Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77335 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77335 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
CHAPTER 13
LUCIAN
“Are you fucking with me?” I asked as I rubbed my temple.
“No, sir,” responded Reid over the phone. “I’ve reconsidered our previous conversation and believe I’m better served overseeing the security detail while still investigating any future threats.”
Yanking on my tie knot, I pulled it over my head before working the buttons of my shirt. “Fine. I’m paying you to make these decisions. Besides, soon it won’t be either of our concern.”
“What does that mean, sir?”
My office door swung open, and Mary Astrid strolled in with my very flustered secretary following in her wake.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Manwarring. She stormed past me.”
I waved the secretary off. Turning to my desk, I said, “I have to go, Reid. Just handle it.” I then hit the speaker button, disconnecting the call.
Mary smirked as she sauntered toward me.
Placing her frigid hands on my chest, she deliberately ran her red claws down my skin. “Just like I remember all those years ago.”
Instead of just stepping back, I held my ground as I latched my hands around her wrists and pulled her off me. “That night is long in the past. I’ve told you never to come here.”
I’d made it a point to never regret anything I’d done in my life.
Regret was a waste of time.
Decisions were made with the best information in that moment. I was too busy running an empire to muck about second-guessing them. Regardless of how things unfolded.
The one exception to that rule was Mary Astrid.
One drunk, grief-laden night. I played it off as a crap fuck, one of many over the years, but the truth was that Mary was the first and the only woman I’d been with since my wife’s death.
I’d tried to move on several times but just didn’t.
It was easier to focus on materialistic things that I could rely on, like money.
Damn, I missed Fiona. Why did she have to die so young?
The stab of pain may have dimmed over the decades, but the anger at her loss hadn’t.
“Don’t be so nasty, Lucian. I’m here to help you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen your version of help, and I’m not interested. If my son learns you’re in the building, he’ll have you thrown out on your ass.”
She adjusted the diamond bracelets on her wrists. “You’d throw out a baroness?”
Crossing behind my desk, I tossed on the fresh shirt I had laid across my chair as I prepared to leave for my polo match upstate. “So you’ve taken to giving yourself senseless titles now?”
With her son and daughter publicly shunning her for her manipulative actions in their life that almost cost Harrison his wife, our peers were starting to smell blood in the water.
The powerful combined fortunes and influence of the Manwarring, Astrid, and DuBois families had so far kept them at bay, and we’d avoided an unseemly scandal, but that didn’t mean it was going unnoticed.
She examined her polished nails. “Not me, darling. Baroness Ophelia Zeigler. She’s waiting for me just outside your office.”
Instead of meeting her gaze, I moved to the hidden panel which opened to reveal an executive bathroom. There, I unlatched my watch and set it aside as I kicked out of my stiff, Italian leather shoes. “And why is that?”
“I’d heard you’ve started making inquiries for a suitable match for Charlotte.”
Damn the woman.
Apparently, she wasn’t ostracized quite as much as I’d assumed. She was like a radioactive cockroach.
Slipping my belt off as I stepped into a change of shoes, I said, “And?”
She lifted one shoulder. “The baroness and I are great friends, and I happen to know she’s ready to arrange a similar match for her son, Romney Horace. I thought I could make up for that silly misunderstand with your daughter by helping arrange a match between the two.”
Silly misunderstanding. What a quaint term for being the villainess behind a revenge kidnapping.
I grimaced. And who the fuck named their son, Romney Horace?
The damn British.
She leaned against the door jamb to the bathroom and continued, “He’ll inherit his father’s title one day, making him a baron.”
“A bankrupt baron,” I quipped.
She waved her hand, making her diamonds rattle, which I was certain was the point. “Posh, that’s just a matter of money. What do people like us care about money?”
We all cared a great deal, and she knew that, but I caught her point.
“Charlotte would be a Baroness,” I mused.
Mary stepped forward and put her hands back on my chest. “Exactly, darling.”
CHAPTER 14
CHARLOTTE
I’d been summoned to my father’s office.
Fear and humiliation added to my already foul mood.
Was it possible he had learned about what happened between Reid and me last night?
Could Reid have told him?
No. Reid might be mad as hell at me, as I was with him, but he wouldn’t betray my confidence by tattling to my father about our indiscretion.
Still, my father was a god in my world. The sun which the entire Manwarring family universe revolved around. And as a god, he seemed all-knowing at times.