Total pages in book: 224
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
“I missed you, too. Let’s not do that again, okay?”
He takes my hand. “Come with me.” He starts walking and leads me around a corner, into a rather empty walkway, where he pulls me behind another wide concreate post. “We’re going to Paris for Christmas. That was going to be a surprise.”
“I love that. It’s a perfect Christmas destination and surprise.”
“I was going to wait to do this there, but I need to do it now.”
My brow furrows. “Do what?”
He goes down on his knee and pulls out a velvet box. “Will you marry me, Carrie?” He pops the lid on a stunning emerald and diamond ring that has so much sentimental value between us.
“Yes. Yes. And that ring is so, so very special.” I start to tear up as he slips it onto my finger. “I had it custom-made.” He stands up. “I wanted it to be as special as you are to me.” He cups my face. “I want you to be my wife.”
“I want you to be my husband.”
“And then we can live happily ever after,” he says.
“Just us and a cat and dog.”
He laughs. “Yes. Just us and a cat and a dog.” He slides his arm around me and we start walking.
“How about Jig and Saw for names?” I ask. “You know like a jigsaw?”
“No,” he says. “We are not calling them jig and saw.”
“Peanut and butter? Like Peanut Butter.”
He laughs again, and I decide it will be my life’s mission to ensure this man laughs forever.
The end…of part one
PART TWO
Chapter seventy
Carrie
Still in the airport, riding the wave of our newly minted engagement, Reid and I walk hand in hand as we travel to the customs line talking about everything from our new cat and dog, to Paris, and finally my father, because I need to talk about him. I need to clear the air with Reid. I need to share the experience of seeing my father with Reid. The line stalls and I can’t hold it back. “I know we talked about this on messenger on the plane, and I know he’s a bad subject, but the meeting with my father was the strangest thing.”
“Strange how?” he asks, concern furrowing his brow.
“I don’t know if strange is even the word I’d use. More like unbelievable. My father was standing there in that Montana country kitchen with his beautiful younger woman threatening him on my behalf. She was willing to tell me what he wouldn’t. She did tell me.”
“About that,” he says, pulling me in front of him, my back to the person in line in front of us. “What exactly did she tell you, Carrie?”
“That my father did some dirty deals and yours did, too. That ultimately my father was afraid he was about to be exposed and he used you to escape his role in West Enterprises before that happened. It shakes me to the core to hear those things. I didn’t think he was dirty. At all. I had no indication that he was anything but honorable and honest.”
“We all want to believe that our parents live up to the standards they want us to live up to. I knew my father was a bastard,” he says. “But I didn’t know he was capable of the things he did. And I damn sure didn’t think he’d connect my name to those things.”
“I won’t ask what things.”
His jaw sets hard but his eyes hold mine, his stare unwavering. “I’ll tell you. Just not here. Not now. You deserve to know before you marry me.”
I know whatever this is, whatever his father did and put his name on, was bad. Really bad. And yet he’s willing to tell me. My father didn’t admit his sins to me, but he told Stella. His new woman ranked higher than his daughter. That hurts, but I focus on Reid, on the man I love. I push to my toes and kiss him, silently telling him how much his trust means to me. “Whatever it is, it changes nothing between us,“ I assure him and move on before he has time to doubt me. “I just can’t believe, knowing what I know of my father now, of the depth of the war between our families, that you agreed to hand over your stock if you broke the agreement.”
“The war was always between your father and my father. I did what I did, because that war was poison. It needed to end, and I had no reason to ever break that deal I made with your father. I had no reason to break my vow of silence over your father’s exit from the company. Not until I met you.” He pulls me to him, his forehead resting on mine. “Every time you talked about wanting no secrets between us, it gutted me.”