He’d been at a business conference in Singapore when he got the call. Cancer, they’d said. Very aggressive. She’d fought hard, but there was nothing more they could do. By the time he got a flight back, she’d been dead for thirty-six hours. He’d stood at her funeral with a handful of her friends and neighbors, none of whom he recognized, and realized he’d become so absorbed in building his company and making his fortune that he’d forgotten to have a family. Or maybe he’d never had one to forget.
His parents’ marriage had been toxic from his earliest memories. His father’s affairs, his mother’s rage, the screaming fights that sent young Nathan hiding in his closet with his hands over his ears. When they finally divorced, it was almost a relief. Except his father moved across the country, and his mother sank into a depression that lasted years, and Nathan learned early that the word family didn’t necessarily mean love or safety or permanence.
By the time he was eighteen, he’d been living in boarding schools and summer programs for so long that institutional living felt more natural than having a home. By the time he was twenty-five, he’d made his first million and realized that money could buy him everything except the thing he actually wanted, to matter to someone. To have someone care whether he came home at night or not.
His last serious relationship had ended three years ago when Jessica finally admitted that she’d fallen in love with his lifestyle, not with him, and honestly couldn’t tell the difference anymore. He’d wanted to be angry, but she was right. He’d been so focused on building the business, on achieving the next milestone, that he’d forgotten to be a person someone could actually love. And now he was thirty years old, absurdly successful, and so lonely it felt like a physical ache.
Sitting in Marcus Hill’s kitchen, helping Alicia peel potatoes while Marcus told stories about Sarah, Nathan had felt something he’d almost forgotten existed. The simple pleasure of being part of something. Of belonging somewhere to someone in a way that had nothing to do with what he could buy or build or achieve. For three days, he’d been part of a family, and then he’d run away from it because he was terrified that if he let himself want it too much, losing it would destroy him.
Nathan set the photo down and pulled out his phone. He had work to do, calls to make, plans to execute. In nine hours, Frank Doyle would show up at the Hill Farm to foreclose on the mortgage, and Nathan needed everything in place before that happened. He just hoped Marcus wouldn’t hate him for what he was about to do.
Frank Doyle arrived at exactly nine o’clock in the morning, right on schedule, carrying a folder of foreclosure documents and wearing his most business-like expression. He’d been looking forward to this for three years, ever since Marcus’s father died and left the farm to his son, and he wasn’t about to let sympathy or sentiment get in the way now.
Marcus was waiting for him on the porch, Alicia standing beside him with red-rimmed eyes and her jaw set with the kind of stubborn pride Frank recognized from her father. They knew what was coming. They’d had ten days to prepare for it. Frank climbed the porch steps, already reaching for the documents. “Morning, Marcus. I assume you know why I’m here.”