 by Lisa Renee Jones.jpg)
Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54589 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 218(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54589 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 218(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
Now his father is dead and the future of the family empire depends on him taking a wife. And there is only one woman he can dare act out this charade with—and that's her. A woman he trusts. A woman he burns for.
And suddenly, it's not a charade at all.
But when the man who declares he will never fall in love, falls, what comes next?
Especially when an enemy wants to take the only thing that matters anymore from him.
That enemy wants Bella.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter Fifty-Three of book two
Bella
Something is coming.
Something very bad.
I bounce through a few weeks of my official engagement to Tyler, where on the surface I’m living in a bubble of wonderful—a fairy tale where I find my prince charming, but deep down in my gut I can sense the calm before the storm.
I don’t shake the idea that trouble is brewing, but I do enjoy this time with Tyler.
Starting with the wedding announcement that has everyone talking.
For a week solid, clients call, studios call, the staff gossip and many of them come to me to see my ring. When I’m asked how it happened, I tell them the truth. It happened over time. Remarkably the whispers are more about my ring than me sleeping with the boss. There is approval for our new couple status, and even more about how different Tyler is with me by his side.
Apparently, he only scowls half the time now.
I smile most of the time. The truth is, I’m different with Tyler by my side as well. Happier. More fulfilled. As cheesy as it might sound, I really do feel that together we are two halves of one whole.
Unfortunately, we have made very little progress when it comes to the will. Tyler worries about the partners, he worries about another will surfacing that is not in our favor. The more he talks about all the head games his father played with him, the more I worry he’s right.
We’ve gone through all the Allen client information we can locate though and found nothing of substance, but Tyler is determined to go through every file in storage despite them stretching a timeline of a decade plus. It’s an incredible number of files the firm has handled over time, and between Tyler’s obsession with the threat of the Allen family case, and his relentless pursuit of another will, his life and work has been disrupted in a mammoth way.
Along the way, Tyler hires a new secretary and fully moves into my place, and places his apartment on the rental market, with the intent to use it as an investment property. We’ve truly settled in together at the house, made it ours, not mine, and in the process, Molly has grown like a weed.
It's three weeks after our official engagement announcement that I decide Tyler needs an intervention. He has to take a break from everything to do with the will and run his company. One morning, I wake to find Tyler missing. With a groan, I eye the clock, to read the early hour of six am. He’s not resting, I think. Not ever. This has to stop.
I roll out of bed, wrap myself in my robe, and shove my feet in fuzzy slippers, no doubt where to find Tyler and I don’t have to go far. I exit the bedroom, pad down the hallway to his new office area and step into the doorway to find him shirtless, in his PJ bottoms, and sitting on the cozy brown chair to the right of the desk.
There’s a stack of files in his lap.
“How’s it going?” I ask.
He glances up, his eyes warming on me, before his mood transforms to stony cold frustration, his lips pressed together. “The same. It’s the same, Bella.” His voice is etched in utter frustration and it’s hard to see the man I love struggling to claim the control he feels he’s lost.
I close the space between us and slide to my knees in front of him, setting the files on the arm of the chair. “Just take a week off,” I plea. “You’ll see this thing with your father through different eyes, if you set it away.”
“What if we don’t have a week?”
“You originally thought that finding this second will you’re sure exists—”
“It does. He would never come at me without a contingency plan.”
“Come at you? You originally thought the second will ended the challenge. You’d inherit and all of this was over. Now your mentality has flipped. Now you think it’s something that can be used against you. Why?”
“You knew my father, Bella.”
It’s really all he has to say. He’s right. There’s no telling what he might have done to trap Tyler, but I also can’t help but believe we’re missing a clue. When I bring this up to Tyler, he assures me he has someone digging around. “Is that smart? Because if your someone digs around in the Allen family business, that feels dangerous.”
“He’s ex-CIA. He knows what to do to stay off the radar.” He stands up. “I made coffee.”
In other words, no, he will not take a break.
“No to your stubbornness, Tyler. No to coffee. We need-”
He scoops me up and starts walking to the bedroom, where we will not go back to bed, at least not to sleep. This isn’t the break I had in mind, but it’ll do for now.