Wanting a Family Man (Raven’s Cove #3)

Chapter Nine

“I honestly don’t know how you ever leave this place.” Cloe shaded her eyes as she took stock of their destination. The breeze pressed her shirt against her curves and her expression softened into sensual appreciation of the whitecaps and Campbell Island across the channel.

“This is false advertising. It rains a metric crap ton.” He made himself drag his gaze away from her to drink in the salty tang in the air along with the sun sparkling on the water.

But yeah, it was beautiful.

He had never, ever, ever imagined himself being back here for more than a family visit, let alone working alongside his half brothers, but no matter his reason for being here, this was the place that settled him. The crumpled shape of land changed constantly, yet always looked familiar. The tideline moved up and down, the trees were logged or grew back in, the sky clouded and turned to pewter before opening to bright blue days or indigo nights, but no matter how it looked, it was always home.

A yanking sensation pulled within his chest. Nostalgia? Homesickness? It was the barbed pain that always struck when he left, but he would leave again. He always did. He had to.

“Unemployment is really high here.” He moved to where a tangle of driftwood provided a small windbreak. The breeze wasn’t cold, but he didn’t want any sand kicked into Storm’s eyes. “I fell ass-backward into a gold mine with the videos and felt obliged to maximize the opportunity. If I don’t film my show, I don’t know what else I would do. Get a degree and work in conservation, maybe? That’s what my mother did. It paid the bills, but it comes with a lot of frustrations.”

“Bureaucracy and inaction?”

“Yeah. The film industry can be problematic, but it’s the devil I know.”

“Plus, you get paid to tell people why they should save the planet. It may not seem like important work in the way that protecting a habitat might be, but you have to get people to care about protecting it before they’ll vote to do it.”

“True.” It was the way he looked at it, but it was nice to hear it from someone else. “Are you hungry?”

“I am, actually.” She dug out the survival blanket from her backpack while he freed Storm.

As she usually did, Storm had dozed off midwalk. He could always tell when she was asleep because she became dead weight, but she was full of energy now. She immediately tried to crawl off the blanket and into the sand.

“Let’s eat before you get your hands dirty.” He drew her into the fence of his bent legs and offered small chunks of banana with sips of water.

She turned and grasped handfuls of his shirt to pull herself up, catching a few of his chest hairs and making him wince.

“Did you always know you wanted to do your show?” Cloe asked as she dipped into her sack of trail mix and sipped from her water bottle.

“Not at all. I don’t like attention, but that’s the beauty of doing it. For the most part, I work alone or with a small team. By the time I release it, I’m off in some new backwoods location.”

“You’ve done talks at conventions and stuff, though. Sorry.” She sheepishly pushed her mouth sideways. “I sound like a stalker. I’m not. I swear.”

“It’s fine.” He was just glad to be off the topic of his childhood. He hadn’t meant to say as much as he had. His public-facing biography said all that he wanted to say about his mixed heritage and how he had stumbled into his career. Most interviews focused on his dating life and plans for the show, never delving into the personal details he’d revealed to Cloe. Those were all things that anyone who lived here knew about him, but saying it aloud still left him feeling unbuttoned.

“I did do the Hollywood thing for a while,” he confirmed, holding a handful of cereal O’s for Storm to pick at. “I hated it with the passion of a thousand suns.”

“I hear that,” she said on a faint chuckle. “As much as I love and miss Tiff, I had some PTSD going through her things that had nothing to do with grief. I felt myself spiraling back into the vortex of needing to wear designer clothes and meet the right people at the right place, terrified I’d be made to feel inadequate over inane things. I wonder if that’s why she wanted to live here,” she mused, “to get away from that. She always seemed to like the flash, but it grinds you down.” Cloe drew up her knees and hugged them, watching the ripple of waves lap at the shore. She turned her head. “You were seeing someone there, weren’t you?”

Storm tried to crawl over his leg to go exploring.

“Will you keep her from chewing rocks while I warm her food?” He handed the baby across and found his pocket camp stove.

Cloe held Storm’s hands as she staggered toward a smooth piece of driftwood, then she knelt beside her to help balance her.

After setting water to boil, Trystan brought out one of Storm’s food pouches. It wasn’t quite thawed. He gave it a squish to break up the chunks, then set it in the hot water, turning off the flame so the pouch wouldn’t scorch while the contents warmed.

Cloe was keeping her attention fixed on Storm, but there was a stiffness in her profile.

Had he bruised her feelings by avoiding the question about his girlfriend? Their breakup had thankfully coincided with a big news day, so it hadn’t made much of a splash. It was public knowledge, but it felt private because he felt like such a fool over it. All of it. From throwing in with Hollywood in the first place to letting a woman use him.

