Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75457 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75457 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
She sighs. “I can’t say I’m surprised by that.”
“Me either,” I admit. “Working with him for a year won’t be easy.”
She picks up her fork to push the salad greens around the container yet again. “You’re determined to claim half of Carden, aren’t you?”
I answer without any hesitation. “Damn right I am.”
She drops the handle of the fork. “I don’t remember you being all that happy when you worked there before you left New York.”
The first thing that strikes me in that statement is that she didn’t accuse me of running away. That’s progress, but now is not the time to address that.
Instead, I slide my empty take-out container to the side. “I admit I didn’t love the job, but this is different, Sin.”
“How is it different?”
“My grandmother wanted this for me,” I say simply. “If she hadn’t, she would have left the company to Holden.”
Sin tilts her head. “Would that have been so bad?”
I shrug a shoulder. “It would have been life, but it’s not reality. She did request that I work with the bastard for a year, so I’ll put in the time.”
“And then what?”
That question catches me off-guard. I haven’t thought that far ahead.
Apparently, I take too long to answer because Sinclair follows that up with another question. “What have you been doing for work since you left New York?”
I cock a brow. “What do you think?”
That was my standard comeback when we were kids, and she asked a question I didn’t want to answer.
A smile edges the corners of her lips up. “Grow up. I’m serious. I know you. You left here with a bulging bank account, but you can’t sit still. You must have been doing something to fill in your time.”
She does know me. In some ways, she probably knows me better than I know myself.
“I wasn’t ghostwriting memoirs,” I joke.
A breathy sigh escapes her. “You were avoiding your life here just like you’re avoiding the question.”
Ouch. That hit the bull’s eye that is my heart.
She glides to her feet. “I’m going to start clearing out the boxes from the closet in my room. We can sort through them whenever you’re ready.”
“I’ll be right in,” I say roughly. “Give me a few minutes to shower.”
She doesn’t respond. Instead, she walks away with her dog on her heel.
Thirty minutes later, I stand in the doorway of the guestroom that Sinclair is temporarily calling home.
She’s on a call.
It’s none of my fucking business, yet I haven’t turned and walked away to grant her the privacy she deserves.
A good man would do that, but my grip on that concept has been fleeting at best.
Some would think that time spent alone traveling the world would help a guy in his mid-twenties ‘find himself.’ My globetrotting did fuck all for me in that regard. I had a purpose during that time, but I felt lost until fate brought me back to this city, this woman, and this life that I thought I’d left behind forever.
“Saturday night still works great for me,” she says softly to whoever is on the other end of that call. “Let’s plan on meeting at Durie’s for a drink at six. We can decide where to have dinner then.”
Fuck.
More fucking plans, but this time they obviously involve a dick with a dick.
Goddamn it.
I clear my throat because I want the call to end before she changes her mind and leapfrogs over the drinks, dinner, and dessert to go to his place.
Her gaze flits across my face, down the front of my T-shirt and over my jeans. “I’m afraid I have to go.”
She nods as she listens. A smile tugs at her lips when she starts talking again. “Thank you. I’m looking forward to Saturday night too.”
I’m not.
I tread across the hardwood to where she’s sitting near the closet. A few cardboard boxes surround her. Each is labeled in ink with the name of a room.
Kitchen.
Main bedroom.
Guestroom.
None of it is written in my grandmother’s perfect cursive handwriting. The labels on these boxes are inked in blue in plain bold lettering. It lacks the grace that was always there when Denia took pen to paper.
In third grade, I tried to convince her to rewrite my short essay in her handwriting because I thought I could impress my substitute teacher. My grandma saw through it all and marched me to school the next day to confess my sins.
The teacher thought it was charming. Denia might have as well, but she never failed to remind me of the lengths I was willing to go to in order to impress that substitute. I wanted a gold star, but all I got was a dose of humiliation.
“Are you ready to get started?” Sinclair pats the top of one of the boxes. “I thought we could carry them out to the main living area and go through them there.”