She didn’t even want to try.
Maddie beamed up at the man she’d crushed on since she was fourteen and loved since she was sixteen. “I love you, too, but you know that.”
“Do you?” Vik asked. “Even now?”
“Especially now.” He wasn’t even remotely responsible for her father’s actions.
“I meant what I said to your father.” He said it like it was a warning.
“I know.”
“I am utterly ruthless and without remorse.”
She might argue that point, but understood that Vik believed it. And that was okay with her.
He used his powers for good, even if he didn’t see it.
She smiled at him, letting her love show in her eyes. “Your sense of honor is the shiniest and clearest facet of your nature. Everything else about you is filtered through the light it casts.”
“I am not a nice guy.”
“You just threatened to destroy my company,” her dad said with feeling. “You sure as hell are not a nice guy.”
Maddie’s smile morphed into a full grin. “It’s all a matter of perspective. I love that you would pull out every stop to slay my dragons.”
“I’m not a dragon. I’m your father, damn it.”
She flicked him a disgusted glance. “Who threatened to have me declared mentally incompetent.”
“You can’t believe I wanted things to go down that way, but you’re giving away my company.” Vik might claim to be remorseless, but Jeremy’s expression and tone were soaked with regret.
“Don’t exaggerate,” she said, dismissing her father’s words. “Twelve and a half percent with the voting proxy assigned to Vik and any successor he should formally appoint.”
Vik jolted beside her. “I didn’t know that.”
“I trust you.”
His gaze turned soft like she’d never expected to see. “You do.”
“You knew that.”
“I told myself you did.”
“And me.” He’d told her when she’d still been denying it to herself.
“Apparently it is different coming from you.”
Her dad sighed. “You know, your mother and I never felt the need to talk our emotions to death.”
Finally, Maddie gave Jeremy her attention. “Maybe if you had, things would have been different.”
“I cannot change the past,” he said with a pained expression.
“You spend enough time screwing up with your daughter in the present, the past is hardly what you need to be worried about,” Vik told her father.
“I am sorry for ambushing you with Dr. Wilson, Madison.” Jeremy looked at her with appeal. “It probably makes no difference to you, but I told Dr. Wilson I wouldn’t be needing his services immediately after you left my office.”
“That’s hard to believe.” Her father didn’t back down once he’d set a course of action in motion.
He just didn’t. And he did lie.
Jeremy said, “Call him. He’ll tell you.”
Bluffing or truth?
“He’s telling the truth,” Vik told her.
Maddie looked up at her husband. “How can you tell?”
“His eyes shift to the left when he’s lying about something important.”
“And this is important to him?” she asked with suspicion.
“It involves you and his company. There is nothing more important to him.”
That she believed. At least the part about the company.
“Why did you tell Dr. Wilson to back off?” she asked.
Jeremy shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I knew that if I followed through with my plan, you would never forgive me.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t because you realized that my marriage to Vik would be invalidated if I was deemed unfit to make legal decisions?”
Her father’s eyes widened, his skin going pale. A reaction he could not fake. He hadn’t thought of that. “No wonder Vik pulled out the rocket launchers.”
“He wants to be married to me more than he wants to be president of AIH.” Just saying the words gave her emotional satisfaction to the very depths of her being.
Jeremy nodded, his expression more vulnerable than she’d ever seen it. “I hope you’ve worked out that I want to be your dad more than I want control of those shares.”
It was her turn to nod, but maybe with not as much conviction.
“It might benefit you both if your father attended some sessions with you and Dr. MacKenzie,” Vik said.
Maddie waited to see her father’s reaction to that piece of advice before offering her own.
Jeremy Archer shocked her to the very marrow of his bones when he said, “I would like that very much. Are you willing, Madison?”