Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
In the end, I mentally applauded the little mouse.
Good for her.
She’d need that ability to fight back. Someone whose books were that successful couldn’t stay anonymous forever.
A piercing ring sliced through the quiet of the bedroom suite, startling me out of my thoughts. Hurrying across the room to where my ringing phone sat on the desk beside my discarded laptop and career, I grabbed the mobile. There was no caller ID. Not in the mood for a sales call, I picked up and answered with lazy boredom, “You’ve called Hot Boys Twenty-Four Seven, Fabio speaking. How can I help you with your kink?”
There was silence. And then a huff of annoyance. “Still haven’t grown up, I see.”
The familiar voice tightened my fingers around the phone. “Seb?”
“Hmm, yes,” my brother responded with impatience. “I’m surprised you recognize my voice it’s been so long. I tried calling you from my phone, but I have a sneaking suspicion you blocked my number.”
I had blocked my elder brother’s number. “What do you want?”
“We haven’t spoken in four years and that’s all I get?”
“Seb, what do you want?” I repeated, trying to remain unaffected and relaxed.
Sebastian hesitated, and then his heavy sigh crackled the line. “Father is ill. Cancer. You need to come home.”
Rage filled me at the C word. The memories it evoked. “You mean, the way he didn’t come home while our mother was dying?”
“You need to forgive him, Theo.”
Like hell. “Is he dying?”
“You need to come home.”
I took an inner breath, refusing to reveal my anger. My repeated question came out calm and uninterested. “Is he dying?”
“We’re not sure.”
Liar. My brother had always been a terrible liar. “What kind of cancer? What stage?”
Seb cleared his throat. “It’s not something one talks about in polite conversation.”
I grinned darkly. “It’s his fucking balls, isn’t it?”
Sebastian snarled, “Do you have to always be so crude?”
Laughing, I shook my head. “That’s bloody brilliant. He spent his whole life dipping his wick in places he shouldn’t, and now he’s got ball cancer. Perhaps Karma exists, after all.”
“I cannot believe you are mocking our father’s cancer.”
“Oh, I’m not mocking cancer, Sebastian,” I drawled. “I’m applauding a universe that respects justice.”
“There’s a very big difference between justice and revenge, Theodore. To wish this on anyone, most especially your father, is outrageous.”
His indignation did nothing to me. “I didn’t wish this on him. I’m just not going to come running to his side to shower him with sympathy. And frankly, I doubt very much he needs me to hold his hand while he loses his balls.”
Silence greeted me for a few seconds and then Seb said quietly, “Your bitterness will eat you alive if you’re not careful, brother.”
His words found their target, and I wanted to hurt him back. “I’m not your brother, Sebastian. You stopped being that for me a very long time ago.” I hung up, throwing my phone on the bed as memories rose from the corners of the room, pressing in on me.
A bright, agonizing flame of pain scored across my chest, and I dragged a hand down my face, trying to push the memories back.
Distraction. I needed a distraction.
Usually writing was my distraction.
Opening my eyes, the first thing I saw was her book.
Hollow Grave by S. M. Brodie.
It suddenly looked more like a life raft than pages bound together, so I kicked off my shoes and clambered onto the bed. Picking up the hefty tome, I pried it open and hoped like hell Sarah McCulloch was about to surprise me some more.
Two
SARAH
“Are you sure about this?”
Closing the boot of my car where Jared had just placed my suitcase, I turned to look up at him. When my cousin arrived on the farm almost five years ago, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Never in my wildest imaginings would I expect us to become best friends, for Jared to be like the younger brother I’d never had. Even if he acted like my big brother most of the time. The thought brought a tender smile to my face, and I reached out to squeeze his arm in reassurance. “I’ll be fine.”
He gazed down at me with green eyes the exact shade as mine. We’d inherited the unusual color from our fathers, who’d inherited them from our grandmother. “I don’t like you being so far away by yourself.”
“I’ll be two hours away.”
Jared’s handsome face tightened. “Aye, in a cottage, by yourself.”
“I hate to break this to you, Jar, but I’m thirty-one years old and I can take care of myself.”
“I know. But I worry.”
With the staggering new fortune I’d amassed in the last year, I’d purchased a small cottage in a coastal village in the North-West Highlands, in a pretty, wee village called Gairloch. It had a beach like Ardnoch but was much smaller, and the waters turned turquoise like the Mediterranean. Our grandpa used to take me to that beach every summer when I was a wee girl. Now I’d packed my bags, intent on spending a few months there writing the next book in the Juno McLeod series.