Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 85608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
And I loved her enough to endure the likes of Leslie Kensington.
By the time we finished the meeting, I was on edge from all the parrying back and forth. English pulled me close, and we exited The Plaza together.
“Thanks for enduring that.”
“Anything for you, bestie.”
“You’re still coming out with us tonight, right? I have that work thing for Fallon, and then I want to get a drink with my girl.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll be there.”
“It probably ruined the surprise now that you saw Gavin though.”
“Surprise?”
“We were going to invite everyone for your return to the Big Apple.”
I groaned. “Seriously?”
“Well, it won’t be much of a surprise.”
“Thank god.”
English elbowed me. “So, what happened with Gavin anyway?”
“Nothing. It was normal, I guess.”
“You guess? You haven’t dated a man in three years, and the first time you see the one who still holds a piece of your heart, you say, ‘It was normal, I guess.’ ”
I wanted to growl at her. She wasn’t wrong. I’d given up men entirely after leaving New York. There was too much drama. I’d only casually dated girls before and decided that maybe I’d dive in head first in LA. I’d even had a girlfriend for almost a whole year. Well, on and off.
Actually, maybe I was back to me being the problem.
“He doesn’t hold a piece of my heart,” was what I decided to focus on instead.
English nearly choked on her laughter. “Okay, Whit. I’ll see you tonight at Club 360?”
“Sure. Sure. I’ll be there.” Then, I thought of something else. “Are you planning to surprise Katherine?”
English shot me a devious look. “Yep.”
“Do you want to get stabbed? She hates surprises.”
“I figure since it’s you, I will be forgiven.”
“Unlikely. I’ll go see her before we go out. I do some excellent sutures, but I don’t want to do them in public.”
English kissed my cheek. “I love you. See you later.”
I headed back the way I’d come, veering toward Percy Tower. Three years ago, when I’d left, Katherine and Camden had just worked out their differences. Of a sort. Now, she’d moved into his penthouse on the top of his hotel with their two kids.
Two kids.
It still amazed me that Katherine was a mother at all. Let alone to two little ones.
I took the private elevator up to the penthouse. It opened to the top floor, and I found Camden Percy striding toward me in a suit that probably cost a few grand. He looked … fucking gorgeous and generally terrifying. He was all thunderclouds and venom and balls of steel. He always made me falter a step, and Katherine Van Pelt was the only one who could come close to matching him.
“Oh, good,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “I don’t have to tell her then.”
“Wait, you already knew I was back?”
He arched an eyebrow. “There’s nothing I don’t know about in my city.”
“Court told you then, huh?”
He didn’t acknowledge that, just smirked dangerously. “She’s in the nursery with Beckett. Up the stairs, first door on the right.”
“And Helena? Do I get to see my niece today too?”
“Helena is with the nanny and her godsister, Gem,” he said of his two-year-old daughter and their all but adopted daughter. “They went to run errands. She should be back within the hour. I’m off to a meeting.”
“Will I see you tonight?”
“Where she goes, so do I.”
Then, he disappeared into the elevator.
Who would have guessed? A few years ago, they hated each other so much that they couldn’t even enter the room together without clawing each other’s eyes out. Now, they were sickeningly in love. In their own way, of course.
I took off my shoes and then climbed the stairs to the nursery. I knocked softly once, and Katherine hissed, “Shh, I just got him down.”
I hesitated a minute before peeking my head into the room. Her eyes rounded in surprise. That was as much of a shock Katherine Van Pelt wanted from her friends. She held up one finger as she rocked her six-month-old against her chest. Finally, she set the big boy down into his crib, fiddled with a white noise machine, and then tiptoed out of the room. Her eyes were all for Beckett fast asleep in the crib. I’d never seen Katherine look at anyone like she did her children.
She slowly pushed the door closed. “You,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. Then, she pulled me into a hug. “What are you doing in my city?”
“Surprise!”
“You know I hate surprises.”
“To be fair, English was going to surprise you tonight when we went out.”
Katherine wrinkled her little nose. She was the most gorgeous person I’d ever known. If I hadn’t known that I was bi before I met her, then she surely would have made me realize it. Long, dark hair and endlessly dark eyes with pale skin and forever red lips. Despite her features, she was more Evil Queen than Snow White.