Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 121054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
“Oh, honey.” Mom clucked her tongue. “That’s just terrible. Is Neil okay?”
“Not at all. So, please, don’t let him know that you know. We had intended to keep it private for now.”
“Yeah, no trouble.” The concern etched into her face deepened. “It’s not the ex I met at the party, is it?”
“Valerie? No.” I pretended to look at something outside, rather than meet her eyes. “It’s just someone he knew when he was in college.”
“Well, that’s just stupid. Who cares what someone did in college?” Mom’s bracelets clinked, so I knew without looking that she was talking with her hands. “Kids hook up in college, they party—”
“They pick up forty-two-year-old men in airports,” I said, just to get a rise out of her.
She wasn’t having it. “Sophie Anne.”
“No regrets!” I punched the air over my head, but ended up punching the roof of the car instead. I whimpered and shook my hand out.
“Serves you right,” Mom grumbled.
“So,” I began, smoothly moving past the subject of the book. “What do you think of the dress?”
“I think it probably costs as much as a house back home,” she said then followed immediately with, “And I think you’ll look gorgeous.”
I sighed happily and settled back against the seat.
“I just hope Neil doesn’t think you’re planning to repurpose it for his funeral,” she said, and snorted.
“Are you cracking on Neil for being old?” That was a sign of affection in my family. It warmed my heart now. I grabbed my phone and opened my notes app.
“What are you doing?” Mom asked, leaning toward me with a suspicious arch of her brow.
“I’m writing it down,” I said, my tongue darting to the corner of my mouth. “Because I can’t wait to tell Neil that you made a snark out of love, but I have to save it until after he’s seen the dress.”
* * * *
When we got home, Neil wasn’t around. Granted, our house is big enough that he might have been around somewhere and I just hadn’t run into him yet, but he wasn’t in any of his usual hangouts. I called Tony’s phone.
“Try the garage,” he suggested. “Do you want a ride out there?”
“No, I think I’ve got it.” It would be a tad spoiled of me to have our driver ferry me around the property. I bundled back up in my coat and hurried down the driveway, turning where it forked, trying not to slip and bust my ass in my form-over-function leather boots.
Neil’s garage is really more like an airplane hangar. Inside, rows of cars with names that were familiar to me—Maserati, Lamborghini, Ferrari—and names that weren’t—Pagoni, Bugatti, Zenvo—shined, their paint like wet candy under the glaring lights. My footsteps echoed off the polished concrete. The sensitive acoustics of the room helped me locate Neil by the sound of a socket wrench turning. I found him kneeling, in sweatpants and a t-shirt, beside one of his Aston Martins. He didn’t look up when I leaned against the car and looked down at him.
“Hey, I was looking for you. You weren’t answering your phone.” I lifted my gaze and saw that phone lying on the floor, not fifteen feet from him. “Do you have your ringer turned off?”
He didn’t answer. Maybe he was really concentrating, or something?
“I’m sorry, am I bothering you?” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. Something wasn’t right. Neil never just stopped speaking to me. I didn’t think he had ever been that angry with me.
He dropped the wrench and sat back on his heels. His throat moved as he swallowed before he said, “I read it.”
My heart plummeted. “Is that why you wanted to be alone today?”
“No. I had therapy. That wasn’t a lie.” He still hadn’t met my eyes, and the uncharacteristic timid note in his voice alarmed me far more than any smashed wine bottle ever could.
I didn’t know what to ask him that wouldn’t be massively intrusive, so I settled for, “Is there anything you’d like to tell me about it?”
“No!” he barked emphatically, whipping his gaze to me finally. “Sophie, I need you to do something for me.”
His expression was so desperate and pleading that a chill crawled up my spine. I just barely nodded, frozen in my shock. “Sure.”
“I need you to tell Emma.”
I swallowed. When had my throat gotten so dry? “Um, tell her…”
“Tell her what happened. No details, please.” He hung his head in misplaced shame that only intensified my anger at the bastard who’d done this to him. “Please. Just tell her the truth, without being descriptive, and tell her not to read the book.”
“Don’t you think Valerie should tell her? It might be better coming from her mother.”
“I don’t want Valerie to talk about this with her. I don’t want Valerie to talk about it at all.” He picked up the socket wrench again and weighed it against his palm then leaned forward as though he would go back to work. He didn’t, though. He just sat there. “She told Elizabeth, only a few weeks after I proposed to her, about what had happened between Stephen and me.”