Total pages in book: 190
Estimated words: 181992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 181992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
“Look, Dane doesn’t have a healthy respect for all laws, but can we say the same about his daughters? Your mom gets that I’m never going to turn to the cops for shit. She accepts it. She accepts that there are things I won’t tell her—whether it relates to my businesses, my contacts, or how I make a problem go away. You don’t know Addison well enough to be sure she can do the same for you. You don’t know you can trust that she won’t betray you.”
Actually, yes, Dax did. He knew better than to think I would ever do something as—
“Time will tell, won’t it?” said Dax.
The comment was a slap. Okay, I got that he didn’t trust easily. I wasn’t expecting him to have total faith in me—especially after all Brooks had told me. But I would have thought that Dax would know I was far too loyal to fuck him over in such a way.
It stung, but I hurt for him as well. Life had taught him to expect betrayal and condemnation. And that was exactly what he did.
I crept past the kitchen, retrieved my phone from my car, and then returned to my office.
It must have been about half an hour later that Dax came striding into the room. Lounging in my armchair, I looked up from the book I was reading.
His hands in the pockets of his slacks, he arched a brow. “You ready to eat yet?”
“Whenever you are,” I replied, injecting a breezy note into my voice as I strived to hide the hurt I still felt. “I’ll go with meatloaf and the usual trimmings I like.”
His mismatched eyes drank in my face, narrowing slightly. “Are you all right?”
Ugh, there was rarely any fooling him. “Yup,” I lied. “Your dad left, I take it?”
Dax nodded. “Just now.” He paused. “I made it clear that he needs to stop acting so distant toward you. He assured me that he would. I believe he meant it.”
“Time will tell, won’t it?” Shit, I shouldn’t have said that. In doing so, I’d pretty much announced that I’d eavesdropped on his conversation.
He went motionless, his eyelids dropping even lower as realization dawned on him. “Addison—”
“I’m not mad,” I assured him. “Offended, maybe, because I’m a loyal person—no one whose loyal likes to be seen as anything else. I get that you don’t know me well enough to trust me. I get that it’ll take time for you to realize that you can. But in the meantime, I ask that you try not to expect the worst from me.” Fuck my voice for cracking just a little.
He stared at me, his tongue poking into the inside of his mouth. “It isn’t really anything personal.”
I heaved a sigh. “I know.” But it stung nonetheless. I cleared my throat. “I’m going to finish this chapter while you order dinner. I should be done before it gets here.” Hint, hint—leave. There was nowhere for the conversation to go.
His chin dropped slightly for the briefest moment. “All right.” He walked toward the door but then stopped and looked over his shoulder. “I know you’re a loyal person, Addison. But you’re married to someone who has a different moral compass than you. Mine isn’t weak, but it follows another set of rules. Right now, you think you can live with that. And maybe you can. But maybe you can’t. It isn’t that I expect the worst from you. It’s that I don’t know if you can deal with the worst parts of me.” He then breezed out of the room.
∞∞∞
Unhooking a tiny outfit from a metal bar a few days later, Sabrina cooed, “This has got to be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
It was in fact super cute. I’d noticed it before we entered—it was featured in one of the window displays. If I didn’t already have three bags of stuff from other stores, I might have bought it.
Harri cast her a swift glance. “That’s about the twelfth time you’ve said that.”
Sabrina lifted her shoulders. “Everything here is just adorable.”
Very true. The popular boutique sold children’s clothes of all sizes. Some items hung on racks while others were folded and piled on either shelves or tables. Little mannequins stood on rises sporting colorful outfits.
The store was bright, courtesy of the large glass-front windows and the florescent lighting. Elevators and stairways led to higher levels. Salespeople wearing headsets walked around, talking with customers and fixing displays.
The scents of new clothing, floor wax, and air freshener were strong in the air. Cheery music played low. The mishmash of voices echoed throughout the space. Babies babbled or cried in their strollers.
“There’s no point in buying newborn-sized stuff, Alicia,” Marleigh advised as my sister fingered a multipack of tiny sleepsuits. “Babies grow so fast they’ll hardly get any wear out of small outfits.”