Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
The man asks something I don’t hear when a group near us bursts into laughter. The noise draws my attention, and I rotate my chair to glance over when a turquoise gaze collides with mine.
My heart leaps, and I almost spill my drink in my surprise.
Because there, in a half-moon booth at the far end of the restaurant, is Silas Cruz.
The noise stops for a moment, people seeming to freeze mid-sentence as he and I take each other in. His back is to the wall, a group of maybe a dozen men and women, all well dressed, sitting around him. Several bottles of champagne are turned down in their buckets and a waiter is serving what I guess to be espresso martinis to all but Silas, in front of whom the waitress sets what I guess to be a tumbler of whiskey.
I haven’t seen Silas Cruz in over a year. He and his mother moved out of the Fox cottage soon after he graduated college. They went to Atlanta, as far as I knew. I’ve only seen Silas in the news a few times since. I remember Mr. Fox’s surprised and irritated reaction when an investment firm had hired Silas. When he’d received his first promotion just two years later, Mr. Fox had been outright angry.
Actually, the whole of the Fox family was not pleased, to say the least. The company Silas had found work with was run by a man Sly considered an enemy, and Mr. Fox felt it a personal betrayal that Silas, after graduating with a degree that Sly paid for, would do this to him. To all of them.
I kept my mouth shut, but it wasn’t easy. Over the years we were neighbors, it took me a little while to figure out the dynamics between the families. I knew early on that Silas was Sly’s son by Esmerelda. I found it strange even then, when I was just a girl, why the Foxes let Silas and his mom live on their property, why they had Esmerelda working for them, but I overheard bits and pieces of conversation here and there and Ethan’s full version of the story eventually.
It turned out that when Esmerelda had come to work for Mr. Fox when she was barely seventeen, he’d taken an interest in her.
Mr. Fox had been engaged to Mrs. Fox, but he’d had what Ethan called an affair with Esmerelda. I’m not sure I’d call it an affair given the age gap and her being staff, though, and as I’d gotten to know Esmerelda over the years, I knew she’d never have an affair with a man who was engaged to marry another woman.
But in the end, she got pregnant with Silas and, according to Ethan and Mrs. Fox, she blackmailed them into allowing her to stay at the cottage and work for them. It seemed like a strange deal to me, but I knew that Silas was Esmerelda’s priority. She’d do what she needed to do to make sure he had a good start, even if that meant living with and working for a family who hated you.
Silas getting a job with an enemy of the man who fathered him—who never acknowledged him, who treated his mother the way he did—well, I know that was as calculated a move as any Sly Fox would make. Like father, like son, and good for Silas, I’d thought.
Now, though, looking into his eyes across the room, seeing him here in the flesh, it’s got my heart racing and blood pumping in my ears. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that when it comes to Silas Cruz, there is some magnet between us—well, for me at least. I am drawn to him like I’ve never been drawn to any other man.
But when the gorgeous woman on his right leans in to whisper something into his ear before intimately brushing her fingers across his chest, I clear my throat and blink away, bringing my attention to my martini and taking a giant sip.
When I look back up, I find his eyes are still on me, and when she touches his cheek to get his attention, he still doesn’t shift his gaze. His eyes remained locked on me.
Her gaze follows his and lands on me.
Silas raises his glass in a toast from across the room.
I do the same, then take a sip just to have something to do.
The woman, who must be a model by the looks of her, and obviously his date, sneers. I turn back to the bar, and in the mirror, I see Silas’s sea-colored eyes, those eyes I memorized when I was a little girl, track to the man who is somehow obliviously still talking to me.
“Another round?” the man asks and without waiting for my reply, gestures to the bartender who sets new drinks in front of us.