Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 105825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
I shook my head, still in shock. I don’t know! I didn’t do this!
But I could already see the hurt in his eyes turning to anger. He marched to the door, his voice tight with rage. “I’ll make my own way there.”
I started after him but he was already pounding down the stairs. I cursed under my breath.
“Why would granddad do that?” asked Cody.
“I don’t know,” I told him softly. I looked at JD and he shook his head grimly, as mystified as me.
I thanked George and we filed back out to the limo. There was no sign of Miles.
As we drove to the wake, I sat there stewing, slowly shaking my head as the enormity of it all sank in. I was going to be CEO of a billion-dollar company. Me. An engineering nerd who can tell you the exact tensile strength of a two-inch steel cable but who stares at her shoes when she has to talk to a stranger. I couldn’t chair meetings, or negotiate, or close deals with politicians. I had the exact wrong skillset. And for some reason, my dad had frozen out the guy with the right one.
As we pulled up outside the bar, I blurted, “His entire life, Miles has only wanted one thing. My dad was grooming him for this ever since he was a teenager. Oh God, he’s going to hate me.” I felt like the entire world was crumbling under me. I’d just lost my dad and now Miles was gone, too. I looked across at JD and my voice cracked. “What am I going to do?”
He growled low in his throat, like he was warning the universe to back off, and then he grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me to him. His arms folded around my back and I was crushed against the warm contours of his pecs. His hands rubbed slowly up and down my back. It wasn’t sexual, just caring. It felt good but I was still in pieces.
JD ducked his head and put his lips right to my ear. “Now listen,” he told me in a voice like iron. “You’re gonna do this, and you’re gonna do great. You know why? Because you’re smart as hell and you’re too stubborn to quit. Just like me.” I felt him jerk his head towards Cody. “That’s a hell of a kid you raised, over there. That’s the hardest thing in the world and you pulled it off all by yourself. You did that, you can do this.”
Warmth flowered in my chest, a slow-motion explosion. When JD said something, you believed it. It helped that it sounded like he spoke from experience. He’s got a kid, too? I nodded nervously, feeling a little steadier.
He gently pushed me back. I looked up…and went utterly still. He was gazing at me with true respect, with belief. I’ve never in my life seen anyone so certain. “You got this, Lorna,” he told me.
Something lifted inside me. I’d never felt anything like it before: my chest filled and my back straightened. Is this how the soldiers he leads feel? I bobbed my head, overcome.
His expression changed, a little smile touching his lips, like I was cute. No one ever thinks I’m cute. And then—
His eyes flared: all that lust I’d seen at the marina, all that need…it was still there, beneath the caring. He still had a hand on my shoulder and his fingers tapped a piano scale, his arm tensing like he was a hair’s breadth from pulling me to him in a whole different way.
Then he shook his head to himself and let me go.
I nodded quickly, trying to be all briskly efficient. “We’d better get in there,” I said. “The limo will take you to the airport.”
We climbed out and, even though it was raining, JD climbed out, too, to say goodbye. He took Cody’s hand and shook it solemnly. “You take care of your mother, okay?”
Cody nodded hard. “Goodbye, JD.”
“Thank you,” I said. Thank you didn’t cover it, but my voice had gone shaky and I didn’t trust it to say more.
JD nodded.
I took Cody’s hand, opened the door of the bar and walked into my future.
13
JD
I turned to the limo. “Airport, sir?” the driver asked.
I stood there, one hand on the open door, silently thinking.
I never claimed to be the smartest. But if you make it through enough combat tours, you start to develop an instinct. You know when something’s not right.
The police down in Mexico had decided that the attack on Lorna’s family had been the work of a local gang: they’d been intending to kidnap Russ and demand a ransom from the company for his release: Lorna and Cody would just have been additional bargaining chips.
Maybe.
Or maybe they’d been planning to murder Russ and his family and make it look like a kidnapping gone wrong.