Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
He also cooked most nights, but if I did, he helped, and so did Liam (Liam also helped his dad, but Darius didn’t let me when he was cooking, I could tell he got off on me sitting with them and drinking wine while they provided for me, and I got off on it too). The same with doing the dishes.
And he had a cleaning lady, so I no longer had to clean the house.
He and Liam took care of raking the leaves in the yard one Sunday while I stood in the window sipping tea and watched father and son working side by side, doing something mundane and normal, feeling my fluffy cloud of happy goodness shroud me.
I sometimes had to work late and loved the fact that I had a family text string where I’d tap in that info and send it to my boys so they’d know where I was and when I’d be home.
And Darius never said a word about me arriving an hour or two after I normally did. He knew I loved my work. He also warned me that Lee was keeping him on jobs where his work hours were normal so we could all settle in. But eventually, his hours could be anything.
I encouraged him to tell Lee he could remove those barriers. Because Darius also loved his job. And although it was very clear that team would move mountains to give one member what he needed (because, from what I’d heard, they’d done a lot of that in their time together), I got how Darius didn’t want to be someone who would slack.
But the bottom line was, my life had changed significantly, and it wasn’t just that I came home to a different house and slept every night beside the man of my dreams.
It was because I’d discovered Mister Morris lived on in his son. And the way Darius was guiding Liam, he’d live on in his grandson.
This meant I had time to bake my molasses cookies, just because.
I had time to curl in the club chair in the study and read, because I didn’t have groceries to buy or bathrooms to clean or bills to pay.
After a sweater of mine turned up four sizes smaller than it used to be, I firmly set the boundaries around laundry. But I’d long since taught Liam how to do his own. It was just Darius who needed to stay well away from the laundry room. So that was my only big job.
I didn’t just have the family I always wanted. I had a partner who more than shouldered his share of life’s burdens.
I was living the dream.
The only gray edge on the silver lining of the cloud I resided in was the fact that I hadn’t found the time to share with Darius that I knew who was the likely suspect that told someone about me and Liam.
Or, more to the point, I hadn’t figured out how I was going to tell him.
That and the fact Miss Dorothea and Mom were going head-to-head about who was going to host Thanksgiving this year.
I had a feeling Miss Dorothea was going to win. Danni and Gabby were now kitting out the last bedroom in our house. This was because everyone on Darius’s side was descending on Denver, mostly to meet Liam and look me over, and we were going to have a full house.
“You told me you had this covered!”
I jumped when I heard these words shouted somewhere in the office. I glanced at my two colleagues, then looked over my shoulder through the wall of windows into the bustle of the office, across from which, through another wall of windows, Carrie, the junior associate Jeffrey (it was now in no doubt) was sleeping with was shoving Jeffrey in the chest.
“Easy for you!” she screeched. “But shit like this can derail my whole fucking career!”
She probably should have thought of that before she climbed into a partner’s bed and fucked over his wife.
With that, she flounced out of his office, slamming the door behind her.
I kept staring, because, Lord, I couldn’t help it. That was a scene.
Everyone in the office was staring.
But Jeffrey was glowering at the door.
Until his eyes moved to the window. I could see from all the way across the office his face was red, probably with anger and embarrassment, but unfortunately, as his eyes scanned the space, they eventually locked on me.
Oh hell.
I didn’t know what to do, but turning my head quickly like I was guilty of something I didn’t think was smart. So I held his gaze for a beat, before shifting my attention back to my work.
“We knew that was gonna happen,” Samantha, one of the other two paralegals in the conference room with me, said under her breath.
“Fuck around and find out,” Robin, the other paralegal, replied.