Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 126589 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 633(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 422(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126589 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 633(@200wpm)___ 506(@250wpm)___ 422(@300wpm)
But Gideon now understood that he had met this painfully shy woman when she’d been raw with grief, and he’d been the worst kind of prick to her because his stupid, masculine feelings had been a little bruised by her lack of friendliness. As if he’d been entitled to any friendliness at all. No matter what her reasons, if she’d wanted to be cool toward him, he’d had no right to expect more from her. He’d been a stranger to her.
He was embarrassed by the memory of his staggering arrogance and sense of entitlement. He’d allowed his unfounded resentment to fester and color every other interaction with her since then.
Gideon didn’t like himself much right now and he wouldn’t blame her at all if she never wanted to truly be his friend after the colossal arsehole he’d been to her over the years.
“I’m sorry.”
She looked taken aback by his words and frowned in confusion. “What for?”
“A lot, but specifically for what an arrogant prick I was back when we met. I didn’t know your grandmother had just died.”
“You weren’t rude or anything, you just kind of…ignored me. Which was rather a relief.”
“I ignored you because I thought you were being a deliberate bitch to me.”
“Oh. Well that explains a lot,” she said with a smile. “And, I mean, it wasn’t your imagination or anything. I was being a bitch to you. But I was being equally bitchy to Cam. It’s hard enough for me to be around new people on my best day, but back then I definitely wasn’t in the right frame of mind to meet anyone new. Cat apologized afterward. She’d been so taken with Cam that she hadn’t considered my situation at all. She felt really awful about it. But I could see how much she liked him. He was all she spoke about for months…” She paused and laughed. “Who am I fooling, right? He’s still all she speaks about most of the time.”
“Yeah, Cam was equally love sick. He kept mooning over her and despairing when she wasn’t around. He was devastated when he first realized that she didn’t actually live here. He thought he’d lost his chance with her forever.”
“God, they were dramatic, weren’t they?” Beth recalled with a giggle, and Gideon’s lips lifted at the sound. “Cat once seriously considered faking an actual swoon at my front gate. Like some Victorian maiden, for God’s sake. I don’t know how I managed to stop her; she was so determined to do it. But once she came to her senses she was terrifyingly and patiently methodical about how she was going to get her man.”
“Well, she didn’t have to go to all the trouble, Cam was properly infatuated from day one.”
“They wasted six months dancing around each other, when they both knew what they wanted from the very beginning,” Beth said, shaking her head.
He watched her glossy, down-bent head as she returned her gaze to her brace and began to toy with the Velcro once again.
Chapter Thirteen
Beth wasn’t sure why Gideon was here. She knew why he’d said he was here, but there seemed to be more to this visit than that. She wondered what he wanted from her, what he hoped to achieve from this. She sneaked a glance at him, but he had averted his gaze and was staring at the neglected, empty round pond in the middle of her garden. It was surrounded by a circle of loose cobblestones and wasn’t looking at its finest. In fact, Beth was considering filling it and just paving over it. Or maybe even installing artificial grass.
Her gaze crept over his strong profile. He looked distant, distracted, and she wondered where his thoughts had drifted off to. She’d once thought he was an open book. A selfish, foolish man who lacked ambition and used women for his own purposes. She’d been so wrong about him and she wondered what else she may have been mistaken about.
“Do you ever speak with your family?” she asked, and his head swung toward her, his eyes sharpening as they drilled into hers. “I mean, I know you’re in contact with your sister. But are you close? And do you get along with your brothers?”
“I suppose I’m the black sheep. The one who didn’t do what our father wanted. My brothers and I were close when we were kids, but because they’ve always been eager to please the old man, I guess maybe they think that if they maintain regular contact with me, he wouldn’t like that.”
“So they’re not in contact?”
He shook his head and his eyes darkened with an emotion that looked like regret.
“Nox got engaged about six weeks ago. First I learned about it was from Kenny, who texted me with the news. The next day it was all over my social media feeds. Official and unofficial announcements. Nox, however, hasn’t yet bothered to inform me of this fact in person. I knew he was seeing someone but I didn’t have a clue it was that serious.” There was no mistaking the simmering hurt she saw in the blue-green depths of his gaze and she felt a sting of anger at his brothers for being such colossal dicks toward him.