Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
“Would you like something to drink? I could probably come up with pretty much whatever you desire.”
My voice deepened with the last, wanting to fulfill it in every way. This thing that thrummed between us, a crackling of energy, though it was diluted by those storm clouds that hung heavy around her.
“No, I’m fine.”
Disquiet tightened my guts, and I moved to take the spot across from her.
Leaning back in the booth, I gazed at her as she fidgeted.
Apprehension fluttered across those pretty features, this distrust and suspicion that I could somehow discern was directed at me.
A frown pulled to my brow. “Need you to tell me what the hell is going on, Emery, because from where I’m sitting, it’s something big.”
I sat there and watched this war go down in her expression.
A war that was waged on the inside.
Then she set the full force of her attention on me, and she lifted her quivering chin in some kind of challenge.
“Kane Asher?”
It was both a statement and a question.
A plea and a judgment.
What the fuck was going on?
Antsy, I shifted on the plush, high-backed seat and roughed a hand through my hair.
For men like me, it wasn’t exactly safe when a stranger came sniffing around, digging into who you were.
Had never taken on a pseudonym. None of us had. Figured if we lived our lives to the closest semblance of normal, it would raise fewer questions.
But I could see the questions whooshing all over her face.
“Guilty.” I tried to frame it a tease, a haphazard shrug of my shoulder. While I sat there knowing I was being convicted.
Emery hesitated before she turned to dig into the little purse she’d had slung across her body. She pulled something out and held it in her hands.
A picture, I realized.
My heart suddenly took off at a sprint.
Sweat slicking my skin.
Not sure why, but somehow knowing with absolute certainty that whatever she was getting ready to show me was going to change everything.
For a moment, she held it hidden against her chest as she pinned those eyes on me.
Pain lancinated through her expression, a sorrow so distinct that I would have dropped to my knees if I hadn’t already been sitting.
I was slammed with it.
A rogue wave that dragged us both out to sea.
Grief.
Then she slowly set it in the middle of the table and slid it farther across to me, her words soggy and thick when she whispered, “Her name is Maci, and she’s your daughter.”
TEN
KANE
Did you ever have something hit you so hard and from out of nowhere that you felt like you’d been blown to smithereens? A bomb dropped that annihilated everything? What you knew and what you believed and what you thought your future was going to look like?
I stared down at the photo she had set in front of me.
Dumbfounded.
Shocked.
Heart a fucking battering ram against my ribs.
Dizziness rushed me as dazed disbelief clashed with the recognition.
This little girl with blonde hair the same color as Emery’s, fucking adorable as could be with her chubby cheeks and giant grin and dimple on her chin.
But none of those things were what had me trapped.
It was her eyes.
Eyes that were the most unique shade of green.
Eyes I hadn’t been able to fully make out through the window of the car.
A sheering emerald, though the irises were rimmed in gold, the same as the glinting flecks that were smattered throughout.
The same eyes as my mother had had.
The same eyes as mine.
Still, I was shaking my head, trying to fucking process what it was that Emery was trying to tell me.
Sickness rising from the gully carved through the center of my soul.
From that wicked place where all the darkness and ugliness reigned.
That place that promised I didn’t get this.
Unable to fathom that I’d actually created something as beautiful as this.
This little girl with the angel face.
Fear locked my throat and turmoil thundered through my veins.
“Are you going to say something?” Emery’s question was woven in a quiet affront, issued so low it was a wonder that I could even hear it, let alone that it would knock me from the trance.
But somehow, I lifted my head, staring over at her, gutted all over again that I somehow couldn’t remember touching this woman before last night.
I was sure that experience would have been engraved so deep in my mind there was no chance it could have been erased.
Sure I’d remember her taste and her scent and the shape of her body.
But no, I couldn’t remember a damn thing.
I blinked through the stupor, and she released a gust of disbelief. Her brow pinched as she leaned farther across the table. “I just told you that you have a daughter, and you have nothing to say?”
“I…” I tried to fumble through the chaos to form a rational thought.
But Emery was hissing before I could formulate a single word, “Her name is Maci. She is four years old, and her mother was my sister, Emmalee.”