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)
We pass a jewelry store where Bella often sneaks peeks at the sparkling gemstones in the window, and it’s like a stab in my gut. Her birthday is almost here, and I just bought her a necklace she’s admired from that store. If I never get to give it to her…I stop myself from going there. I will give it to her. I’m just letting this walk fuck with me. And how can I not? At least several times a week, Bella makes this trip to Cupcakes and Books, as she most likely did today. Even now I scan the area, looking for her, a desperation in me that is nothing I have ever known, but everything consuming me right here, right now. Dash curses next to me, and I follow his gaze to a blonde female on the opposite side of the street, a flicker of hope filling me until I realize what he obviously already has. She’s not Bella.
We’re both praying she will step out of some quaint little store, as she would call it, and the world would be right again.
Dash’s cellphone rings and I glance over at the exact moment he eyes his screen and declines the call before shooting off a text message. “That was Allie,” he informs me, casting me side-eye.
Allie being his wife and my employee, as well as Bella’s close friend. “I’m not telling her what’s going on,” he adds. “Not yet. She’ll freak out and get in the middle of this, and I don’t need her in the line of fire. I won’t put her in danger, too.”
But I put Bella in danger.
Intentional or not, that’s the implication of the words that just came out of his mouth. The moment I crossed the taboo line with Bella—my employee, his sister—I made her a target of my enemies, the biggest of which was my father. Still is my father. It’s as if he is reaching out of his grave and wrapping his hand around her throat, and choking the life out of me, with her.
She has always been the perfect woman who deserved better than me and my fucked-up family. I knew that. I knew, and I went there with her anyway. If I’m honest, despite three years of trying to prove myself wrong, I was always going to go there with Bella.
My mind travels back in time to the night I’d met her. She’d applied for a job as an attorney, willing to learn and take on agenting duties. My assistant had quickly figured out who her mother was or had been—the founder of Alice’s Home Shopping Network. Bella didn’t need a job. I was skeptical but intrigued. But I’d been buried in work, too buried for anything but an after-hours interview. It was almost six in the evening when Bella had arrived to meet with me, the day winding down, the office clearing out even if I was not. When my secretary announced Bella and led her into my office, I’d instinctively stood up, and the minute my eyes had landed on her, I felt the punch in my gut. There stood a petite, beautiful little blonde goddess with lush curves and sea-blue eyes, who despite her tiny stature, oozed as much pride and confidence as her CEO mother once had.
She’d enchanted me when I’d have sworn that to be an impossible task. After all, at that point in my life, I’d had my share of gorgeous women, even intelligent, gorgeous women, but they all saw me as their money ticket, their ride to comfort and a luxurious life. But Bella was different. She had her own money, a famous NASCAR driver for a father, and a mother who set the standard all women wanted to live up to in business. She didn’t need my money. She didn’t need to work. And yet, she came out fighting for the job and for her own individual success.
I can’t even remember how many late nights over the past three years she’s knocked on my door and poked her head in when no one else dared disturb me. “Can I run a negotiation by you?” she’d ask.
I came to look forward to those late evenings, but I never asked her to drinks or dinner. I never touched her. I never crossed a line. I wanted to, but looking back, my restraint with Bella was miraculous. That is, until my father died, and she showed up at my apartment.
It was the night that everything changed between Bella and me in ways I’m not even sure she fully understood.
Chapter Fourteen
Tyler
That night, the night that ultimately changed everything between me and Bella, I’d been coming out of my own skin, tormented by both my father’s life and death when my doorbell had rung. The next thing I’d known, there Bella was, standing at my door, trying to get me to not only let her in, but invite her to stay. And she did. She made me watch a damn chick flick and all I could do was sit there and think about stripping her naked and taking her to my bed.