Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 142976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 715(@200wpm)___ 572(@250wpm)___ 477(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 715(@200wpm)___ 572(@250wpm)___ 477(@300wpm)
The older man stared at him sadly before sighing and shaking his head.
“Well, then I suppose she’ll soon be our wee mad lass, aye?” his dad said, his voice soft. “And we take care of our own. I dare Abernathy to try and come for her then.”
Chapter
Four
Fern awoke in Denmark.
She hadn’t once thought to ask where they were going, and when Cade shook her awake hours after they’d departed from the airport in Cape Town, she was shocked to realize that she’d slept through the entire flight. And that someone—likely Cade—had somehow managed to move her from the seat where she’d fallen asleep, onto the comfortable double bed in the sleeping quarters of the plane without waking her.
She hadn’t recognized how tense she’d been since discovering her pregnancy and how the sudden absence of her fear and tension would leave her utterly wiped out. She also hadn’t understood how much she trusted this relative stranger until she’d left herself so utterly vulnerable in his presence.
“Why Denmark?” she asked in a groggy voice, while tugging a comb through her hair which she would usually braid before bed. Instead, it had been left loose and was now a snarled mess.
“Easiest place for tourists to get married quickly,” Cade said, his eyes following the movement of the comb through her hair before he quickly looked away. “Also, no visa requirements for any of us.”
Fern—like her soon-to-be-husband—had a dual British/South African citizenship. It made travelling to Europe much more convenient. And, since her school had been in Switzerland, it had been useful.
“I see.” They were in a limo en-route to God knows where, Fern trusted that Cade and his father—who was sitting across from them watching them with a furrowed brow—knew what they were doing.
“You’ve placed a lot of faith in us,” James Hawthorne suddenly said, as if he’d read her mind.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’ve overheard Granger speak about you to Richard several times before your arrival yesterday. I think he always felt aggrieved and outsmarted by you. That was why he played these petty games with you. Because he could never quite get his way with you. I can’t say he likes you very much.” She allowed a small, malicious smile to tug at the corners of her lips as she recalled her stepfather’s constant frustration when it came to his dealings with these men. “It was because of his dislike of you that I took a leap and decided to trust you. It was risky, but I had no other viable alternative.”
Her straightforward response startled a gruff laugh out of the older man, and he slanted an inscrutable look toward Cade, who was sitting on the same bench seat as her, but what felt like miles away, against the door.
Fern risked a glance at Cade, before diverting her gaze back to her hands, which were twisted nervously in her lap.
“So where are we going?” she asked.
“To the chapel,” Cade intoned in a somber tone of voice. “Where we’re gonna get… married.”
His father choked back another laugh and the deadpan delivery of the line immediately brought Fern’s eyes back up to Cade’s face. His expression was as inscrutable as always, but she caught a glimmer of something resembling humor in that penetrative stare. His eyes were deep, dark gray with these mesmerizing striations of blue threaded throughout the gray that made them disturbingly beautiful. He was so handsome it was almost painful to look at him for too long.
Tall and so seriously big, that even while he sat practically huddled in the opposite corner of the huge limo, she still felt crowded by his bulk. He was too big, too muscled to be an attorney. Someone with his build should be in construction, or working on an oil rig or something. His hands were meant for wielding power tools and sledgehammers. She’d recently read somewhere that all of the Hawthorne children—even McKenna—had spent their adolescence working on construction sites to get a feel of the business at grassroots level. It certainly showed in the Cade’s bulk.
The gold Montblanc fountain pen he was gripping between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand looked out of place in that huge, rough paw.
His silky black hair fell over his broad sweeping forehead in wings from a slight widow’s peak. One that she could see he’d inherited from his father. That wasn’t the only thing he’d inherited from the older man. There were also the dimples, deep grooves in their cheeks that were present even when they were not smiling. And seriously, Fern couldn’t recall seeing Cade smile more than twice. And both of those times had been on the night they’d first met.
There was no sign of any smile on his face currently, despite his dry little pun of just a moment ago. He held her gaze a moment longer, before picking up his briefcase and opening it to rifle through the contents. He produced a thick sheaf of papers and handed them to her.