Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 446(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 557(@200wpm)___ 446(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
Well, him . . . I can see him there.
Wait.
“What the fuck?” I whisper, blinking and rubbing my eyes. But he’s still there . . . no illusion.
“Damn, he’s got finesse, I’ll give him that. I told him seven on the dot, and man is here at six-fifty-eight,” Taya says, tapping her gold watch.
“Huh?” I say dully.
“Girl, that man has been going viral trying to track you down. Best you listen to what he has to say.”
Without any explanation, she gets up from our blanket picnic and walks back through the sand toward her place. She calls out over her shoulder, “Yell for Carlo if you need help with the body! I’m sure he knows the tides or whatever shit you gotta know to make Prince Charm-Your-Pants-Off disappear.”
That’s exactly the kind of thing I should yell at her for saying. Public threats of murder are kinda frowned upon, after all. Or at the least, they’re admissible in a court of law. Thankfully, there’s no one around to testify against her, given the stretch of beach Taya owns.
Carson is stalking toward me in slow motion. His jeans are rolled up to his knees, and his bare feet are leaving imprints in the sand behind him. He looks dark and thunderous, backlit by the setting sun but also fearful that I might bolt like prey running from a predator.
I am no prey. I’m a predator all my own, with years of experience dealing with assholes who think they know best. Or certainly better than some young, blonde PR consultant bitch. I click into that well inside my core that takes no shit and kills any potential prisoners. Because I won’t risk my life for someone unworthy, and Carson proved himself that with his reaction . . . to my dealing with Archer and to my parents.
Just because he’s here to take it back doesn’t change that.
“Why are you here?” I demand, already planning and considering my possible responses depending on whatever he answers.
“We need to talk. First and foremost, are you okay?” he growls, stopping several feet away from my blanket stronghold.
That is not one of the things I thought he might say. “Yeah?”
He grinds his teeth. “You left the charity event, and I couldn’t find you anywhere. I was worried, and then mad. Mostly worried.” Quieter, he confesses, “And hurt.”
It could be a list of emotions without reference, except that I can see each of them cross his face, with the pain resting there the longest. Plus, I’ve felt the same way.
“Did you get drunk and sing sad songs?” I ask with the smallest hint of acknowledgement.
He huffs out a wry laugh. “I spent the night with Myron.”
“What?”
“I wanted to see you, but he wouldn’t let me in or tell me if you were even there. So I waited.” He shrugs as if that’s no big deal, but I know sitting outside my building while Myron contemplates the different ways he could end your life in ranking of least to most painful is more than most men could withstand.
“Then what?” I ask, suddenly interested in how he went from a Myron hangout session to here on the sandy beach with me.
He takes two steps closer, still standing over me. Not in a looming way, but rather as if he’s waiting for me to invite him to sit, letting me control the pace. “Then Toni had the idea to enlist Taya for help. The video of that went viral, which you can yell at me about later, but it worked. She responded, telling me where you were. I don’t know if she arranged the flight or if that was your parents.” He tilts his head, thinking.
“My parents?” I pat the blanket impatiently, gesturing for him to sit down because this I need to hear.
He approaches slowly, on guard as he lowers down next to me. “They were at the airport. Flew with me to LA so we could talk.”
“They’re here? What did they tell you?” I ask suspiciously.
“They went back home, just wanted to talk to me.” He looks deep into my eyes. “They apologized for ‘springing themselves on me’, as they called it. They thought I knew. I apologized for being a frozen idiot because I didn’t know.” He drops his gaze to the blanket. “And then they told me some cute stories about you as a kid. My favorite one was when you tried to go to college with James by enrolling yourself in classes online. That sounded like something you’d do.”
I can’t help but smile. “That’s one of my favorite stories too.”
James, as the oldest, was the first of my brothers to leave home, and I was missing him before he was even gone. It only made sense for me to go to school with him. Well, at least it made sense to me. Until Dad found out I’d used his credit card to pay for enrollment and Mom had freaked out about my leaving home, even though it was nearly a decade away at the time.