Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96600 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96600 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
But good for Scott for grabbing a pick-me-up on his way out.
“They weren’t having sex. They were breaking up.” Charlotte’s brows came together and she looked close to crying. “Just listen to me, okay? I get it, you don’t want to hear any of this, but you have to.”
“I’m listening.” This was quickly becoming a conversation I couldn’t lean back and relax for. I sat up and braced my elbows on my knees, hands hanging between them. “What did you overhear?”
“Scott was mad. Hurt because of what we told him. He was confronting her about sleeping with someone else. And he…” Her voice trembled. “He sounds like he loves her. It sounded like it had been going on for a long time.”
I wanted to tell Charlotte that she must have misunderstood what she’d heard. Or that maybe it hadn’t been Catherine with Scott. But Charlotte had been there. She knew exactly what she’d heard. I couldn’t argue with her because the truth was inconvenient for me.
“I need a second to think,” I said, and got to my feet. Pacing would be so much more satisfying if I didn’t have to do it with a cane.
She sat on the sofa, hands clasped in her lap, knuckles white.
“I suppose it makes sense that he wouldn’t want us to be together, if he thought there was a chance of being with Catherine later,” I muttered, mostly to myself.
“It sounded like she’d promised to leave her husband for him,” Charlotte said. “Or at least, he thought that was going to happen.”
“Never.” That was fully out of the question. How could Scott not have seen that?
“Catherine said she wanted to believe that she could walk away from everything to be with him, but she couldn’t.” Charlotte looked down at her fingers twisting in the throw.
“She has a lot more to lose,” I noted.
Charlotte flinched.
Before I could question her reaction, she went on. “She didn’t want to endanger her stability. And he accused her of not loving him enough.”
“It sounds like she doesn’t love him at all.” I couldn’t fathom the idea of Catherine having a human emotion like love in the first place.
“He said he would give up billions if it meant he could be with her,” Charlotte said quietly.
I scoffed at that. Scott? The guy who obsessed over interest rates and read nonstop self-help books about growing wealth? I couldn’t imagine him walking away from a million dollars, let alone a billion, and definitely not for someone like Catherine.
“That doesn’t sound realistic. Poetic, I’ll give him that. Not realistic.” None of this made any sense. On the few occasions that Scott and Catherine had been in the same room together, I couldn’t recall them ever saying more than a few polite words to each other. When could this have happened? And why on earth would someone like Scott be interested in my sister? Sure, she was beautiful. But she was also cold and materialistic.
And apparently she cheated on the guys she was cheating with.
A tear streaked down Charlotte’s cheek and I went to her side, sitting to take her into my arms. “Don’t cry. This isn’t an emergency or anything, I promise. Whatever is going on with your brother and my sister? Those things don’t involve us. It’s not going to impact our relationship.”
“Yeah,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But I’m angry at him. He gave us so much crap about being together.”
“Some of the crap, I could see where he was coming from. He was worried about our age gap and our dating histories more than the fact that you’re his sister, I think.” Although he had been concerned about it affecting our friendship. I chalked that up to his guilty conscience.
“I want to go to his place and punch him in his stupid face,” she muttered.
I chuckled. “Don’t think that he and I won’t be discussing this. He gave me so much grief about dating you, but he was helping my sister cheat on her husband? Not cool. But also, not worth losing either of you over.”
“Right.” She let out a long breath. “I guess I was worried over nothing.”
“Not nothing. It’s weird.” I didn’t want to diminish her feelings, but at the moment, I wasn’t even sure exactly how I felt about this development. “But I’m not going to break up with you over it. Are you going to break up with me?”
“No. I think it would be foolish to walk away from the one relationship I can actually see working.” She sniffed and half-laughed. “But I’m angry. I’m angry that he tried to stop us from being together while he was doing the same thing we were doing.”
I mock gasped. “You’re married?”
She gave me a little shove. “Shut up. You know what I mean. He did the protective big brother thing without hesitation. And he knew the whole time how hypocritical he was being.”