affront.
“I want to marry on my terms,” Luli said, echoing his own sentiments. She dropped her hands to reveal a raw agony in her expression that made his heart lurch. “I thought she liked me. Why would she do this?”
He had his theories, but asked instead, “Was there any indication she was ill? Was she putting things in order because she thought her time was near?”
“I don’t think so.” She paced a few steps, calming a little as she thought. “She only brought it up a few times. One of the maids left to get married last year. Mae said I wouldn’t have to marry some fish-smelling man from the hawker center. She said she’d find me a good husband. But she also told me at different times that she would take me shopping and let the chauffeur teach me to drive and take me back to Venezuela so I could tell my mother what I think of her. It was never a good time for any of those things. ‘Another day,’” she tacked on in Mandarin.
Presumably she was quoting Mae. Her accent was spot-on.
“I don’t think she was lying to me on purpose,” she continued despondently. “She talked about a lot of things that never happened. She wanted to redecorate. Retire. She said when you came to visit we would take you to see the sights.”
Gabriel had seen the ones he wanted to see. He’d been here several times and had never once let his grandmother know he was in town.
His stomach tightened in disgust with himself. Had she meant to introduce him to Luli? Oversee their courtship?
So what if she had? What he’d said earlier about having no interest in finding women for other men stood. He had no desire for his dead grandmother to find him a wife, either.
But he ruefully had to admit she had never led him astray with any of the other opportunities she had presented to him.
“I don’t want to marry one of those men and be trapped here for the rest of my life.” Luli’s hushed voice made something grate in the base of his throat. “Why would she do that to me?”
Why had Mae thought she could do this to him? The answer was the same in both cases.
“She was angry my mother didn’t abide by the marriage she wanted for her. Good children allow their parents to make them a good match.”
“I’m not her child and I’m not doing it!”
He held up a hand. “But this does prove she saw you as a foster daughter. She was taking a personal interest in your future the way she thought a mother should. She wasn’t finding husbands for any of the housemaids. Only you.”
In fact, like the rest of the house staff, the maids were entitled to a settlement based on their years of service. Gabriel had shown that part of Mae’s will to the butler and told him to begin making plans to take the house down to a skeleton staff.
Luli wasn’t house staff, though. Not that it mattered. Gabriel could offer her any amount that he deemed fair out of his own pocket and ignore his grandmother’s wishes. He owed Mae nothing.
Except that she had birthed the woman who had given him life. Luli could tell him things about his grandmother, maybe even his mother, that likely no one else could.
He cursed silently and ran a hand through his hair.
“I don’t know how to ask to be deported.” Luli moved to the window where she stared down at the courtyard. Her shoulders seemed very narrow, all of her quite fragile despite her willowy height. “I’m worried they’ll put me in jail if I admit I’ve been here all this time. I can’t stay, though. I don’t want to and I have nothing to stay for. I have no one to put in a good word to help me get a job or find a place to live. They all hate me for never doing laundry or dusting. They think I’m a freeloader.”
Her fingers were digging in to her upper arms, liable to leave bruises beneath her smooth skin.
“I heard men on the other side of the garden wall talking about fake passports once. I should have called out to them, but I was afraid. They were talking about guns and drugs. I would have had to steal money from Mae’s purse. They might have decided to come in if they realized—”
“Luli.” The other suitors crumpled beneath his feet as he walked across to her. “My grandmother intended you would be looked after. That’s proof of it.” He pointed back to the billionaires found to be not quite good enough for Mae’s surrogate daughter.
“She wanted to hand me to a stranger like I’m a...a thing.” Her eyes were bright and angry.
“I don’t think that’s true.” He had taunted her earlier that she was one more asset he was inheriting, though. And he might not need this inheritance from Mae, but if he intended to accept it, he had to take all of it—including the treasure she had confined to this house like an heirloom jewel tucked in a safe.
He took in Luli’s ugly dress and flat-footed sandals, her hair rolled into a cinnamon bun at her nape, her hands like rocks in the wide, patch pockets of her dress.
Whatever she was, Mae had kept her close for a reason. She had valued Luli highly enough to think her good enough for her only grandson. For that reason alone, he couldn’t throw Luli away. Not without a thorough polish and appraisal first, he deduced with dark humor.
“You’ll honor the dowry if I marry one of them?” she asked with dread, glancing at the papers with desperation and anguish.
Repulsion gripped him as he thought again of gnarled hands setting themselves against those luscious curves. If anyone touched her, he wanted it to be him.
“No. I want you to marry me.”
“WHAT?” HER EYES went round as big blue plates. “Why? No.”
“It’s what she wanted.” He moved back to the safe and brought out the pages he’d removed from the portfolio, the one with his own head shot atop it. “I was in there, too.”
“No.” She shook her head and spoke in a hurried, half-panicked tone. “She often asked me to include you as a comparison when I prepared reports like this. She regarded you very highly, always measuring other businessmen by the standards you set.”
“She asked me nine different times in the last year to come visit. How many times were any of those men invited here?”
“They live in the city. She didn’t like to travel. She probably wanted you to come so she could tell you she was leaving everything to you.”
“She wanted me to meet you. Look.” He flipped past the summary of his holdings and showed her the contract with their names already written into it.
Her sharp inhale told him that had been a blow she hadn’t expected. He’d been shocked, too. And had wanted to see her reaction, to be sure she hadn’t set this up. Her lips were white, her pupils tiny dots.
“You don’t want to marry me! Do you?” she asked with trepidation.
“Marriage
