Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
“Use mine,” I said, reaching for it.
“I want my own phone,” she hissed.
“And I’ll get it for you. But that’s not going to happen right this moment. So use my phone to call your grandfather. Or don’t. I don’t particularly care either way.”
“He is in danger too,” she said, snatching the phone out of my hand, but carefully enough that our fingers didn’t brush.
“He’s not,” I said. At her incredulous look, I held up a hand. “I doubled his guard. And that’s on top of the hospital staff and security. He’s safe. You’re the one you need to be worrying about.”
“I’m literally locked in a fortress with security guards,” she grumbled, swiping on my phone to find the hospital’s number, then calling.
She walked past me, and down the stairs, wanting some privacy. I let her, needing a second to pull my damn self together.
I hadn’t been prepared for how much seeing her in my shirt, and only my shirt, would impact me.
The lack of control I had over my own desire around her was, frankly, fucking embarrassing. Like I was a goddamn teenager again or some shit.
Eventually, my cock calmed down, and I made my way back downstairs to find her standing in the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest, staring at my phone on the island.
“Did you get to talk to him?”
“Yes. He’s still loopy from the pain medicine,” she said. “And the doctor said he wants to run some more tests on him,” she added.
“He’s in a good place. Trust that they know what they’re doing.”
“I do,” she said, but there was a false note in her words. “I want to be there with him.”
“But I’m keeping you prisoner,” I finished for her.
“That, yes. But also…” she said, waving at her forehead and then neck. “I can’t explain this. And he’ll ask about the store. He did just now. I had to do somersaults to avoid the topic.”
“Your head will heal. And when it’s safe to go again, you can just put a bandage on, and say you tripped and hit your head. As for the shop… what the fuck does it matter that you lie if he never knows?”
“Because it’s his store. Because it’s losing money if it is sitting there closed.”
“If money is the issue—“ I started.
“I don’t want your money!” she said, frustrated, but I couldn’t understand why.
If money was the issue, and I had the answer to the problem, why was she in a bad mood about it?
“Do you want dinner?” I asked.
“I want to go home. I want clothes. I want my books. I want… fine,” she said when looking at me and seeing my placid face. “Fine. I want dinner.”
And she’d finally given me some problems I could easily solve.
Now, how she would respond to that, though, that was the question…
CHAPTER TWELVE
Halle
Maybe I was being a brat, complaining about being stuck in a luxurious penthouse with food delivered to me three times a day, the most comfortable bed known to mankind, and, yes, TVs in every room. They were hidden inside cabinets in some cases. They acted as art in others. Rich people stuff that I had no prior experience with.
I was just… restless.
I felt like life was slipping away from me.
Especially at the shop.
How many times would a customer come to the shop to find a closed sign on the door before they refused to come again? How much money had been lost just during the one day closed?
My grandfather would know the answer to that question. But I clearly couldn’t ask him.
I woke up alone the next morning, but found a fresh pot of coffee waiting.
And within two minutes of starting to sip that, there was a knock at the door.
But there were several bags instead of one.
Two of those bags had a familiarity to them, patterns that I’d seen before, but couldn’t quite place
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Breakfast,” the guard said. “And something to wear.”
Oh, thank God.
Washing my panties and re-wearing his tee was not it.
“Oh, thanks,” I said, giving him a smile because he was a guy doing his job. And it was, objectively, probably a shitty one, compared to the other stuff the mafia must do on the daily.
I brought my breakfast to the island, finding strawberry-banana crepes and some sort of fruit smoothie.
I started to eat as I placed my bags on the far end of the island, checking to make sure it was clean, then pulling items out.
The first, smaller, bag was all white with a silver word scrawled across it.
La Perla.
I didn’t have any frame of reference for what that was until I reached inside, and pulled out several pairs of lacy and silky panties.
A lingerie store.
And now that I thought of it, I could have sworn that I’d heard Lauren mention it once or twice in the past. Like all things that were out of my tax bracket, though, I’d completely forgotten about it.