Between the two of us, we knocked out the floor in a few hours. Days like this made me hate the office, days when I could move and feel alive instead of like a mountain of paperwork would suffocate me. I lived for going to King’s Creek and helping Dawson. A few times a year wasn’t enough.

Xander grabbed a couple of beers from the downstairs fridge and we sprawled on the floor of his office.

“Gonna stay and help me with the trim?” he asked.

“Is it stained already?”

His grin was unrepentant. He had more work than just the flooring that he wanted my help with. “About that. There’s space in the garage to stain it. Just like the floor, it won’t take long with both of us.”

I took a long drink.

“Unless you have to go back to work.” He sounded resigned.

“There’s always work.” I didn’t say I had to go. I didn’t want to go back to the office, or to my quiet house. My stress headache was returning.

“Tell me to butt the hell out—because I know how Grams is—but why won’t she let you hire on?”

Grams earned a lot of the blame we put on her, but she wasn’t the sole backer of this decision. Not for the VP of finance. The other positions were just her thinking small, thinking it was like the old days when companies backstabbed each other instead of collaborating. She thought more higher-ups meant more opportunities for subterfuge.

“Money. Trust. Loss of control. It’s Grams; take your pick,” I answered.

He set his beer down. “All right, then. How’s Kate?”

I clenched my jaw. I’d rather talk about the company even after I’d just been thinking how nice it was to ignore it for a bit. “Fine. Living with her parents.”

“Are you two…”

“For a guy who left home and made himself unreachable for over ten years to avoid talking about his life, you’re really damn nosy.”

“Maybe I learned that avoiding the issue made everything worse and cost me a lot of years with people I usually like to hang around when they’re not being touchy assholes.”

Touchy asshole. Astute description. “I asked her for time.”

“You don’t want to divorce?”

I glared at him. First Dad. Now Xander. “No. Why would I?”

“None of us really knew if you married for the trust or not.”

“None of you?”

His gaze was steady. I ground my teeth together and stared at the off-white wall across from me. Dad and my brothers didn’t think I’d married my wife because I loved her, and I hadn’t thought I needed to justify myself. Maybe a little part of me thought my actions should speak for themselves, like they had with the rest of my life. And…they had.