The Hidden Heiress: Married to My Ex's Brother novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Boy He Picked

At her grandfather's house Etta refuses to be announced as the heiress yet, and learns the Beckford heir Walter chose for her five years ago is Rem.

I typed three replies and deleted all of them.

Then I sent one.

You left me a credit card. I owe you nothing.

He answered in under a minute.

The card was for a cab. You snapped it, didn't you.

I looked at the trash can.

How do you know that?

Because I would have.

I didn't answer.

He sent one more.

Sister-in-law isn't a name.

I put the phone in my pocket and went home to shower.

That evening I rode my own ferry to Bainbridge as a passenger.

Nobody on the weekend crew looked twice at me in jeans and a gray sweater.

I stood at the rail and watched the Salt Pier shrink behind us.

The fish market. The old net sheds. The pavilion at the end where Lance and Liza planned to cut their cake.

My grandfather's house sat on a bluff above the water, all cedar and big windows.

He opened the door himself before I could knock.

Walter Conway was seventy-nine, tall, a little stooped, with thick silver hair and eyes.

He looked at my face for two seconds.

"I'll have him killed," he said.

"Grandpa."

"Quietly. In a tasteful way."

I walked into his arms and stayed there longer than I meant to.

He smelled like cedar and pipe tobacco he swore he'd quit.

"Dinner," he said into my hair. "Then you tell me everything, and I pretend to be calm."

He'd made the clam chowder he'd made every bad night since I was twelve.

It was still terrible. Too much pepper. I ate two bowls.

Above the fireplace hung the photo I always looked at first.

My parents on the bow of a Conway ferry, squinting into the sun, my mother laughing at something out of frame.

They'd died on a wet road when I was twelve.

Walter had come to get me from school himself.

I told him about the club.

The door. The bottle. The ice bucket.

I left out the elevator.

He laughed so hard at the bottle that he had to put his spoon down.

"Eleven stitches," he said. "I'd have paid for twelve."

"You never liked him."

"I liked him fine. I just liked you more." He refilled my water. "Five years, and he never once asked who your people were."

"That was the point."

"I know it was." He looked at me over his glasses. "Was it worth it?"

"I found out who he was. So yes."

He nodded slowly.

"Then let me do this properly. Monday morning, a statement. Henrietta Conway, heir of Conway Group. Let the Beckfords choke on their wedding cake."

For one second I wanted it so much my hands curled.

Lance's face when he heard.

Liza's.

"No," I said.

Walter waited.

"If I do that, the whole story is about who I am. Not about what he did."

"Fair."

"And I like my job. I like being Captain Lane. Nobody on that boat cares who my grandfather is."

"Your grandfather owns the boat."

"Exactly. So nobody can know."

He sighed the sigh of a man who had lost this argument before.

"Let him have his stage," I said. "He's climbing as fast as he can. I'd like to see how high he gets first."

Walter's mouth twitched.

Then his face went serious, and he set down his spoon.

"There's something you should know about his stage. The board wants to sell the Salt Pier."

My chowder went cold in my mouth.

"Sell it to who?"

"Beckford Construction. Three hundred and forty million. Luxury condos where the ferry dock is." He said each word like it tasted bad. "Your run loses money, Hen. It has for a decade."

"It carries nine hundred people a day."

"It does. The board doesn't ride it."

"When's the vote?"

"Eight weeks."

"Stop it."

"I'm retired. I have one seat and a lot of opinions." He looked at me. "The heir would have a seat too. If she ever wanted one."

I didn't answer.

The pier where my father proposed.

The fish market lady who saved me the ugly crab.

The old engineer who'd taught me to dock in a crosswind.

Lance wanted to stand on it in a tux and sell it.

"Who's running the bid?"

"Your ex-fiancé. It's his ticket to the chair."

Of course it was.

Walter got up, slowly, and fetched the whiskey he wasn't supposed to have.

He poured two small ones.

"While we're confessing things," he said. "Five years ago I offered Beckford a deal."

"What kind of deal?"

"Conway money behind his company. On one condition. His heir marries my granddaughter."

I stared at him.

"You tried to sell me."

"I tried to introduce you. With a modest dowry of several hundred million dollars." He sipped. "The boy said no. He didn't even look at a photo. Said he wasn't marrying a merger."

"Good for him."

"I thought so too, actually. I liked him for it."

He turned his glass on the table.

"The Beckford heir," he said. "The older one. Remington."

My whole body went still.

Walter's eyes were very, very bright.

"Conway owns that club's building, Hen. The housekeeper found a black card in two pieces in the Beckford suite this morning."

He sipped his whiskey.

"The one who left a card on your nightstand, I hear."

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