Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 142976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 715(@200wpm)___ 572(@250wpm)___ 477(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 715(@200wpm)___ 572(@250wpm)___ 477(@300wpm)
“The baby…” he began, not sure why he was bringing it up. Not even entirely sure what he wanted to say after those two words.
“Won’t know you, of course,” she inserted smoothly and his lips tightened before he nodded curtly, ignoring the unfamiliar pang in the middle of his chest at that reminder.
“Right, uhm… what I meant to say is, that when the inevitable happens between you and me, Beth won’t simply write off her friendship with you. Especially not if by then, you’re close friends. That’s simply not the type of person she is. And none of us would expect her to do so either. So please, don’t let anything I said the other day, influence how you feel about her, or destroy the friendship you two were starting to build.”
“Don’t do this,” she whispered, her voice throbbing with misery and that pang in Cade’s chest intensified. He took a sip of water, wondering if it was heartburn. It didn’t feel like heartburn, it was too sharp, too acute for that.
“Fern…” He didn’t know what to say beyond that and his voice tapered off as he watched her clearly battling with her emotion.
“Please don’t be kind to me,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken.” I’d prefer if you didn’t do things like this—this dinner, this conversation—it’s not impersonal. In fact, it’s downright friendly even nice… and I thought we weren’t doing friendly. Please, pick a lane and stick with it. Because this…” She flicked a hand toward the room at large, “it confuses the hell out of me.”
She lowered her gaze back to her salad, and Cade found himself utterly stymied by her words, because she was right. He was the one who’d demanded they keep things impersonal between them, yet here he was giving her friendship advice, trying to make her feel more at ease in his family. Actively contradicting himself, while Fern was trying to give him exactly what he’d demanded of her.
And just because he had discovered that what he wanted wasn’t necessarily what he liked or needed, didn’t mean he had the right to play fast and loose with her feelings.
“Get those papers off to Mike Stansfield at the Greenleaf Group before the end of business today, I want it back Monday first thing. Signed and sealed. No more delays,” Cade told Mitchell—his executive assistant—on Friday, four days after his godawful dinner with Fern.
They were at the tail end of an hour-long phone call and Cade was ready to call it a day. He’d been staring at screens for the last two hours without a break and was starting to develop a blinding headache.
He was prone to stress headaches and it generally made him irritable as all hell and if he didn’t get off this phone call soon, Mitch would bear the brunt of his bad mood. Not that the guy wasn’t used to it. But Cade tried not to be too much of an arsehole to the people who worked for and with him. That was more his dad and Nox’s style.
“That all sounds fine,” he told Mitch, after the man had double and triple checked the language of the contract. Cade just wanted to get out of this suit, take a shower, and relax on the patio with a drink. Technically, he was still on vacation but the Greenleaf contract was too important to hand off to anybody else. “Go ahead and send it. My phone will be on. Text me with any emergencies, but consider me off for the rest of the night.”
His assistant’s astonishment was palpable in the silence that followed and Cade grimaced, squeezing his nape tiredly. It wasn’t like him to explicitly state that he was unavailable. He was always available and on call. Ready to deal with whatever cropped up… day or night, twenty-four/seven. Even more so over the last couple of years since Nox had done a runner.
“Right,” Mitch said, his voice slightly raise. “Right. Of course. No problem. I’ll handle anything minor that crops up.”
Cade bloody well hoped so, else what the fuck was he paying the guy for? To be fair, Mitch wasn’t used to Cade not overseeing everything with a magnifying glass and a fine-tooth comb. He had a reputation for being exacting, a perfectionist, and not able to fully trust his team to get the job done to his standards. In that, he did take after his father.
For all intents and purposes Cade was on his honeymoon but none of his team had been at all surprised that he’d been working remotely most days since his so-called wedding.
But with things the way they were with Fern he was restless, out of sorts, unable to concentrate, and now he had this goddamn headache. He needed to switch off for just a few hours and he should be good to go again.