“Yasmine,” he provided. “We broke up.”

He sensed her surprise even though he was concentrating on finding his own bag of trail mix. He was a little surprised himself. He could have let it go. Should have.

“I’m sorry. Was it serious?” she asked gently.

“Serious enough. We said the words.” Had he been in love, though? He wasn’t sure. The sex had been great. She had made him laugh, but there had always been something that held him back from proposing. “She was part of that vortex you mentioned, but she still had a warmth to her. A way of making everyone feel important. She made it easy for me to swim with the sharks so I bought a house for her. Us,” he corrected. “But I was never there, so it was basically for her. It seemed like a good investment.”

“Were you married? Did she take it?” she asked with alarm.

“We weren’t married.” Thank God for small mercies. “But we were talking about it.” He bobbed and squished the pouch. It wasn’t quite warm enough. “Work got complicated. Initially, when I was offered obscene amounts of money for something I was doing anyway, it seemed like a no-brainer to take the offer. I was promised I would maintain creative direction, but I had a bigger support team. Agents and managers, marketing and a PR consultant. First-class travel. I can’t say I hated that.”

“Money is a drug. It messes with your judgment and is highly addictive. People commit crimes to get their hands on it.”

“I’ve never thought of it that way, but yeah. It can be. And it’s funny how the people who give it to you figure they’re buying the right to tell you what to do. I had built my following on choosing locations that interest me. I bring my audience to somewhere they aren’t likely to visit and show them the environment, what lives there, how humans carve out an existence there. Once Hollywood was involved, I was told the show would have a broader appeal if it was more dramatic. The locations became more dangerous, my survival more of a test.”

“I noticed that.” Her brow crinkled as she glanced in his direction. “It’s kind of stressful to watch.”

“It’s stressful to live it.” Cloe was one of the few people he had ever admitted that to. “Storm”—he waved the pouch, shaking the water off it—“want some?”

She grinned and Cloe caught her when she would have toppled to the sand to crawl toward him. Cloe carried Storm back to the blanket and sat cross-legged, tucking the baby into the hollow of her legs, then helped her slurp at the food pouch.

Trystan turned the flame back on to bring the water back to a boil and poured a packet of dehydrated soup into it.

“Treating nature as an adversary is a very colonial, capitalist attitude. The wilderness isn’t something to be conquered and tamed. It took me a while to realize I was playing into that narrative. I was blinded by the numbers. Viewership rose through the roof. Money rolled in. But more money for me meant more money for them. And for Yasmine. By then, she had become my business manager. There was no incentive for anyone to agree to a safer show except me and my desire to stay alive. I began to push back and everything fell apart.”

“She broke up with you because you didn’t want to die?” she asked with contempt.

“Because the money was drying up. I was already behind on filming because negotiations were taking so long. No one wanted to pay me for the original vision. They all wanted the high-risk version. The distribution agreements were falling off. I needed money to finish the season and wanted to sell the house to do it. Yasmine was horrified.”

“ I’m horrified,” Cloe assured him. “On your behalf. That’s awful, Trystan.”

“It was. But you know what made her angriest? That I was there at all. She really enjoyed being the partner of an absent celebrity. She liked being my voice and holding the spotlight on herself. It turned into a very ugly parting where she took all the credit for my success. I gave her the house and paid her a chunk of cash to get lost.”

“That’s bullshit,” she muttered, glancing down at Storm to help the baby recover the food pouch. “All of it. When someone is thoughtful and caring and says they love you, you should be able to believe them.”

“Yeah.” Her words kicked him straight in the chest, winding him.

He hadn’t told anyone about Yasmine’s betrayal because it was too humiliating. He felt like a grade-A fool. Having Cloe’s understanding ought to alleviate that in some small way, but it only made him angrier. She knew exactly how he felt and that infuriated him. No one should feel like this. She shouldn’t.

“You got the executives to see reason, though. Things changed in the latest season,” she noted.

“It took time to find investors willing to gamble on my shift in focus. They weren’t really convinced until I risked my own money again. I refused to ask my team to take a pay cut or reduce the production value of the show, not when I already knew I’d lose viewers by talking about the dangers of climate change instead of, you know, camping beside volcanoes or man-eating tigers.”

“Where do things stand now? I’ll be really sad if you tell me the show isn’t coming back.”

“I’m trying like hell to get back to filming. I want enough episodes in the can to get a syndication deal. I was finally out filming when—” He waved at Storm.

