Her brows knitted together. Worry pinched her eyes. I’d been too busy checking her out to notice something was bothering her.

I sat straighter. “Everything okay?”

She held a manila envelope in her hands. She spread one hand over it and the emotion in her eyes thickened. Worry? Fear? Sorrow?

“We need to talk.”

“All right.” I checked the time. “I have a meeting in ten minutes.” I could push it back. Kate hardly asked me for anything, so yeah, I’d be late.

Annoyance crossed her face, but she covered it, evening out her expression. I leaned my elbows on my desk. Something was wrong.

She glanced at the envelope in her hand, a deep emotion I couldn’t identify buried in her eyes. I knew my wife, but this was foreign territory. I couldn’t read her expression, I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I didn’t like this twist.

She let out a steady breath and met my gaze. “What’s with the trust?”

Ice washed through my veins. Shit.

The trust. Full of stipulations I should’ve told her about but…hadn’t. And my brothers sensed I hadn’t, so they hadn’t said a thing either. Nor had their spouses. Years had gone by and Kate hadn’t found out about the trust and I’d continued to gamble on not telling her.

Kate was smart. I respected her too much to bullshit her. Ironic, since I should have showed her the utmost respect by telling her about the trust before I proposed.

I was a man who dealt in numbers, who waded in reality, who made the tough decisions others wouldn’t. Kate finding out had been inevitable, yet I’d tempted fate and now fate was flipping me off.

“Mama set it up.” Tightness crept across my shoulders, bunching muscles that would take days to relax. “She, uh, she made some rules in order for us to get it.”

“Like marrying before you turned thirty?” Her voice was nothing more than a whisper but it echoed between us.

“Yes.” Words clawed their way into my throat. I was the oldest; I couldn’t fail. It all depended on me. How could I tell you that I had a hundred million reasons to propose when I did? And that I’d done it after you’d told me how I didn’t lie to you like your dad lied to your mom? I stuffed them down like I always did. I’d hurt Kate enough with what I hadn’t said.

“And what else?”

“We had to stay married a year.” I swallowed hard. Speaking the rules out loud, to my wife, left a sour taint on my tongue. “Though we’ve been married for four,” I pointed out. Lame.

Hurt resonated in her expression. “And if you hadn’t married, you’d have lost it?”