Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Hearing about it, we’d struggled to compute the descriptions of her crimes with the petite five-foot-three woman who made our dinner and tucked us into bed every night, but the police had shown us the evidence. Well, they’d done that after they’d questioned the four of us for hours, assuming that we’d been involved with her ‘job.’ To this day, I still couldn’t do it, even after all these years.
That was the night we’d lost everything, except for each other.
I doubt anyone could imagine the confusion we’d felt over it all. We loved our mom, and she was a good mother who adored her kids, so putting that woman together with the one who’d amassed a small fortune out of ripping people off? How do you do that?
Thirteen months after they’d charged her, she’d been sentenced to fifteen years in prison, with the time she’d already served deducted. That’d all been eleven years ago, so she had another two years and six months left to do because her trial and sentencing had taken the better part of two and a half years. She might have had a lesser sentence or been eligible for parole if she’d have told them where a chunk of the money they couldn’t find was, but even now, she maintained that she had no idea.
After hearing all of the details, my older siblings, Euan, and Chloe, had cut Mom out of their lives, adamant that they wanted nothing to do with her. Still, my younger sister Laura and I maintained contact with her and even visited her whenever we could. To some, she was a thief and a con, but she was still our mom, and we couldn’t switch off to that fact.
I’d been leery of getting serious with anyone and seeing their reactions when they found out I was related to the notorious Connie Ray, so I’d changed my last name to my grandma’s maiden one.
Obviously, that wasn’t enough, so I’d also changed my hair and appearance from the photos in the news of the young girl who’d cried when her mom had been sentenced, and I’d worked hard to be successful in college and at my job as a nurse. Thankfully, puberty and age had also played a noticeable change in my appearance, and now I was able just to be me—Eva Dawson.
I liked to think of myself as a work in progress still, emotionally, and physically.
“Eva,” Danielle, one of the other nurses on duty today, called out. “That fine hunk of a man of yours is waiting for you at the desk.”
Joshua. How would a man who owns a prestigious club, who’s respected and admired, cope with finding out the truth about me? I knew I’d have to tell him one day, but I just didn’t know how to do it.
Blowing out a breath and pasting a smile on my face, I thanked her and put the last of the cannulas in the tub in the storage closet before making my way down the hallway to where he was waiting for me. Joshua did this often, surprising me at work and making me feel special.
All it took was seeing him for the fake smile to morph into a real one. He’d had that effect on me from day one.
His grey eyes scanned me from top to bottom as I got closer. “Hey, baby. You look beautiful.”
Looking down my body at my dark pink scrubs and remembering the high ponytail I’d put my long brunette hair up in today, I grimaced. “You’re good for my confidence, honey. What brings you by?”
Gently, he tucked some hair that’d come free behind my ear, then trailed his fingertips across my cheek. “I brought you some lunch. You didn’t bring any in with you, and I know how you feel about the food here.”
“If she doesn’t want you, I’ll take her place,” Miriam, who was two weeks away from her retirement, muttered as she dropped off a chart. “Eva, go take your break with the poor man, will you?”
Taking the hand being held out to me, I waved over my shoulder at the other ladies, who were all watching Joshua with their chins resting on their hands. I was lucky, but I couldn’t allow myself to relax into the happiness he brought out in me.
I needed to have that conversation with him, and soon.
CHAPTER THREE
Joshua
“So, have you found anything yet?” Harry asked as we sat down in my office, taking the chairs next to the glass window that took up one wall overlooking the dancefloor of the club below.
I’d have been working until the club shut, not that long ago, but now…
Fuck, it’d all changed for the good but gone so drastically wrong at the same time. I loved my club, Shingle, and I loved the variety of jobs I had to do for it, but Eva had been a task outside of it that’d taken over. And then she’d taken over the importance for real, the words job and task receding from the description that she fell into now.