He blinked a couple of times, drew a deep breath. Then he braced his hand on the door frame.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I haven’t come in here.” He paused. “Not since…”
Kaitlin’s chest squeezed around her heart. “Since your grandmother died?”
He nodded in answer.
“We can leave.” She moved briskly toward the door, feeling guilty for having done something that obviously upset him.
He shaped his lips in a smile and stepped decisively into the room, stopping her forward progress. “No. Sadie put my wife in her will. It’s right that you should learn about her.”
For the first time, it occurred to Kaitlin that in addition to being blindsided by the news of their Vegas marriage, Zach had likely been blindsided by the will itself.
“You didn’t expect your wife to inherit, did you?” she asked, watching him closely.
He paused, gazing frankly into Kaitlin’s eyes. “That would be an understatement.”
“Was Sadie angry with you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Maybe you didn’t visit her enough.”
He shook his head and moved farther into the room.
Kaitlin pivoted to watch as he walked toward the windows. “Seriously. Would she have liked you to come home more often?”
“I’m sure she would have.”
“Well, maybe that’s—”
“She left you a few hundred million because I didn’t show up here enough?” He turned back to face her, folding his arms over his chest.
Kaitlin took a step back, blinking in shock. “Dollars?”
“It wasn’t like I never came home,” Zach defended.
“Okay, I’m going to forget you said that.” Kaitlin knew Harper International was a very big company, but hundreds of millions? All those zeros were going to make her hyperventilate.
“She did want me to get married,” Zach admitted, half musing to himself.
But Kaitlin’s mind was still on the hundreds of millions of dollars. It was a massive, overwhelming responsibility. How on earth did Zach handle it?
He swept his arm, gesturing around the room. “As you can probably tell, the Harper family history was important to Sadie.”
“The responsibility would freak me out,” Kaitlin confessed.
“The family history?”
“The millions, billions, whatever, corporation.”
“I thought we were talking about my grandmother.”
Right. Kaitlin pushed the company’s value to the back of her mind. It was a moot point anyway. Her involvement would be short-lived.
“What did you do to make her mad?” she asked again, knowing there had to be more than he was letting on. Zach was right, Sadie wouldn’t have cut him out of her will because he didn’t visit often enough.
His lips thinned as he drew an exasperated sigh. “She wasn’t mad.”
Kaitlin crossed her arms over her own chest, cocking her head and peering dubiously up at him.
“Fine,” he finally conceded. “She was impatient for me to have children. My best guess is that she was trying to speed things up by bribing potential wives.”
“That would do it,” said Kaitlin with conviction, admiring Sadie’s moxie. She could only imagine the lineup that would have formed around the block if Zach had been single and word got out about the will.
“I’m not sure I want the kind of woman who’s attracted by money,” he stated.
“She was obviously trying,” Kaitlin said, defending Sadie’s actions. “It was you who wasn’t cooperating.”
He rolled his eyes heavenward.
“Seriously, Zach.” Kaitlin couldn’t help but tease him. “I think you should step up and give your grandmother her dying wish. Get married and have a new generation of little Harper pirates.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Are you volunteering for the job?”
Nice try. But he wasn’t putting her on the defensive.
She smoothly tucked her hair behind her ears and took a half step in his direction, bringing them less than a foot apart. “You want me to call your bluff?”
“Go ahead.”
“Sure, Zach. I’m your wife, so let’s have children.”
He stepped in, bring them even closer. “And you claim you’re not flirting.”
“I’m not flirting,” she denied.
“We’re talking about sex.” His deep voice hummed along her nervous system, messing with her concentration.
“We’re talking about babies,” she corrected.
“My mistake. I thought you were making a pass at me.”
She inched farther forward, stretching up to face him. “If I make a pass at you, Zachary, you’ll know it.”