Total pages in book: 224
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
I force myself to walk into the bedroom, only to find Reid gone. I then force myself to finish packing. “I got you a private jet,” Reid says re-entering the room. “It’ll take you wherever you want, whenever you want.”
A few minutes later, he walks me downstairs to a hired car with directions to my father’s ranch in hand but before I climb inside, he pulls me to him. “I love you. Don’t forget that I love you.” He kisses me, a deep passionate, goodbye kiss that brings tears to my eyes, because it ends with him walking away.
I arrive in Montana at midnight on a snowy night, but I don’t care what time it is. I dial my father as I pick up my rental car, and he doesn’t answer. I leave a message. “I’m here. I need to see you.”
I drive to the ranch with snow tires in place, and the directions Reid wrote down for me, but the gates are locked. I’m stuck going to my hotel room, which turns out to be really crappy because it’s a small-town kind of place. I lay down on the hard bed and I want to call Reid, but I don’t think he wants to hear from me. Not until I talk to my father and that guts me. I lay awake replaying our last kiss, and I don’t read the document my brother sent me. I can’t.
Morning comes with my alarm and I’m up and dressed in the appropriate attire of jeans and boots with a coat to beat the December cold by seven. I grab coffee and a donut at the gas station and drive to my father’s place. The gates are open, and I travel a snow-covered dirt path to the mansion of a house where it ends. I park and a ranch hand informs me that my father is out on some sort of morning horse run but he’s happy to let me inside the house.
A few minutes later, I’m in an elegant kitchen with a massive wooden island with my coat on a chair and coffee in hand. Two hours later, I’m getting worried about making my flight when my father walks in, wearing jeans and boots, instead of a fancy suit, with a pretty brunette beside him, dressed the same. “I assume you’re Stella,” I say. “And I don’t mean to be rude, but I have an hour and then I need to be on a plane. I need to speak to my father alone.”
“Of course,” she says, graciously backing out of the room.
“Tell me what really happened with the company and Reid.”
“I’ve told you what happened.”
“I know you were behind Anthony sending me that takeover document. I know you know what it would do to me and Reid. Dad, I love Reid with all of my heart. If you love me, you will tell me what he can’t. Tell me what really happened.”
Stella steps back into the doorway. “She doesn’t know?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Tell her or I will.”
“Leave me with my daughter.”
“He made bad deals and he was going to get caught,” Stella says. “As in dirty deals that could have put him in jail, so he made it look like he’d lost his touch. He had dirt on Reid’s father, things that could put him in jail and Maxwell Senior had tied Reid’s name to those things, but Reid didn’t know.”
“I’ll tell her the rest, Stella,” my father says. “I’ll tell her.” He looks at me. “I didn’t want you to know I wasn’t your hero as you thought I was. I told Reid that if he made it look like a hostile takeover and buried the dirty deals, I’d bury the trouble his father could have gotten him into. My condition for handing him all the data was that you never knew. If he told you, I would get his stock. The dirt I had on his father that was attached to him was bad enough that he agreed. He wanted it over. He wanted the war to end and he didn’t know you. He had no reason to ever feel the temptation to tell you.”
“And then I went to him and changed that.”
“You went to him?” my father asks.
I ignore the question. “What did Reid’s father do?”
“Someone died,” he says. “That’s all I’ll say. I don’t want you to know the details. It was enough to make even Reid Maxwell feel really damn trapped. And I didn’t tell your brother to send that document to you. He knows about Reid’s father and your mother. He hates the Maxwells.”
“Why did you tell him, and not me, about all of this?”
“I wanted you to have something perfect in your world. I wanted you to think I was your hero.”
“And yet, you have treated me horribly over Reid.”