Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77335 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77335 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“You want to reconsider how you’re talking to me, princess?”
“You tell me you love me, but then you don’t tell me anything about yourself. I prepared myself to give up everything for you. I was looking forward to a simple lifestyle. I actually Googled how to clip coupons last night. I don’t understand what’s happening.”
Her hands went to her forehead as she swayed on her feet.
I swept her up into my arms and gently placed her back in bed.
She didn’t fight me as I covered her legs with the blanket.
“I didn’t tell you anything before because you didn’t ask, and it was none of your business before. I was going to tell you before you ran from my apartment so fucking fast the other morning. I didn’t think you gave a shit.”
“I was trying to figure out how to tell my father I wasn’t going to marry Zeigler. I was working up the nerve to stand up for myself, and I didn’t want to tell you in case I chickened out.” She was just shy of screaming at me. Then her voice broke into a sob. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me.”
“Then ask me now.” I crossed my arms over my chest and sat back in the chair next to her bed. “Ask me what you want to know.”
“If you’re so wealthy, why do you live in a tiny apartment?” she asked again, hung up on that little apartment.
“Because I don’t need much. Until recently, I never really even thought about staying in one place long-term. I have a few apartments in different countries about the same size, and I’m hardly ever in any of them.”
“Why?”
“Be more specific.” I sat back, not letting her off the hook. She knew what she wanted, and she could ask.
“If you’re as wealthy as you say you are, why do you work?”
“Because I hate feeling useless. I need something to do to occupy my time, and I fucking hate golf,” I answered honestly and shrugged my shoulders. It was the truth. I needed a sense of accomplishment, and golf was a fucking waste of time.
“There are other jobs you could have taken that don’t put your life at risk.”
“But that’s the fun part,” I said, giving her a rueful smile. “Sitting at a desk shuffling papers and playing Monopoly with other people’s lives doesn’t make me feel accomplished. It makes me feel like a giant asshole who spent too much money on a suit that was probably made by children, being paid pennies just so another rich asshole can pocket the profit.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand, princess? Tell me and I will answer any questions for you.”
“How do you have so much money? Did you topple a small country?”
She was trying to be funny, but in my years serving the Marines, I’d actually toppled several countries. But that wasn’t what she was asking, and I was not about to volunteer that information.
“It’s family money.”
“Family money? Are you a secret Rockefeller?”
“No, I’m a Taylor, of the Texan Taylors.” I wasn’t surprised when she kept giving me a blank look. So I added just a little more to help her connect the dots. “As in Taylor Oil, Taylor Ranch, Taylor Meat Packing.”
“Your family owns cows?” she asked, her nose scrunching in the most adorable way I had ever seen.
“My brother owns a ranch that has a little over a hundred thousand acres and about fifty thousand head of cattle. My family also owns a meat distribution plant, and we are providers of the finest beef in North America. Although last I talked to him, he was also looking at expanding into Argentina as well as a few other places globally. Apparently, even in New Zealand. He’s convinced he can make mutton have a comeback in North America.”
“Okay…”
“But that’s not what you asked. You asked how I have money. My grandfather had a little over three hundred acres when they struck oil. That made my family very, very wealthy. When he died, he left the ranch to my brother, and I got the oil rights.”
“So you are an oil baron?”
“If this was 1904, I would be called an oil baron. We prefer tycoons now,” I said, mostly joking.
“But I don’t understand. If you’re so wealthy, how come we’ve never met before? You should be running in the same social circles as my father and brother, not working for them.”
“When I was eighteen…” I took a deep breath, knowing that she needed to know this story but hating to tell it. I had never really told anyone this story. In fact, she was the only one, other than Hunter, who knew the truth of where I came from.
Most people assumed I was just some backwater country boy who joined the Marines so I didn’t starve to death. I actually preferred that to be what people thought.