Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
I said the only thing I could to this news.
“Oh shit.”
Tom nodded, lifted the papers he was holding and shook them.
“We need to start with getting this authenticated. It’s a very weird hoax, if it is one, and if it is, we’ll have to move on to why someone would attempt to punk you in this manner. It would be beyond disturbing.”
He could say that again.
“However, it looks real,” he carried on, tossing the papers on his coffee table, and taking his glasses off in a manner only Daniel Craig playing James Bond could make attractive, though Tom did it with zero effort. He then dropped the glasses on the papers. “We still need to verify that. We then need to talk to an attorney. Once we assess if we have any vulnerabilities, and how we feel about those, then we’ll form a game plan. But in the immediate, I must talk with Hale and Judge. I don’t know how close they are to putting ink to paper with Core Point, but if this is what it looks like, they’re going to have to pull back.”
“Agreed.”
His gaze stayed steady on mine when he requested, “Will you leave this with me?”
“To read without tearing your living room apart?” I inquired dubiously. “I don’t think so. I think you need company, someone feeding you snickerdoodles and making you pay attention to your kitties, so you won’t lose all faith in the world and then, perchance, hunt Andrew Winston down and string him up by his balls. Which, incidentally, was my first reaction when I read all of that.”
His lips twitched but he said, “No, I mean just leave it with me. Full stop.”
My chin went into my neck. “You mean, to deal with?”
“Yes.”
“Take it off my hands and handle it for me,” I went on.
“Yes.”
That warmth in my chest was coming back.
However.
“Tom, I’m a big girl.”
“I know you are.”
“This isn’t your problem.”
“It isn’t yours either.”
“It was delivered to me.”
“It still isn’t yours.”
“Well, it certainly isn’t yours.”
“I’m troubled this landed on your doorstep.”
“I am too.”
“I’d like you removed from it.”
“Tom—”
“Please, Mika, leave it with me.”
He’d said please, and even though the tone made it sound like an order, he was, in his macho way, actually pleading.
I was curled into the side of his couch.
He was in his armchair.
We both had glasses of wine. He’d opened another bottle, and I, personally, was on glass number three.
Dinner was exceptional. I ate so much, I didn’t have room for a cookie.
Tom ate more spaghetti than me and had three cookies.
Men.
Conversation had been easy. Like that night at Eleanor’s so many years ago, and then some.
He was an active listener. He was a very sexy-fun teaser. Mr. Eye Contact. And definitely interested in learning what I’d been up to and more about Cadence, and he laughed when I shared about Nora (they knew each other, not well, but like his relationship with Eleanor, Nora and her siblings still donated to Tom’s summer tennis camp on their mother’s behalf).
On the other hand, I kept us out of the heavy by letting him semi-third-degree me.
It didn’t suck, bragging about my kid, or laughing at how hilarious my best friend was.
I did ask him about Sasha, and he shared that the family decision was that she either check into life in a meaningful way, or she was on her own. No free room and board from Tom or Imogen and Duncan, and Chloe jumped on board with that. Matt, who had plugged into the meeting through Skype, since he was in Indiana at vet school, wasn’t sure, but no one pushed him.
If she didn’t respond, the issue would then become, since Tom and Imogen still had power over her trust fund, when they’d cut that off.
That decision, if it should need to be made, was for a later family meeting.
We skirted Rollo.
And he’d said, “Your work is going to need its own dinner,” which made me absurdly happy, not only knowing we’d have another dinner, but that he was interested.
Now we were with that envelope.
And he was a man who could eat more spaghetti than me, chase that with cookies, sport the lean waist and muscled flesh I felt under my fingers in the brief time I had with my arm wrapped around him.
He was also a man who felt it was his job to run interference for women so they didn’t feel the unpleasantness of life.
I didn’t know what to think of this.
It was kind to the point of chivalrous, which never felt bad.
However, like the kittens were his responsibility, not one he looked for, but one he assumed nevertheless…
What was in that envelope was mine.
Rollo was also a man like this. A Southern boy who could brawl like Ronnie Van Zant and cherish like Paul McCartney.
He didn’t know what to do with the woman that was me. His mother was a ball buster, but she was also a wilting Southern belle, a dichotomy, it was my experience, only Southern women could pull off.