Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
Her mom cleared her throat.
“Well, and your mom died. I try not to think about that part. Honestly, meeting your mother, being with her before she pulled all that bullshit fake death thing was what made me reconsider. After my mentor John Bishop died, I went deep. I pulled away from friends and family. I was starting down a very dark path where I stopped seeing people as humans with hopes and dreams and lives and started seeing them as chess pieces to move around.”
“Isn’t he Henry Flanders now?” Lou asked.
Her father pointed Lou’s way as though she’d made his point. “Yeah, you get too deep in this ‘career’ and there’s a whole lot of faked deaths. It’s a real theme. My point is it took loving your mother to make me reconsider, and then even when she was gone, I was too changed to go back. If you leave this team behind, you won’t return. Cooper is your shot. Baby girl, please take it. Whatever he did, however he hurt you, it’s fixable.”
But she wasn’t. For all her father thought he knew her, the situation wasn’t the same.
Was it?
She stared at him, not knowing what to say.
Her father shook his head. “You’re not going to DC. I’m still your boss, so unless you want to quit, you’ll stand down. Stay here. Go home. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re in Dallas. We have a meeting in the morning now that everyone’s home. I expect you there at eight a.m.”
She knew an order when she heard it. He would move heaven and earth and probably cut her off at the knees. She needed a new plan. “Sir, yes, sir.”
Her father turned and walked out.
Her mother stood up. “And I expect you at the house for dinner on Sunday night for Travis’s birthday. If you’re not there, I’ll send someone to find you. I know you think your father is the hard case, but only because you’ve never put me in a corner. You try to walk away from this family and you’ll find out how hard I can fight, my love.”
Her mother knew how to make an exit.
Kala watched her, not truly understanding why her heart felt so twisted. There was anger at them not respecting her decisions and treating her like a child.
There was this odd warmth that came with the knowledge that her parents wouldn’t ever let her go, wouldn’t ever stop fighting for her. Even when they had to fight her.
It was a lot. So much damn emotion, and she didn’t handle a regular amount of emotion well. She looked at the last person in the room. “Do you have something to say before you walk out?”
Lou’s head shook. “I’m not leaving. I brought a bag with me. I took the second privacy room. Where you go, I go. So if you’re leaving the team, I’m coming with you.”
Fuck it all.
Too much. It was too much. She stood because she needed some air. She walked through the conference room doors.
“Just remember I can track you, and if you think you can cut that tracker out, you’re wrong,” Lou yelled after her. “Why do you think I put it in your ass cheek? Your arms aren’t long enough to get there.”
She’d told her it worked best in subcutaneous fat and her butt was the only place she had some. Liar. Her best friend was a liar who was trying to keep track of her.
Because she loved her. Because she worried about losing her.
Too much.
She let the door slam shut and strode to the front of the club in time to see her parents leaving in the massive Navigator her father drove.
They had no right to tell her what to do.
Couldn’t they see this was for the best?
Had her father thought about doing the same thing?
She drew in a deep breath and wished she was back in the woods with Cooper and they’d never found Joyce, never revealed the secret of his birth. She wanted to be with him in that space where nothing mattered but the two of them. Where she’d felt safe to be exactly who she was. Where who she was had been a woman in love with a man.
“I knew I’d find you here,” a familiar voice said.
She turned, trying to tamp down her shock. Because the man standing in front of her shouldn’t be looking for her at all. The man in front of her had no idea who she really was.
Ben Parker stepped from behind the big oak tree.
She was fucked.
Chapter Fifteen
“What are you doing here?” She had a million questions, but it seemed like the most important one.
Ben Parker was handsome—if one liked the type. Which she did not. He had golden hair he kept in a stylish cut and light blue eyes that could go from warm to icy in a heartbeat. At six foot six, he towered over her.