“Not at the expense of our own safety,” she said. “Your father would never want you to be in danger.”
“He also wouldn’t want to be kidnapped, and yet here we are.”
The bitterness in his tone stung for some reason. Maybe she was taking his understandable anger too personally.
Taking a breath to calm herself, she grabbed a frying pan from one of the cabinets and got to work scrambling some eggs. If he didn’t want to eat that was his choice, but she was determined to help him through this ordeal in any way she could.
She filled his mug with coffee and set the plate of scrambled eggs in front of him. When she turned away to make her own cup of coffee, Simon’s fingers curled around her wrist. His grip was firm, and yet still gentle. Sadness flickered in the depths of his eyes, filling her heart with an indescribable ache. This was eating him up inside. Not only did he have to worry about his father’s safety, but he was dealing with guilt. Last night he had blamed himself for rushing her into having a good relationship with his father. As if anything he did could have possibly caused all this misery.
“This isn’t your fault,” she said gently.
“It is,” he said evenly. “That’s why I have to save him.”
“I can?
??t convince you to let this crazy idea go, can I?”
He shook his head. “No. What would you do if it was your father?”
She didn’t want to encourage his recklessness, but how could she lie? If her father had been taken from her, she’d do anything to get him back. Simon’s bravery terrified her because it put him in so much danger. Yet his bravery was one of the reasons she loved him so much.
When the guests in the ballroom had scrambled out of the room in a panic, Simon hadn’t fled. He had refused to leave until everyone got out safely. Even though his father had been the one taken. That kind of selflessness was what made her love him, and yet that selflessness might lead to her losing him.
“I’d do everything to save him,” she finally admitted.
“I keep going over our last fight in my head,” Simon murmured. “The things we said to each other all those years ago...”
She stared down at him, taking in the pain that flashed across his face. “You don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want to. I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard to face the past, when you weren’t ready.”
“But you were right,” Simon pointed out. “If I had faced the truth about my father earlier on, I might have been able to repair our relationship sooner. Without putting a burden on you to ignore our issues.” He released her wrist and sighed.
Realizing that he wanted to unburden himself, Heather filled her cup with coffee and sat down on a stool across from him. “I’m here if you want to talk.”
He gave her a strained smile. “My father was the one who gave me some of the money I used to initially invest in Dover.”
“Right. I remember you telling me this recently. You said it was a long story.”
“Dad gave me some insurance money he got from an accident at work. At first I thought he had given me the money out of the goodness of his heart, but he did it so that he could control me,” Simon continued. “He never appreciated my intelligence. Never took my dreams seriously the way you did. He thought I was wasting my time by focusing on tech, and was pissed that he didn’t have a say in my life after I got my scholarship to Stanford.”
“So, he wanted to get back control by giving you money with strings attached,” she added.
“Yes, exactly,” he said with a nod. “Only, instead of spending it on setting up some hair-brained business like he wanted, I invested in Dover.”
“It was a good investment. Look how it turned out for you,” she said, motioning to the luxurious kitchen.
“It was a great investment, even though I knew it would take years before I saw any kind of profit. So, when I told him what I spent the money on, he was furious,” Simon went on. “Called me up and demanded I come back to Seattle to face him and explain myself.”
“That’s when you had the fight,” she said. “When you came back to Seattle after you first invested the money.”
“Yes. I tried to get my father to see things my way,” Simon said. “I did everything to explain to him that my investment in Dover wasn’t a waste. That I’d share the profits with him when the company started performing well.”
“You offered him money after all of that?” she asked in amazement.
“Of course. I promised both my parents that I’d share the profits with them,” he replied. “I knew that if I had five years I could make enough money to set them up for life. But Dad was too proud. He said he didn’t care how much money I made from Dover, he never wanted any money from me.”
“He was still upset that he couldn’t control you.” She paused as she weighed her thoughts in her mind. “Honestly, I think he wanted to control you because he resented you.”
“That’s what I thought, and I told him so during the fight,” he said. “My dad had done manual labor his whole life, and he thought my going into the corporate world was me rejecting his values. Rejecting him. But that wasn’t it at all. I looked up to him. For all this flaws, my dad worked hard. All I wanted was to follow my dreams and make him proud.”