Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
7
HERE BE DRAGONS
Danny frowned, parted his lips, then looked into her eyes. “Okay, you get the bed.” A gentleness to his tone that made her cheeks flush, but he carried on before she could get uncomfortable. “I’ll see if I can find an air mattress small enough to smuggle in a suitcase. Most of the fancy hotel couches are insanely tiny.”
Fighting off her hot cheeks and the urge to be annoyed with him for getting it—getting her, she said, “Or you can be a diva and ask for a custom ‘rugby player suitable’ couch.”
“Will work on my soprano.”
Heart dangerously softer toward her childhood nemesis—a nemesis she was starting to see had grown into the best of men—she looked at her list. “We have to have an end date.” For both their sakes. “Six months?”
He shrugged. “Sounds okay. That’s like a real relationship that just happened not to work out. And after, we can still do our usual social stuff so people don’t think we’re enemies.”
“Except we are.”
“Exactly.”
Laughing, happy, content in this moment, she said, “What else?”
“You don’t look at me with dagger eyes everywhere we go.”
“No one will believe it.”
“In fact, I want goo-goo love eyes.”
Catie would’ve thrown a cushion at him, but she liked the one she was sitting against. “Shall we tell the family now, before we do anything else?”
“Yeah, might as well bite that bullet.”
They decided to do it on a visual conference call, complete with the Dragon. Who said, “A wise business decision for both your brands.”
Catie had never before seen her mother’s business brain as an emotional asset.
The rest of the family laughed and took bets on how long Catie and Danny could keep it up.
The longest bet came from Charlotte, who said, “They’ll go all the way.” The hazel of her eyes sparkled behind the clear lenses of her spectacles.
Everyone else told Gabriel’s gentle, strong wife that she was going to lose all her money.
“O ye of little faith,” Danny said. “Catie and Charlie and I are going to take all your money. Put it on the line if you’re so confident.”
They all did except for Jacqueline, who just raised a single eyebrow. “Caitlin is my child. She will ensure Daniel follows through.”
Ducking out of camera angle by pretending to reach for something, Danny mouthed a dragonish roar.
Catie gave him a smug smile.
Charlotte, meanwhile, was laughing, Gabriel’s deep voice tangling with the sound as he tried—and failed—to convince her that she was throwing away her money. Charlie might be the quietest member of the extended family, but she knew how to hold her own—especially with her big, brash husband.
“So you’ll all back the story in public?” Danny asked after returning into the shot.
“Of course” was the response from so many throats that Catie couldn’t separate them out.
Not that the backup had ever been in question. The family might razz them in private, but in public they’d be an impenetrable wall. It was only after they’d hung up that Danny said, “You didn’t add your dad to the call.” His gaze was gentle.
Irritated, she shoved off the blanket and swung her legs to the floor. “Clive would sell the story to the highest bidder.”
“Hey.” Danny reached out to grip her arm, his hold warm and loose enough for her to break at will. “I wasn’t poking at you. I thought I heard that, you know, he’d gotten a bit better. Not the money stuff obviously, but the rest.”
Catie shrugged off his hand, but she couldn’t keep up her anger. Because it wasn’t about Danny. Dropping her head, she shoved her hands through her hair. “He’s older, not wiser, Danny.”
Catie would never trust Clive—and that hurt her heart. But she had enough of Jacqueline in her to understand that emotion couldn’t reign supreme—not when it came to something this important. She’d always love her father, but trust was out of the question.
“The whole leopards don’t change their spots thing?” she said, staring at the wall rather than at Danny. “That’s Clive in a nutshell.” She wished she was wrong, that her father was a better man, but she wasn’t and he wasn’t. “I stopped expecting more from him a long time ago.”
She got up. “I need to move.” And she didn’t need to see compassion in Danny’s eyes. He’d never get it, not when he’d been raised in the most stable family situation Catie had ever seen. His older brothers though, Gabriel and Sailor, they got it.
That wasn’t just supposition. A year after Sailor married Ísa, he’d found Catie crying after Clive pulled some stunt Catie could no longer remember. Her brother-in-law had hugged her with those big strong arms, rocking her like she was a little girl; then he’d told her about the deadbeat who’d been his mother’s first husband, a man who’d walked out on his family after cleaning out their accounts.