Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 130414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
“I’ve had a job.”
“Operating the kiss cam for your college basketball team doesn’t count. Especially since you were fired.”
“Unjustly.”
“You turned the kiss cam into a baby cam.”
“Your point?” She set the remote down and rounded the desk to my side, standing before me. “The news said there’s a bill to repeal the ban on crib bumpers. They increase the risk of SIDS.”
What was with her and SIDS? Already, I’d found dozens of charges on her credit card to more SIDS charities than I knew existed.
“I cannot risk any weaknesses for Bruce and Senior to pick apart.” I forwarded a document for proofing, moving on to an email from a financial analyst. “This includes breaking a long-standing company policy.”
“Rom.”
“My answer won’t change.”
She hesitated a moment, edging back before inching closer. Her eyes fluttered shut. Slowly—so, so slowly—she sank to her knees. For a moment, she didn’t breathe. Neither did I.
Finally, her eyes popped open. She rested a white-knuckled fist on each knee, staring so deep into me I wondered if she saw a soul. “I am literally begging you, Romeo.”
“And I am literally answering your request in the most pragmatic, logical wa—”
“Fuck your pragmatism!” Her breaths escaped in heavy, erratic jerks, her eyes breathing fire into the room, hiking up the temperature. “Have you ever wondered why I care so much?”
I did. All the time. But I said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
“When I was six, Frankie and I finally got our wish. A sibling. A sister. A beautiful baby girl. Momma let us name her. Victoria.” Her throat bobbed. She was looking at me but not really.
I turned rigid in my seat. For the first time in ages, panic wrapped around me, lacing through my bones with startling familiarity. Shit.
“She was lovely. So sweet and chubby-cheeked and happy. Healthy. She was healthy, Rom.” Still on her knees, Dallas pinched her delicate brows together, as she collected the memory between trembling fingers, weaving together her past. “I remember the day I found her. A Sunday. I woke up extra early to pick matching dresses for church. Victoria—Tory—was only four months old.”
She paused, running a hand down her shirt as if she could soothe away the pain. “I found her blue and stiff. She still looked asleep. Angelic and comfy. Just … blue.”
Her sister died of SIDS. It made sense now. Her fascination with the subject. Her tunnel focus on infants. The first death she’d ever witnessed—a tragedy of magnificent proportions—carved a different person out of her.
And she begged me to help fight this demon.
But I had my own ghosts to slay.
“Romeo.” She perched her hands in my lap, gazing at me with defiance, with pain, with rawness—but, I noticed, not with tears. “Please. Help me do this for Victoria. She passed away, but her legacy can still live on.”
It killed me to do this to her. To deny her something so profound and important. So uniquely Shortbread.
I fingered her jawline, tilting her chin up, pushing through the lodge in my throat. “You may donate another wing to whatever children’s hospital you’d like. Money’s no issue. But forming a lobbyist group is out of the question.”
Dallas rose slowly, inch by inch. I held my breath.
“You’re a coward.” She spoke with a voice void of emotions, her expression blank. “Luckily, you’re my coward. I know your weakness now, Romeo. And I fully intend on using it.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Romeo
Days after Dallas detonated a truth bomb in my study, she shimmied into one of her many Chanel gowns, shackled on expensive jewelry, and swiped her favorite red lipstick across her pouty lips.
Shortbread flipped me the bird as she passed a security camera on her way out and slipped into the back of Jared’s Maybach, going out for the day.
From my corner office in Costa Industries, I dialed Alan, the trained martial artist I’d hired to tail her. “My wife left the house. See to it that she is safe.” I wondered if the lie sounded more convincing to him than to me. “Don’t forget to text me where she is and whom she is with at all times.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is Jared taking her now?”
“Looks like she’s headed toward your office, sir.”
My treacherous, good-for-nothing heart thumped out of whack in its bony cage. I sized up the picture of Shortbread I kept on my desk for appearances’ sake. Did you somehow discover I secretly manipulated the sudden congressional support for your crib bumper ban? Are you on your way to thank me with a sexy number under your dress?
Dumping my engraved pen over my documents, I reclined against my backrest, laced my fingers together, and tapped them against my lips. I supposed enough time had passed since my last lapse to grant me another taste of her.
The ease in which I snatched the remote to the glass shade and rolled the curtain all the way down in advance should have clued me in to my increasingly poor judgment regarding Dallas. Unfortunately, my brain didn’t take the hint.