Total pages in book: 235
Estimated words: 224334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1122(@200wpm)___ 897(@250wpm)___ 748(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 224334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1122(@200wpm)___ 897(@250wpm)___ 748(@300wpm)
She loves you. So maybe she won’t leave you. And can you really carry on like this? Hiding your secrets? Hiding your daughter? Hiding your miserable story? Hiding me?
No, I can’t go on like this. But the alternative is Ava getting beneath this exterior, and I refuse to be anything less than the man she needs me to be. The man I want to be. The man she’s helping me to be. A few minor meltdowns aside.
And cheating on her aside.
“We weren’t serious,” I yell, giving the steering wheel another punch, heaving like an angry gorilla. It’s a lie. It was very serious. For me, anyway. And that’s exactly why I turned to the bottle. It’s a fucked-up kind of compliment to Ava in a way. Because no woman in the history of Jesse Ward has sent him crazy. No woman has enchanted him. No woman has made him fall in love.
Until now.
And with my love, unfortunately for Ava, it seems there comes a whole heap of crazy.
11
The Manor is dead, the foyer silent, the bar empty, the summer room quiet. I don’t see one soul as I walk to my office, calling John to check in. Or, more to the point, check he’s still in one piece after collecting Ava from Lusso. “She’s here, Jesse,” he rumbles, unimpressed, before hanging up. And that’s that. She’s in his car, though I bet there was a pile of indignance that got in with her. Nevertheless, I feel like I’m winning.
I smile and put a call in to the maintenance guy at Lusso to order a new remote control for the gates before calling my new friend, the florist. “Jesse Ward,” I say when she answers, pushing through the door of my office.
“Mr. Ward. Same again?”
“Yes, please.”
“Same address on Bruton Street?”
“Of course.”
“And what should the card say?”
I sit down at my desk, thinking for a moment. “You got a pen?” I ask, and she confirms. “It should say,” I begin, reaching for my shoulder and rubbing at the place she sunk her teeth into me. “You’re a savage and a tease. You drive me crazy. I love you. Sign it off J. Add a kiss too.”
“You know, we’re living for your calls, Mr. Ward,” the florist says, and I frown. “My colleagues and I have a little bet going on about what swoony words will be delivered with each bunch.”
I laugh a little. “Too cheesy?” I ask. I’ve never been cheesy, and I don’t want to start now.
“Oh no, very romantic.”
My pathetic chest swells, and I grin at thin air across my office. “Women love romantic, right?” Why the fuck am I looking for reassurance? I know what Ava likes. I don’t need this woman to tell me.
“Right,” she confirms. “I might have to look for an older man myself.”
I choke on my tongue, balking. The cheeky fucker. “Charge it to my card.” I hang up and get to my feet, feeling at my freshly shaven face. Older man? Is that what people see when they see Ava with me? Older man with a younger woman? The doctor thought she was my wife. I pout, just as Sarah walks in. She looks me up and down, and I jump in before she can comment on my crumpled form. “How old do I look?”
“So you’re talking to me then?” She struts across to my desk and takes a seat, swinging one leather-clad leg over the other and pouting her pouty red lips.
I narrow an eye on her. “How old?”
“Now? Two hundred.”
“Oh fuck off,” I mutter, rounding my desk, heading straight back out. “At least I’m all natural.” What am I, a bitch? I roll my eyes to myself and yank the door open. I’ll go for a swim. Have a sauna. Maybe even smash a few balls over the net on the courts. I look up to the ceiling. Killing time. Again.
“Why are you so concerned about how old you loo—” Sarah stops abruptly, gasps, and then starts laughing. The sound stabs me in the back. “Good God, you’re paranoid the young, hot interior designer will find a hotter, younger man.”
I swing around, outraged. “There aren’t many men in this world hotter than I am, no matter their fucking age.”
Her smile is slap-worthy, and she shrugs, standing slowly from the chair. “Well, that’s the risk you take when you start fucking a younger woman.”
Fucking. She refuses to accept I’m capable of anything but emotionless fucking. “What, like the risk Carmichael took with you?” It’s out before I can stop it, and I don’t hold back there. “Because you were certainly on the lookout.” Permanently. And I was her unlucky prey.
Sarah doesn’t even flinch, the hard-faced bitch. She knows I’m being spiteful because I’m injured, even if every word I’m spitting at her is one hundred percent accurate.