Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 62197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
I watched him as he walked toward the door, headed back to bed with his wife. Apparently, I’d had so much to drink that I was speaking all my thoughts without realizing it.
“I’m not in love,” I called out after him. “That’s a fucking dumb emotion. It makes you weak. Messes up your head. Controls you.”
Bane stopped and turned back around. He raised one of his eyebrows as he stared back at me. “And you sitting in here, watching her sleep on the hidden cameras you placed in her apartment, isn’t you being controlled? Your head was clear today when you decided to pay a man to set a fire in his place of business? Or when you handed a man over to the cartel without going through the line of authority?”
I said nothing.
“Right. That’s what I thought,” he finally said.
When he walked away this time, I let him go. Bastard had said shit I didn’t need to hear.
Swiping my finger over my phone screen to open up the camera I’d been watching before he interrupted me, I sighed heavily. Just the sight of her eased me. Not completely because I wanted to talk to her. Reassure her. Explain why I had gone silent. But it did help me breathe.
Ah fuck.
Bane might be right.
Dammit all to hell!
Eleven
Noa
Twenty-Eight Days Since Ransom Left …
While my manuscript had needed me to stay inside tonight and continue to work on it, my sanity required I get the hell out of the apartment. Not that I was counting … okay, I was counting … but it had been four weeks of silence from Ransom. It was time to face the fact that we were over.
The bouquet of sunflowers, arrangement of chocolate-covered caramels, and all three volumes of the first printing of Pride and Prejudice that had been delivered over the past week were maddening and confusing. Thurston hadn’t called or texted, so I assumed he’d gotten the hint, and I had a hard time believing he’d sent these specific gifts. Each delivery had been an exact replica of items given to the heroine in my first two books. The Pride and Prejudice set had sent me reeling. The price on those was a quarter of a million dollars. I’d looked it up online when I wrote the gift into my story.
The only person I knew who could spend that kind of money would be Ransom, but he was ghosting me, so that made no sense. It would also mean he’d read all of my published books thus far since the Pride and Prejudice set was the wedding gift the hero gave the heroine in the last book. My ideal Ransom I’d created in my head. The real Ransom wanted to shut me out of his life. He had fucked me and was moving on. It was what he did. He didn’t send elaborate gifts, and he didn’t read romance novels. As far as I knew, he’d just read the first one.
I stared at the books I’d put in a firesafe glass display case and placed on my bookshelf. They baffled me the most. Even if someone had been lucky enough to inherit these, why would they just give them away? And to me?
Thoughts of Arden, which were rare, flickered through my head, and I wondered if it was possible. He had read all my books. He’d edited them. He knew my characters as well as I did. Would he have sent them? His way of apologizing? The wedding gift from my novel could hold some significance. But where would he have gotten that much money to buy something so expensive? This wasn’t a typical Christmas gift. It was on another level.
Grabbing my purse, I took a deep breath and went to the door. I normally didn’t go out in the evenings by myself, but this was Manhattan, and it never slept. Especially this close to Christmas. Stores were staying open later, and people were rushing to shop after getting off work. It would be busy and full of tourist.
I’d walk until I saw something that I thought I could actually eat more than one bite of. I needed to eat today. Going all day without food wasn’t good for me, but it was becoming the norm.
I also needed to pick up some more laundry detergent, and if Ulta was still open, I was almost out of my shampoo. With a plan before me, I headed down the elevator and exchanged good evenings with Wayne, who had been working a lot more shifts these days. I saw him more than any of the other security doormen.
When I stepped outside onto the always-busy street, the sound of horns blaring was comforting. I’d once hated it. They always startled me, but over time, I’d come to think of them as normal. Part of the city. Inside the apartment, the noise was muffled, and I often didn’t notice it. Glancing up and down the street filled with elaborate holiday window displays, I gave myself a small pep talk about finding some joy in this. This was my favorite time of year, and I had been missing it, locked away in my apartment.