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It didn’t look so big and grand to him now. Not after being accepted into the Bond family.
He was so lost in his own world as a kid and where he lived that it never occurred to him how much bigger it was outside of Scranton.
The three of them got out and went to the door. He rang the bell and expected Lara’s mother or father to answer. He didn’t expect it to be Lara in the wheelchair.
He wasn’t prepared for the sight of her.
She hadn’t changed much other than there were lines in her face from years of bitterness.
She was still thin. Her nails were professionally done; her makeup was applied thickly like always. Her hair was done too as if a stylist attended to her daily.
After the call with her, he’d expected her to be someone that let herself go. That didn’t care about life or anything. The way she kept spewing hatred toward him made him feel as if he had ruined everything.
But what he saw was a girl who was still in fashionable clothing and had expensive jewelry on her hands.
“Come in,” Lara said. She hit a button on the wheelchair to back up. He shut the door thinking that maybe she didn’t have much movement in her arms.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet with us,” he said.
“Of course,” Lara said. “Let’s go do business in my father’s office. My parents are out of town this weekend. My father won’t care.”
He looked at Hailey as they followed Lara down the hall. She was far from helpless if she was in the house alone. It was not the impression he was made to feel by their earlier conversation.
He looked around her father’s office. He’d never been allowed in here as a kid. He was barely allowed in the front door when he picked her up.
Lara wheeled over to her father’s desk, picked up her laptop and set it on her lap, then opened it up. She had full use of her arms and hands.
“Listen, Lara. You do know what you’re doing isn’t legal, right?” he asked. “You’re trying to get Grace’s family to pay you money so that you won’t cause problems for something you did when we were kids.”
“It’s your fault,” Lara snarled.
“You were driving,” he said. “You always drove too fast. I even tried to warn you not to go.”
“You see it your way and I see it mine. You walked away free and clear from everything. You can walk. You got the career you wanted. You even got out of here.”
“I’m sorry you ended up in a wheelchair,” he said. “No one wanted that. No one wanted any of this.”
“That’s right,” Lara snapped. “I’ve been stuck here at home while my mother babies me because she doesn’t want me to live alone.”
“But they left you alone for the weekend?” Hailey asked curiously.
Lara narrowed her eyes at Hailey. “There is a housekeeper. She’ll be over later tonight so I’m not alone at night. You know, in case I want to get drunk and they think I’ll fall out of my chair.”
The way she was laughing told him that it might have happened more than once.
“What is it you want?” Lincoln asked. “What are you trying to accomplish here?”
“I want the payday I never got. I want to get the hell out of this town and start over.”
“No one says you can’t do that now,” Hunter said. “You’ve got a job. Looks like you’re living here, so probably not a lot of bills.”
Lincoln was thinking the same thing, but he could tell she was probably spending her money on material possessions like she always did.
One big payday would take care of that in her eyes.
“Nope,” Lara said. “I want what I never got. I can get it from you. I think it’s fair. Lincoln gets to go on and have a family. Not me. I’ll never walk again. I’ll never have kids. All those things normal people get, I won’t.”
“And you think blackmailing my girlfriend’s family is going to give you that?” he asked. “All these years you could have come after me and never did.”
