Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 78323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Although, as he made his way down the stone steps and opened the passenger door of my SUV, he flashed a genuine smile, and I wanted to believe the lie too. Just for today, I told myself.
It was a manufactured whirlwind romance, so why did I struggled to find the deception?
“Hi,” he said as he climbed into the passenger seat. “You look nice.”
Perplexed, I glanced down at my basic top and pair of jeans. I’d put on makeup, but nothing special. I simply looked like me. “Hey. Thanks.”
He buckled his seatbelt. “Where are we going?”
“The old mall that closed down. They have a big, empty parking lot you can practice in.”
He nodded his approval, and then we were off.
Royce was quiet for the first few minutes. An angsty love song crooned from my car speakers and I thought about changing it, but he didn’t seem to mind. He stared out the window and watched Cape Hill speed by.
“Where did you leave it with Alice?” he asked finally.
“She’s told me about almost everyone on the board, so I think I’m in good shape? I don’t know. It’s weird. Sometimes it feels like she’s purposefully keeping me in the dark.”
He didn’t turn to look at me, so I couldn’t see his expression, but he kept his voice even. “Maybe she’s trying to protect you.”
Well, that was cryptic. “Protect me from what?”
“I don’t know. I’m not on the board yet. It’s not official until my initiation is done.” His words died off at the end. This was something he wasn’t supposed to say, or I wasn’t supposed to know.
“Initiation?” I struggled not to roll my eyes. “Is there a secret handshake and decoder rings too?” I wanted to study him closer, but I needed to keep my attention on the road.
He’d probably been aiming for a casual tone, but it came out forced. “Forget I said anything.”
“Okay.” The silence between us dragged, and I felt compelled to fill it. “So, the only person she hasn’t talked about is your father.”
The mood in the car plummeted further. “What do you want to know?”
I shrugged. “Anything, I guess. I’m going to be honest—he scares the hell out of me.”
Royce was quiet.
The tension got to me. “So, do you like Alice?”
“I do.” He sounded sincere.
“How’d she get together with your dad? I mean, he’s her boss.”
He relaxed on a breath. “She’s like him in a lot of ways. When she wants something, there’s no stopping her. That woman is relentless. For example, you say he scares you? Lots of people are terrified of him, but not Alice. She’d been working at the company a week when she walked into my father’s office and told him he needed to get rid of his brand manager. She asked him to fire her boss and showed him all the reasons why.” Royce fiddled with an air vent before continuing. “That took guts. He respects her.”
Macalister’s marriage wasn’t about love but finding a partner he respected. They made it work. Did he assume the same would happen for his son and me?
The conversation lulled for a moment before Royce added, “When they first got married, they used to fuck like rabbits.”
What? Was he trying to deflect?
“Lovely,” I gritted out. Macalister was handsome and powerful, but I couldn’t imagine wanting to sleep with him.
“It drove Vance and me nuts, but it kept him occupied and off our backs.”
I hesitated. “He always seemed pretty involved in your lives.”
“Ever since my mom died, yeah.”
The Hale estate used to have working stables because Elizabeth Hale loved horses. She’d been riding one when it spooked and threw her off. She hadn’t been wearing a helmet, and when she fell, her head slammed into a stump.
She hadn’t died right away. It’d been three agonizing days for the Hale family as she deteriorated in the hospital before she was gone. I’d been six when it happened and barely remembered her, but she’d been nice and pretty, and Macalister hadn’t seemed so scary back then.
Maybe when she died, all he felt he had left were his sons and his legacy.
After several laps in the parking lot, Royce said he felt confident enough to try driving on some back roads. I agreed. He’d been surprisingly easy to teach. I would have thought he’d shrug off my instructions, not just because he was older and a man, but because he’d acted most of his life like he was better than everyone else.
My assumptions about him were wrong. He really had been acting, putting on fake bravado so he wouldn’t appear weak in his father’s eyes. Today he listened thoughtfully and took directions, and had no problem asking questions. There didn’t seem to be any worry that he might look stupid or make mistakes and I would judge him.
Behind the vacant department store on one end of the mall, the parking lot let out into a neighborhood, and beyond that, away from civilization. The heavily wooded sections of the curvy road were broken up occasionally by farmland, but otherwise the trees, flush with the first leaves of summer, closed in around us.