Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 55093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
5
Emily
I got to about midmorning before thoughts of Jason Storm began to crowd my mind once again. Like I said, I’ve heard his name in the past, even well before daddy had mentioned his business dealings with him, he was on the lips of many of my friends. As a new transplant from back east, his money, not to mention his good looks, had made him a hot topic for months.
Funnily enough, though I had the reputation of a bubble headed socialite, a breed thought to flit from bed to bed with a new man on her arm every other week, I was quite the prude. Not many knew this, except for my closest friends, but I’ve never seen sex as the harmless pastime so many took it for.
Between a flighty mother whose only interest was her next designer shopping spree and a dad who was always hot on the heels of the next best deal, I had a nanny who’d instilled her own values on a young impressionable me. I’d lucked out there, and Estelle was my one true regret of this whole mess. Well except for my dad and his horrible end.
After I’d outgrown my use for a nanny, I’d insisted that Estelle be kept on in some capacity or another and so she’d become the head housekeeper. A position she’d held since my first day of kindergarten until a week ago when I had to tell that wonderful woman that I could no longer afford her services. She’d cried and offered to stay on free of charge until I got myself together, but I couldn’t ask that of her. I’d only just begun to learn how hard the real world is.
I do miss her sorely though, but I held fast to all her little anecdotes and adages that had always kept me one step ahead and above my peers.
So, while most of my girlfriends had been goo-goo eyed over Mr. Storm, I hadn’t given him a second glance. Back then I was well on my way to becoming a cross between my parents. Flighty, in the way I flitted away my days and nights doing nothing but seeking out the next party or social event, but still savvy enough to know the worth of a dollar. This is why I still had a few dollars in my savings, though not enough to keep both my mother and myself in the lifestyle we were accustomed to.
I’d of course appreciated his dark good looks; who wouldn’t? His jet-black hair, which he wore cropped close and those piercing blue-grey eyes that always seemed laser focused on the camera whenever he was snapped. The dimples in his cheeks that were evident even without a smile, and that strong jawline that said he was all man and serious with it, I’m sure had melted many a heart from coast to coast.
My disinterest stemmed more from my personal promise to myself that I would never marry someone like my dad, who was consumed by his business. My dream was to marry a man who worked a nine to five, left work at the door, and was happy to spend time with his wife and kids. Obviously from the write-ups on Storm, he was not that guy. In fact he seemed to be a lot like daddy from what I heard.
Sure I loved my dad, but I wouldn’t want to be married to him. I well remember all the missed recitals and plays, ballgames and pretty much my whole childhood. His idea of parenting was to give me every material thing my heart desired, but his time, which I would’ve gladly traded for, was given to his business.
With that idea firmly planted in my mind, the likes of Jason Storm held no appeal for me, good looks notwithstanding. But now it seems, after closer acquaintance, he has invaded my mind and refuses to leave, though I try at every turn to keep him out. Even my dreams, when I do sleep, are overtaken by him and that snide smirk which seems permanently planted on his smug face.
It hadn’t been that way in the beginning. When I first sought him out, it was to get to the bottom of his thievery. I’d convinced myself that he had swindled daddy out of his company, the company he’d inherited and expanded over the years. The one he’d always boasted to me would be his legacy, a legacy he planned on leaving to his only daughter. I could hear him even now, telling me that I never had to worry a day in my life because my future was already set.
I shied away from such thoughts as well and went back to dwelling on my degradation. Though the furor that had first surrounded him when he moved here had died down somewhat, the name Jason Storm wasn’t new to me but the man himself was. Even though in the last month or so before he died I’d heard daddy mention him a time or two, since I’d never paid too much mind to his business dealings in the past, this time was no different and I’d barely given non- interested murmurs for answers whenever the subject arose.