He stared at me with both concern and heavy longing.
And he glared with outright jealousy at the man at my side. Macalister didn’t bother to hide that he wished to be the one I was leaning on. He wanted to trade places with his son.
The thought made me shiver.
Royce’s lips pressed against my forehead the moment before he whispered, “Still cold?”
He didn’t wait for my answer. His arm pulled me tighter against him, and I was grateful. Not only for his warmth, but for the display. It reminded his father who I belonged to.
Not you.
He may have been the one to find me collapsed on the stairs, but he hadn’t rescued me. He was just the first one home, two minutes ahead of the son he refused to share a car with after they’d left the impromptu board meeting. Macalister wasn’t the hero. He was indirectly responsible for how I’d ended up on the staircase.
I was cold, though.
My beautiful green dress had been left behind at the hospital, so all I had on was a thin hospital gown beneath Royce’s tuxedo jacket, and a throw blanket pulled from one of the cabin compartments.
I’d been hot earlier, but being confined in this small space meant Macalister’s ice could get to me faster. It grew worse when he undid his seatbelt and tugged off his own tuxedo jacket.
“No, that’s—” I said, but it didn’t matter.
The patriarch of the Hale family was on his feet, stooping so his head wouldn’t hit the ceiling, and draped his open jacket over me. Had he done it so he didn’t have to see Royce’s arm around me? Or was it simply a power move? I wouldn’t accept the gesture as an attempt to be nice. It had an agenda. Everything Macalister did was calculated.
“Yes, I’m here,” the doctor said into his phone.
As he listened to the person on the other end of the line, I evaluated the man seated across from Royce. The doctor was exactly what I would have expected. Older and seasoned looking, with smart eyes and a serious demeanor.
“Has the patient’s care team at Mass General been informed already?” He paused. “Very good. Thanks for letting me know.” The doctor tapped his phone screen and lowered it into his lap. “We have a positive result for glycoside. Further testing will tell us which type.” He spoke directly to Macalister, as if he needed to have the information, and not me. “I haven’t been out to the house recently, but your gardens are extensive. Do you have any foxglove or lily of the valley flowers growing in them? Lily of the valley is white, bell-shaped—”
“I know what they look like,” I said. “The florist wants to use them in our wedding.” My stomach twisted horribly. They were the flowers Alice had picked out. A vision of her in her Hera mask sliced through my mind before my gaze flicked unavoidably to Macalister. “And Alice grows them in the garden closest to the house.”
My tone was full of accusation, but there was no reaction in his steely blue eyes.
The doctor focused on me. “They’re safe to handle but can be quite toxic if ingested. Anything made from its leaves will give you a high dose of convallatoxin, which is what caused your cardiac arrhythmia, but we’ve got that under control now. With the toxin identified, your doctors can get it flushed out of your system and you could be recovered as quickly as a few days.”
“Mr. Hale,” the pilot’s disembodied voice came through the cabin speaker, “we’ll be landing in ninety seconds.”
The doctor slipped his phone into his slacks and subtly tightened the belt across his lap as the helicopter began its quick descent. “Although death is extremely rare from lily of the valley poisoning, you’re a lucky woman, Marist.”
If I wasn’t so miserable, I might have laughed. I’d been poisoned by my future stepmother-in-law, and with Macalister’s relentless gaze on me, I felt anything but lucky.
I’d barely been settled into the enormous private suite before Macalister’s sharp order punched through the air, disrupting the quiet. “Clear the room.”
The nurse, who’d been writing her name on the dry-erase board, froze mid-scribble. “I’m sorry?”
It carried the same weight as if he’d told her to fuck off. “Out.”
She stiffened, capped her marker, and set it on the rest before hustling from the room.
He turned his sneering expression toward his son, who sat in the chair closest to my bedside. “That includes you, Royce.”
The sun had begun to rise outside, painfully reminding me we’d been up all night. I was as exhausted as Philippides after he’d run the fabled twenty-six miles from Marathon to Athens to declare victory. My fiancé likely felt the same, judging by his heavy, red-rimmed eyes. His bowtie was undone, as were the top buttons of his white dress shirt, and his hair was ruffled from hands he’d raked through it countless times.
It did nothing to diminish his attractiveness.
As he rose deliberately to his feet, his exhaustion faded, and Ares came out, preparing for battle. He clasped a hand on my bedrail, not for support, but to assume a defiant stance. It communicated he wasn’t going anywhere, and my gaze couldn’t help but trace his long fingers or the muscles twisting along his forearm and disappearing beneath his rolled-back sleeve.
Jesus. He should have been an artist instead of a banker, because he had such beautiful hands.
“If anyone’s leaving,” Royce’s tone hinted he was barely restraining his fury, “it’s you.”
Macalister lifted his chin like Royce had taken a swing at him and just missed landing the blow. His eyes were shrewd. “Marist and I need to discuss a personal matter.”
He spoke so professionally, but my heart thudded inside my body, searching for ways to escape. The personal matter had to be what I’d mistakenly said on the stairs. I despised how weak I sounded, but I was frayed to the point of breaking. “No. Royce stays, and we have nothing to discuss.”
How things had changed. When I’d first moved into the Hale house, Royce had been the enemy, and I had eagerly withheld information as he’d done to me. I’d cut him out and gone to Macalister alone. But nearly dying had given me a new perspective, and I knew who the real enemy was now.
I drew in a deep breath. “What I said when you found me—”
“I’m not interested in that at this time.” Macalister waved his hand, brushing my statement aside. “The more pressing issue is Alice.”
Words failed me, but the tendons in Royce’s arm flexed and his knuckles went pale as he squeezed the railing. “You’re fucking worried about her? After what she did?”
Macalister’s stone-cold gaze swept from me to his son. “To say I’m disappointed in her would be a grave understatement, but no, the only concern I hold for her is how her actions will reflect on the Hale name.”
Now it was Royce’s turn to be speechless.
In an instant, I understood with terrible clarity what Macalister desired. Status held the utmost value to him, and he’d do everything in his considerable power to stay scandal-free. My gaze dropped to the blanket stretched across my lap. “You can’t have a Hale go to prison.”
Royce’s tone was begrudging. “Like that would even happen.”
“No,” Macalister agreed, “I’m confident our lawyers would prevent that.” His focus shifted back to me. “But it cannot get that far. Do you understand how disastrous the optics would be? My wife arrested for poisoning my future daughter-in-law. The media would be all over us, in every facet of our lives. Imagine how low the stock will drop when the story comes out. We’d have to put everything on hold, and table the takeover attempt of Ascension we voted to make.”