His son wanted to live with him. Ethan couldn’t help feeling excited at the idea of really getting to know his son. They could have so much fun together—really bond. Not that he wanted Liz hurt.
His office door opened and Nevada stood there.
Nevada was the quietest of the triplets, the most practical. She’d studied engineering, had come to work for him and did a helluva good job. Customers liked her, the other employees respected her. When he wasn’t around, she also ran things.
Now she stared at him with a combination of pity and amusement.
“You really are the stupidest man on the planet,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I would have thought the statement was self-explanatory.” She leaned against the door frame. “I just passed Liz and asked how she was. She said you asked her to marry you for practical reasons. Tell me that she’s lying.”
“It’s not like that.”
Nevada raised her eyebrows. “Then what’s it like?”
He explained about Tyler and Liz being hurt and how getting married would solve all their problems.
“Very romantic, too,” she quipped sarcastically.
“This isn’t about romance. It’s about doing the right thing.”
Nevada stared at him for a long time. “I think it’s about you getting what you want. You’re not thinking about Liz. Why does she need to marry you?”
“Tyler needs a father.”
“Sure. But what does that have to do with Liz?”
“She’s his mother.”
“Yeah. I knew that. You’re not answering the question. What does Liz get out of marrying you? It’s not like she needs a second income. Or housing. Most people get married because they’re in love and want to be together, but you already took that off the table. So why exactly should she marry you?”
“I, ah…” He swore silently.
Something he’d never considered. Why would Liz want to be with him? He blurted out the proposal without thinking. Because it was the right thing.
Just like with Rayanne, he thought. Was that so wrong?
While he knew it wasn’t, he couldn’t escape a nagging sense of having screwed up in the worst way possible.
Nevada shook her head. “I’ll give you a hint because you’re my brother. The only thing Liz needs and wants from you is for you to love her.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Of course I can. It’s what every woman wants. Why else would she put up with your crap? She didn’t have to be this nice. She didn’t have to tell you about Tyler. She could have taken her nieces back to San Francisco that first night and you would never have known. Liz has been giving you chances since she got here and I’m going to guess you’ve blown every single one of them.”
“No,” he retorted, even as he wondered if Nevada was right.
“Here’s the thing, Ethan. You have a very limited window of time to make this right. Assuming you want to. Because if you’re trying to convince Liz to stay with you, you’re going about it all wrong.”
Then Nevada walked out, leaving him staring after her.
Wait. She couldn’t leave like that. He had more questions. Damn.
As he stood alone in his office, he realized that maybe his sister’s point was that he had to figure it out himself.
“I’m not the bad guy,” he spoke into the silence. “I’m doing the right thing.”
But for the first time in his life, he wondered if doing the right thing was going to be enough.
LIZ WALKED THROUGH TOWN. THERE were plenty of tourists on the street and she had to weave between them. Summer was a busy time, with visitors flooding the area to check out the wineries, hike in the mountains and spend time on the lake. To anyone who didn’t have a gaping hole in her chest, Fool’s Gold probably looked really good. She knew better. It was her own personal, living nightmare. It was the place where she’d lost both her heart and her son.
She turned onto a residential street and reminded herself that she hadn’t truly lost Tyler. It only felt that way. He would come around. What she didn’t know was how long it would take and she wasn’t completely sure she trusted Ethan to be impartial. A part of him had to love the fact that his son wanted to live with him.
But being a parent was about more than saying yes. It could be difficult and frustrating. There were lessons every child had to learn. If someone didn’t teach the kid right while he was young, life lessons were that much harder to grasp later.
Would Ethan get that? Would he look past his need to connect with Tyler to what was best for the boy? Even as she asked the question, a part of her knew she was searching for reasons to be able to tell Tyler and herself why spending more time—maybe even living with his dad—wasn’t possible.