
“She also said she didn’t seem dangerous.”
“I don’t think she is. She seemed like a mother concerned about her daughter. This isn’t another Bruce Carol nightmare…” His tone naturally dipped the second the man was mentioned.
Better not be. I’d never laid a hand on a woman, but I’d rip her apart if she was a threat to my future wife. “She says she doesn’t want to know if it’s her mother because it doesn’t change anything. Doesn’t want her in her life regardless. But I want to know…for myself.”
“I’m curious too.”
I glanced at my top drawer, where the information sat in a manila folder. I’d had my private investigator track down all the information so I could get my answer. Titan didn’t want to confront the situation, but I needed to know. “Do you want to know?”
Thorn was quiet over the line, absorbing the powerful words I just said. “You figured it out?”
“I had my guy dig.”
“Did he find something?”
“Does that mean you want to know?” Once I answered him, we would both be part of a secret Titan wasn’t privy to. It was her business, but we were both butting in.
Thorn sighed over the line. “Yeah, I want to know.”
I didn’t need to open the folder again to see the answer. “It is.”
Another sigh filled my ears as Thorn processed my answer. “I knew it…”
“Yeah.” My investigator had dropped off the information that morning. I didn’t hesitate before I ripped the packaging and took a peek inside. Maybe it was wrong for me to pry into Titan’s life, but I couldn’t just sweep it under the rug the way Titan did.
