Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 123579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123579 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 618(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
By all rights, living with my father—his callousness, infidelity, and neglect—should have lined Mother’s face with pain, but her skin radiates age-defying youth. By necessity, I have toughened my heart’s tender places, but I’ve always wanted to be like her in some ways. Always wanted us to be closer. Maybe I remind her too much of my father for her to really love me. I glance at Daddy, who barely registers her approach because he’s fixated on the “special guest” accompanying her.
I shift my attention to the special guest.
Everything in me goes still. My fingers freeze around my fork like rigor mortis has set in. My breath stalls in my throat. My heart refuses to beat for a matter of seconds, depriving me of blood to the brain. That must be why I’m lightheaded. Why my hands go cold and my feet go numb. It is circulatory, not long-buried fear. Not never-forgotten disgust. Not deeply embedded shame.
I want to believe the man at my mother’s side is not who I think he is. Is not who my body thinks he is, but he goes still, too, and makes me certain. He stops walking toward us, his steps faltering for a heartbeat and his eyes widening when they tangle with mine. We share memories, memories that tortured my dreams into nightmares. Memories that, even now, as he regains his composure and continues his steady pace toward my table behind my mother, twist his lips into a smile.
CHAPTER TWO
Trevor
Who is this girl?
Obviously, I know who she literally is, but what stirs beneath that polished, placid surface? When Harold told me Sofie Baston would be here tonight, I expected to be impressed with her physical beauty, but I didn’t expect to be…intrigued.
Even though I saw her on a billboard earlier, that colossal image a hundred feet in the air is somehow dwarfed by this woman in the soft, silky flesh. My preconceived notions of her have been broadened and lengthened by what appears to be a quick wit and sharp intelligence.
I’ve been fighting myself not to just stare at her ever since she and that punk-ass quarterback walked in. I mean, yeah, Rip’s got a great arm, but he hasn’t fully lived up to the promise he showed in college when he won the Heisman. Okay. He was MVP last year. I gotta give him that. Let’s face it. I’m just sour because he’s with her. I’ve never been one to go after another guy’s girl, and I won’t start with this one. But I’d trade places with him, even if just for a night.
In the high-risk ventures that have made Harold and me richer than we ever imagined when we walked away from our Princeton scholarships, I sink or swim on my instincts, on my gut-level assessment. Based on what I see, Rip bores her. He has no idea how to handle a woman like Sofie. That silver-blond hair, those bottle-green eyes, that pale gold skin—all make you think she’s an icy goddess, but even our brief exchange showed me the truth. There’s fire beneath that perfectly cool façade. She isn’t feisty or sassy. Those words are too girlish somehow for what I sense in her. She is…bold. And I’ve decided that I like her.
I’ve been rationing glances, allowing myself to look over at her only every so often. I don’t want her to think I’m one of those idiots who run behind her with their noses wide open. I’m not that guy. Harold and I have been so focused on building Deutimus over the last decade that there’s barely been time for dating, relationships, or any life really outside of creating these entrepreneurial incubators all over the world. But even I haven’t been so far under a rock I don’t know a gorgeous woman when I see her.
Okay. I’ve waited long enough. I’ve earned another look.
I turn in her direction, ready for more flirting and to tease out that fire I sense hiding, but everything about her is now frozen. Her smile has hardened into an icy curve on her face, and I watch it splinter into a thousand icicles that leave her lips a straight, dead line. Her hand is a cold claw on the table in front of her. And her eyes, frozen over like a winter pond, fix on the man approaching with her mother.
Walsh leans across me, touching Sofie’s hand and tugging until she shifts her glance to him.
“I had no idea, Sof.” His eyes and whisper are urgent. “I didn’t know he would be here. I don’t know why he is, but I’ll find out. I’ll handle this. I promise. Are you okay?”
This is the softest I’ve seen her so far. Not in a magazine, not on that billboard, not tonight has she been less than certain. Less than the runway moniker I’ve heard they call her—the Goddess. But for a second, in a flash, she looks completely, humanly lost. Those icy eyes melt when they meet Walsh’s, and she bites her lip hard enough that when she releases it, blood rushes to the surface, color flooding the lips that had gone white around the red lipstick.