Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 114419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Which was entirely possible. I had been raised with a suspicious mind, after all. Father had guaranteed it.
“I’ll drive you home,” Mr. Patches said, and though my legs felt stiff and awkward, I made myself move to the door and out to the parking lot with him, where I got in his car and he drove me home, waving and wishing me a good evening.
My father had hit me, he’d snapped my bones and made me bleed, but he’d never touched me the way Mr. Patches began touching me after school each evening as we sat at my kitchen table, a science book in front of us, nothing but a mere prop.
“Do you like it?” he’d ask, his eyes glazed and his breath short. And if I hesitated, his expression would grow stony, and he’d say, “Don’t make me fail you. If you don’t graduate, you’ll be a nobody. You don’t want to be a nobody, do you?”
No. I didn’t want to be a nobody.
But I already was.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was just after lunch when Gavin opened his office door, greeting Sienna. She looked slightly harried or maybe worried, a small wrinkle between her brows. This job was obviously running her ragged, and he had the strong urge to ease her burden. He hoped he could.
“Thanks for meeting with me. I do realize you have a real job that keeps you very busy,” she said as she stepped inside. “I appreciate your help, and I won’t keep you.”
“I have the time,” he told her. He’d made the time.
They’d sat at his desk the last time she was in his office, but he directed her to the small seating area this time, both so she could spread out the items she’d brought if necessary and so that there wouldn’t be a wide expanse of desk between them.
She’d said she would give him a call the night before, and he’d tried to convince himself he wasn’t waiting like some teenager, but that would be a lie. He’d been looking distractedly at his phone all morning, disappointed each time it rang and wasn’t her. Which was ridiculous on several levels, most importantly because if she did call, it would be to ask him about evidence for her case, nothing more. She’d finally contacted him an hour before, and he’d canceled two meetings so he’d be available—not that he’d tell her that, but he’d been happy, even eager, to carve out all the time she might need.
He’d enjoyed her company far too much, limited and stilted at times though it’d been. He’d wanted to stay. Dammit, if he was being honest, he’d wanted to stand up from that stupid, uncomfortable-as-hell box he’d been sitting on that had been caving in under his weight, swoop her up in his arms, and kiss the hell out of her. He wondered if her taste would be familiar, completely new, or some exotic mixture of the two. He wondered if his hands would know the dips and curves of her body, like muscle memory that had lain dormant but might reawaken with a single touch. But he’d forced himself to push those thoughts aside. She was involved with someone else, and he’d given up the possibility of ever having her again when he’d left without a word.
Or had he? Her reactions, the places her gaze sometimes lingered—his mouth for example—made him wonder. And Gavin was not a man who liked to leave questions unanswered.
Sienna took a seat at the end of the leather love seat, and Gavin sat on the chair next to her, only separated by a wood-and-metal side table.
She set her briefcase on the floor and bent to retrieve the items she had brought, and he took the moment to let his eyes fall on each part of her. His gaze swept the elegant line of her spine, the slender side of her thigh, and the gentle swell of her calf. She was graceful perfection, and he’d always wondered how such a beautiful girl had come from two stout, ugly creatures like the ones who had called themselves her parents. Genes were a funny thing.
Or maybe if her parents had lived lives free from addiction and meanness, poor health choices, and general disregard, it wouldn’t have manifested in such physically hideous ways.
Or maybe they’d been especially ugly in his eyes because of the way they’d hurt their daughter.
Sienna set a close-up photograph of a gold bee with a penny next to it for scale on the table and removed what looked like four or five sheets of paper. Gavin recognized the same handwriting from the notes he’d read before. “The criminalists found yet another piece of Danny Boy’s writing in the house on Allegra this morning.” She pointed to the photo of the bee charm or whatever it was. “I’m assuming this doesn’t mean anything to you, but it was found with the latest note, and I thought it might have something to do with a hand of cards or . . .” Her expression registered frustration, and she sighed. “I don’t know, but there it is.”