Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
I read between the lines and recited out loud what I read. “Then again, if you do everything perfectly, you don’t need to be competitive.”
Now I had a sly smile.
“You said it, I didn’t.”
Insufferable.
“Are you trying to chase me away?”
“Absolutely not, Miss Ryan. I like you. Very much.”
“You don’t know me very much.”
“I know you were seven minutes late, doing this thinking you were meeting my father, and that tells me quite a bit.”
It did, damn the man.
“You…and my sister,” I prompted.
“Two dates, and we didn’t fuck.”
His coarse language was another test, and I realized he’d been testing me since before I showed up.
“I’m not a game player,” I warned.
“I know this about you.”
“Can I assume you’ve investigated me…us?”
“You’re a size eighteen and you have very good taste in underwear and very poor taste in men.”
I gasped.
“The dress last night was inspired, by the way,” he continued. “I knew I liked you then. You’re only confirming my good instincts now.”
I shifted subjects.
“So Daniel stole Portia from you.”
“No, Daniel thinks he did. Your sister is pretty, not beautiful, like you, but she’s too highly strung, not grounded, again…like you. Both reasons why I didn’t fuck her.”
“Can you please refrain from talking about fucking my sister?” I requested.
“If you wish.”
“I do.”
“Fine,” he allowed. “I let Daniel think she was stolen. Everyone needs some wins once in a while. Even if they aren’t come by honestly.”
I had nothing to say to that.
He had things to say.
“Your mother was…still is, beautiful, like you. Why do you think your father left her for Portia’s mother?”
“Because Andrea was a whore with a particular skillset, and no matter Dad turned his father’s hardware store into a retail giant that gobbled up the world online and in brick and mortar, he still solely thought with his dick.”
When I was done speaking, Ian angled back his head and laughed.
The sound was deep and lush and thrilling, and I hated it almost as much as I absolutely adored it.
I scowled at him.
He finished laughing and whispered in a way that was both silken and sinister, “Yes, I very much like you.”
“Are we doing this tour, or what?”
He uncrossed his arms to raise them to his sides. “Meet the Conservatory.”
“It’s oppressive,” I told him.
“It would be. One of the four people who hung themselves in this house did it from a plant hook right over there.”
He pointed.
I looked over my shoulder.
When I looked back, he’d gotten so much closer, and he’d done it in such utter silence and with such quickness, I jumped.
“You don’t have to fear me,” he murmured, gazing down at me with a languid look in his astonishing blue eyes that I felt everywhere.
“Yes, I do.”
“And she’s smart too,” he continued murmuring.
“We’re going to make a deal right now. We’re going to give them a chance, you and me.”
“Again, if you wish.”
“I think it’s real for Portia.”
He appeared openly dubious.
But he said, “You control her money. You’re intelligent and shrewd. You’re successful and don’t need a man or your father’s money. If there’s something to see through, you’ll see through it. If her happiness means more to you than his games, you’ll give her what she wants. Then it’ll be on her. You don’t care about the money. You’ve given half of yours away already.”
Yes, he investigated me…us…thoroughly.
“You can live a long time on fifty billion dollars.”
“I’d bet half my own fortune that half of the rest of yours will be in the hands of charities in the next two years.”
He’d win that bet, so I didn’t take it.
“Are we only allowed to be in our bedrooms, the Pearl Room, the Wine Room, this room and the dining room?” I asked.
“Of course not. I’ll follow you to the hall.”
This offer wasn’t gentlemanly behavior. My ass looked great in these cords. And if I preceded him, he’d be able to watch it.
Whatever.
I led our way to the hall and stopped by the newel post.
“You get two questions here, petal,” he stated, stopping a few feet away from me.
Petal.
I didn’t like that he used the name on me that he’d used with my sister.
I let my expression convey that, he caught it, I knew because of his smirk, then I said, “You know my questions already, so answer them, please.”
“She’s Persephone, wandering the Elysian fields.”
The woman of the statue was wandering the afterlife.
How fitting for Duncroft House.
“Of course,” I muttered.
He moved away and stood what appeared to be dead center of the wide circle of the entryway.
“And she landed right here,” he stated.
Dorothy Clifton.
Another shiver.
“Do you think it was an accident?” I asked.
“That’s question three,” he told me.
I tipped my head. “Actually, that was the first question I asked.”
Something shifted in his eyes, on his face, an awareness, of me, of us, of this conversation.
It was uniquely thrilling.
He hadn’t only been testing me and giving me shit to see what stuff I was made of, he hadn’t been taking me seriously.