Storm dropped her food pouch again and rolled, scrabbling to stand against Cloe. One of her little fists clutched into Cloe’s T-shirt. The other covered Cloe’s hand when Cloe offered the pouch again. Storm sipped once, then ignored it, trying to crawl past Cloe to freedom.

“We can live with a delay,” Cloe said to Storm, supporting her so she could stand. “Can’t we?” She rubbed her nose to Storm’s, getting a bat of Storm’s flat hand on her cheek in response.

“Get comfortable,” Trystan muttered.

“What do you mean?” She blinked at him.

“I had to dump what was left of my available cash into Raven’s Cove. When we graduated, Dad gave each of us a hundred thousand dollars. Reid and Logan used theirs for school. I sank mine into getting my show off the ground. We didn’t know that he took loans against the resort to give us that leg up. Between that and two divorces and Tiffany’s renovations, the place was fully underwater when Dad died. There’s nothing for Storm.”

“Really?” she breathed in shock.

“That’s not blame on Tiffany. Dad let her run with the upgrades after years of his own mismanagement. The overextensions are on him, but selling at a loss would have left a lot of people holding unpaid bills.” Trystan hadn’t been able to bear that, not only because a lot of those unpaid bills were held by locals who were closely connected to him.

On a deeper level, by accepting that money from his father, his father’s debts were his. He wouldn’t feel right until all of it was balanced out, including the resort being run by the people who owned the land.

“It’s great that Reid and Emma want to adopt Storm, but supporting her shouldn’t fall completely on them,” he continued. “Logan and I need to pitch in. Do our fair share.”

Reason number ten billion why he wasn’t ready to have kids. They were freaking expensive.

“Filming the baby hacks is a special episode that will keep the show on life support while I figure out the rest, but things are pretty dicey right now.” He took the soup off the heat and stirred it. “I’ve downplayed all of that with my brothers, so I’d appreciate your keeping it to yourself.”

“Why? I mean, yes, of course I’ll keep it in the vault.” She absently guided Storm’s hand away from her nose. “I’m just wondering why you wouldn’t tell them?”

Why did she think he would? Because she thought they were close?

“Pride,” he admitted with a self-conscious scratch beneath his jaw. “Reid would take it as a problem I need him to fix. Fuck that,” he said firmly. “I’ll fix it myself in my own way.”

“He does seem kind of… I don’t know. Tense?”

“He’s knotted tighter than a boa constrictor with an embarrassing itch.”

She sputtered a laugh.

“You can tell him I said that.” He was kind of proud of it, to be honest.

“I will not,” she said firmly. “What about Logan, though? He seems more easygoing. Wouldn’t he understand?”

“Logan wants everyone to believe he gives no fucks, but he gives so many fucks. He and Reid are competitive as hell, especially with each other, in a very passive-aggressive way.”

“Just them?” she asked mildly.

“Yes,” he lied, making her chuckle under her breath. The sound was husky and sensual and sent flutters down his spine.

“Do you know what I find fascinating?” Cloe cocked her head. He was captivated despite all his best intentions. “You have never sounded half this annoyed on your show. That’s part of why it’s a comfort watch for me. You’re never agitated or distressed. Like that time you woke up to find all the biting ants in your gear? I would have lost my mind and screamed all the way home, but you shook out your stuff and shrugged it off.”

“I’m not annoyed.” He was definitely annoyed. He was always annoyed by his brothers. He was pretty sure it came from being the youngest. Growing up, they had always been that little bit smarter and stronger. In some ways, it still felt that way, seeing them with their shit together, getting married to great women with their great kids already made for them. “I’m just saying how it is.”

“What do they say about you?” Cloe asked. “Do you know?”

“Do you honestly think they’d hide it from me? They say I’m spoiled. And that I think I’m better than they are.”

“Do you?” Her eyes were bright with anticipation.

“The correct question is, ‘ Are you?’ And yes. I am.”

“Better? Or spoiled?”

“Better. Isn’t it obvious?” He was smirking with self-deprecation.

She snickered. “But you’re not competitive.”

“I don’t have to be.”

“Because you know you’re better.” Her voice was dwindling into that laugh again, this time deeper and even more engaging.

“It’s nice that you get me.”

He couldn’t help his wide grin. Her laughter was infectious, maybe even addictive. He liked seeing her face lit up like that, too. She forgot all her troubles and her eyes sparkled and her teeth flashed and everything about her glowed.

The embers of admiration and hunger in the pit of his belly burned hotter.

“You want this soup or the next one?” He made himself look to the stainless steel cup.

“You have that one. I want to keep holding Miss Muffet.” She hugged Storm closer to her chest, smiling with unabashed love and that, too, was a beautiful sight to behold.