Total pages in book: 211
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
I dash forward and I place myself in front of Eric, planting my hands on his chest. “We need to talk before you say another word to anyone.”
His eyes narrow and glint hard. “Why?”
Why is easy to me, but I can’t say any of my reasons in front of an audience. Because he blames his father for killing his mother and now for my attack. Because I think he’s secretly wanted to end that man for his entire life. He hates his father far too much for me to let him make any decisions tonight, when all those old wounds have been cut open to bleed anew.
For now, I need a reason to get him into another room alone and I make a fast decision that now is the time to put it all on the line. Now is the time for me to stop holding back and I act on that decision before I can back out. “Because I need to tell you something. I need to talk to you.”
He studies me for several long beats, his expression unreadable, before he takes my hands and starts walking across the room without speaking a word to any of the men in the room. His strides are long, calculated and rapid enough to have my short legs struggling to keep up. Once we’re on the stairs, he places me in front of him and I hurry forward, hyperaware of him at my back. Hyperaware of the box I just shoved myself inside, and how easily a box can be cut open and destroy me with him.
We travel up a winding set of stairs and when we reach the top level it’s a few steps until we enter a pair of open double doors. I have about ten seconds to take in a massive gray leather bedframe on a pedestal, his bed, that I should have been introduced to in a far different way than I am now.
I rotate and he shuts the doors.
Another ten seconds before Eric has placed me against a wide wooden bedpost and steps in front of me, his powerful thighs caging mine, his palms flattening on the door on either side of me. “I’m listening.”
He’s listening.
And now I need to talk.
Now I need to tell him what I brought him up here to tell him.
Officially, my time is up.
Chapter fifty-seven
Harper
My heart races, no it’s more of a gallop that wants to punch through my chest.
Eric is staring at me expectantly, anger ticking in his jaw, and I know why. Not because I interrupted his meeting, not because I wanted to talk. It’s because I lured him up here with a confession and now, he thinks I have been hiding things from him when I have not.
So I just stare at him, a doe in headlights.
He’s beautiful. He’s gifted. He’s damaged in ways that I wasn’t equipped to understand six years ago. In ways that I can never fully understand, and the truth is some of the darkness in him, is brutally sexy to me. It’s also terrifying with his talk of ending his father.
“Talk to me, Harper,” he urges, his voice low, almost gentle, but tension radiates off of him, almost as if it pings off the walls and slams right back into him.
I press my hand to the solid wall of his chest and his heart thunders under my touch. Because of my touch? Because of what he’s about to do to end his father? “Whatever you were about to tell Walker Security to do down there, please don’t.”
He offers no denial. His hand comes down on top of mine. “Why would you protect my father?”
There’s an accusation in that question that pisses me off, even though I know I brought it on with the promise of some revelation. But I thought we were past him believing it was something that somehow linked me to his family, and pitted me against him. “Are you really serious right now? I’m not protecting your father,” I say. “I’m protecting you.”
“Me? How are you protecting me, Harper?”
“There are some things you can’t come back from.”
“What do you think I’m about to do?”
“Tell me. What are you about to do?”
“Whatever it fucking takes to get that man out of our lives once and for all.”
“Kill him?” I challenge. “Would you kill him?”
“Kill or be killed, sweetheart.” He is cold, hard, decisive. He’s made up his mind. He has a plan and it’s a plan I have to change.
“No,” I hiss, bunching his shirt in my free hand. “No, you will not.”
“You don’t want him to die.”
Again with his damn accusations. “I don’t want you to die. Do you really think you could live with killing your father?”
“Live with it? I’d sleep like a baby if that man was gone. What don’t I know again, Harper? What did you bring me up here to confess?”