Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
“That may be for the best,” Brand said.
“It might. But if you feel like reading tonight…perhaps read about the red string of fate.” Amiko smiled faintly. “It’s a story I know quite well.”
“The red string of fate?”
“Ah. Hai. Look it up.” She reached over and patted his arm. “Perhaps it’s just the two of you tugging at each other’s strings, and it doesn’t have to make sense at all. The red string has no understanding of days, hours, minutes, even years. It just is, and it pulls when those holding either end of it are close enough to each other to hear each other’s heartbeats.”
Brand frowned, turning that over. It sounded quite terribly impractical. “Thank you, Miss Ara—Amiko.” He supposed he had a good deal to think about, if nothing else—least of all the oddity of having this conversation with Ashton’s mother, even if it was in veiled terms. “If he returns to the house, would you tell him that I am at the office?”
“Of course.” Amiko’s eyes glittered brightly as she fluttered her fingers at him. “Go. Shoo. You look like the workaholic type.”
“Madame,” Brand said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, “you have no idea.”
ASH RAN UNTIL HIS WAISTCOAT threatened to cut his torso in half; until the slap of the pavement against his feet ached through his dress shoes; until his entire body pinched and he doubled over and struggled to breathe as he hunched on the shoulder of the winding suburban highway in the shade of the overhanging trees.
Fuck. Fuck. What had he thought he was going to do? Run all the way to the inner city in his fucking polished Italian leather shoes?
The bitingly cold air sliced into his lungs. He pressed his hands against his thighs, straightening, and glanced back the way he’d come. At least Brand hadn’t chased him down and dragged him back.
So why, then, did he feel a faint twinge of disappointment?
It didn’t matter. Brand was just going to drag him back to more work. Nothing had changed now that his father was home; nothing at all. Ash was still the completely unprepared CEO of a global megacorporation.
And his father—this figurehead in his life who was half stranger, half everything he loved—was still dying.
They’d just changed the scenery.
Maybe Ash was the one who needed a change of scenery. He fished his phone from his pocket and pulled up the black car service app he’d used before Brand had taken over as his driver, and put in a request for pickup.
Within ten minutes he was settled in the back of a sleek black SUV with blackout windows, leaning against the door and watching the roads slide by, blending from slick suburban blacktop into patched and potholed city streets. The driver said nothing, practically a voiceless automaton, and Ash kept his mouth shut. If he said anything, there would be no tart rejoinders, no gentle mockery.
Who would have thought Ash would miss that?
He had the driver drop him off on the sidewalk at Central Park. Considering he hadn’t picked up anyone watching him as he’d run from the estate, it wasn’t likely Ash had been tailed—and considering his past haunts, wild yacht parties and burning through the gorgeous young men at expensive bars frequented only by the rich, he doubted any nosy paparazzi would even think to look for him here.
Nor did he think anyone would recognize him, making it safe to take his shoes off, tuck his socks into his pockets, and walk barefoot through the grass.
It wasn’t anything he could remember ever doing in his life. As a child he might have played on the lawns at the Harrington estate now and then, but he couldn’t remember. Such things hadn’t been allowed at his Liverpool boarding school, the boys kept tightly in hand. And when he’d come breaking out of Liverpool and into liquor-soaked years at university…
There’d been a certain expectation. Living fast, living hard, glitz and glamour and money spent everywhere. No time for simplicity.
No time for savoring the crunch of autumn leaves beneath his bare soles, and the ticklish feeling of grass poking up between his toes.
Yet as he lingered, looking up at the wan autumnal sun and the pale, watery sky, he wondered if he would ever be able to coax his father to walk through the park like this with him, one day. Just father and son learning how to be father and son in a simple and quiet moment. He didn’t even know if his father would be able to stand again, let alone walk with him, talk with him.
And just like that, the bitter pain in the pit of his stomach was back, chasing him from the park and through the city streets.
He didn’t know how long he wandered. The bustle of continuous pedestrian traffic was a blessing, letting him blend in, get lost, be no one on his way to nowhere.