Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“I came here tonight,” I say.
She narrows her eyes on me, as if some part of her senses the far-reaching implications of my reply that she can’t possibly understand, and yet still, the inescapable heat between us radiates and burns. “You’re still touching me,” she points out, and this time there’s a hint of reprimand.
“I’m holding on to that good luck,” I say.
“It feels like you’re holding on to mine.”
With that observation that hits too close to the truth, which I have no interest in revealing just yet, I drag my hand slowly down hers, allowing my fingers to find hers before they fall away. Her lips—lush, tempting, impossibly perfect for someone I know to be imperfect—part with the loss of my touch, and yet there is a hint of relief in her eyes that tells me she both wants me and fears me.
A most provocative moment, indeed.
“Have a drink with me,” I say.
“No,” she replies, her tone absolute, and while I don’t like this decision, I appreciate a person who’s decisive.
“Why?”
“Good luck and bad luck don’t mix.”
“They might just create good luck.”
“Or bad,” she says. “I’m not in a place where I can take the risk for more bad luck.” She inclines her chin. “Enjoy the rest of your visit.” She pauses and adds, “Tiger.”
I don’t react, but for just a moment, I consider the way she used my nickname as an indicator that she knows who I am, and why I’m here. I quickly dismiss that idea. I’d have seen it in those pale green eyes, and I did not. But as she turns and walks away and I watch her depart, tracking her steps as she disappears down the path, I wonder at her quick departure and the fear I’d seen in her eyes. Was the root of that fear her guilt?
That idea should be enough to ice the fire in me that this woman has stirred, but it stokes it instead. Everything male in me wants to pursue her again, and not because I’m here for a reason that existed before I ever met her, when it should be that and nothing more. It is more. I’m aroused and I’m intrigued by this woman. She got to me when no one gets to me. Not a good place to be, considering I came here to prove she killed my father, and maybe even her own mother.
Chapter Two
Faith
I stand at the library window on the second level of the mansion that I’ve called my family home, but not my home, my entire life. Nick Rogers exits the front door, pure sex and arrogance. He stops to talk to the doorman, both men laughing, before Nick palms the other man a tip and then rounds his shiny black BMW that I’m fairly certain is custom designed. He begins to get in but hesitates, scanning the grounds immediately around him, and then, to my complete and utter shock, his gaze lifts and lands on my window. Stunned, my heart begins to race all over again, the way it had when he’d touched me in that garden, but it’s impossible for him to see me. I know it is, but somehow, there is no question that he knows I am here. He holds his stare in my direction for several beats, in which I cannot breathe, and then lifts two fingers, giving me a wave before he disappears into his car. Moments later, he drives away, and I let out the breath I’m holding. Hugging myself, I am both hot and cold, aroused and unsettled, exactly as I had been when I was with him in the garden. Every look and word I exchanged with that man was both sexual and adversarial.
Rotating, I sit on the window seat of the grand library that was once my father’s, bookshelves filled with decades of books lining the walls left and right, all with answers to questions that we might not even ever ask. Which is why I read incessantly and why I wish I knew which one to open for the right answers to why Nick Rogers felt so right and wrong at the same time, and why so many other things are wrong in ways I’m not sure I can make right. But that would be too simple, and I am suddenly reminded of a poem I wrote long ago in school that started out with: The apples fall from the trees. The wind blows in the trees. I’d proudly handed it into the teacher and quickly found myself scolded for my display of simplistic writing. I didn’t understand. What was wrong with being simplistic? The words and the concepts fit together. That is what mattered. That was what was important to me. The way the pieces fit. The way it made sense. It seemed so simple to me, when in truth, little in life is simple at all. And that’s exactly why I keep that poem pinned on my bedroom wall. To remind me that nothing is simple.