Her lack of response irritates me more than I care to admit. I thrust my empire under the nose of a man who’d give anything to ruin it. I’m planning to stain it with so much murkiness, it may never come clean, yet she can’t comprehend a slight bend in moral obligations in a hypothetical setting.
Perhaps more than my astuteness has been awry the past couple of months.
Maybe my intuition is also crooked.
This isn’t the first time I’ve put everything on the line for a woman. I was just hopeful years of insistent advancement in both my intellect and empire would have yielded a different result.
Now I’m worried it hasn’t, and I feel like a fool.
“Not everything is black and white,” I mutter out before I can stop myself. “There’s a whole heap of gray no one pays any attention to.” Needing to leave before I say something I’ll later regret, I dip my chin in farewell, tuck in my chair, then enterMummo Kotiwithout so much as a backward glance.
24
As the sun pounds my back, my feet pound the pavement on the roads surroundingMummo Koti. Usually, I take my frustration out on a sagging boxing bag in the middle of a rundown warehouse. Since I don’t have access to the same crutch today, I threw on a pair of running shorts and a fitted shirt before bolting out the wrought iron gates ofMummo Kotilike I can outrun my annoyance as easily as I wish I could my past.
I didn’t mean to snap at Isabelle like I did. My tiredness expected her to respond to a hypothetical situation with the same impudence a real-life situation demands. No one knows how they’ll respond in an urgent situation, so it was unfair of me to expect differently from Isabelle. Now instead of feeling like a fool, I feel like an ass. If I want an honest answer from Isabelle, I need to be honest with her. I can’t do that if I place distance between us instead of bridging it.
After cursing my impudence, I cross a busy intersection before commencing the four-mile dash back toMummo Koti. It’s hot today, and with the humidity too high to register, I’m perspiring like a pig by the time the security on the main gate slows my strides from a sprint to a jog with a wave of his hand.
With Hunter pinging Col’s location less than a hundred miles from here, I can’t risk leaving Isabelle without adequate protection for even a minute. I’m unsure if she’s aware of her true birthright, but if a man like Col becomes knowledgeable, she’ll have no choice but to face the challenges of her past with an audience.
Col isn’t a man who hides the dishonors of others. He parades them for the world to see. The way he acted at Ophelia’s funeral is a sure-fire sign of this. I’d never been more mortified in my life.
“Anything?” I ask the guard.
The man with blond hair and massive shoulders shakes his head. “I forwarded the tags from the guests’ vehicles to your man as requested. He’s given every guest clearance so far.” He leans into his security hub to grab a puffed-out envelope. “But he did ask me to give you this the instant you returned from your run.”
I clear away the sweat rolling down my cheeks with my shirt before accepting the envelope. I’m anticipating for it to be a security movement sheet for Nick or an incident report for an event that occurred at the Dungeon last night. This is the last thing I anticipated, and it’s clear from the cheekiness of the prose that Hunter wasn’t the instigator of these photographs.
There’s only one man with the gall to go against me like this. He’d be on his last leg if I weren’t hiding as many secrets from him as he is for me.
“Ah. Now his chuckles make sense,” grunts the security officer when he takes in the images Hugo stuffed into the envelope. They’re glossy photographs of activities most people undertake during a weekend getaway atMummo Koti—swimming, paragliding, horseback riding on the beach, and numerous high-octane water sports. Each image has a big green tick in the corner. Only one image has a massive red cross. It’s a photograph of me crossing the intersection four miles ago. Hunter must have plucked it from the red-light camera. “He said I wasn’t allowed to look until you did.”
“Of course, he did,” I mutter under my breath before shoving the envelope into his heaving chest.
“Are you sure you don’t need these?” he asks when I recommence my sprint. I don’t need to look around to know he’s smiling ear to ear. I heard his grin in his words. It’s as showy as the one I’m sure Hugo does when the security camera dangling above the back entrance ofMummo Kotitreks my every move.
“If you have nothing better to do with your time than scrutinize me, Hugo, consider your weekends for the next six months booked.”
I angle my head to hide my smirk when the camera rips away from me so quickly, it faces a brick wall instead of the parking lot. The redness on my face from exertion deepens when my shortcut through the outdoor seating area has me stumbling onto Isabelle. She’s lying on a lounge chair, stomach down, reading while kicking her legs out. Her carefree nature fills me with gratitude. If our interaction this morning upset her, wouldn’t she be mulling in her room like Clara did the hour before I went for my run?
I take a moment to relish the prickling of the fine hairs on Isabelle’s nape before planting my exhausted backside onto a section of the lounge chair her curvaceous frame isn’t filling. When I place my hand on the small of her back to wordlessly publicize my presence, goosebumps coat her skin, and her breathing tapers.
“Phew,” I breathe out with a groan. “I was getting worried it was another Mills and Boons book.”
A blistering smile reflects off the screen of her Kindle before she rolls over to face me. Since my hand refuses to acknowledge my head’s numerous demands to maintain amicable distance between us, my fingertips brush the silky-smooth skin on her hip during her maneuver before they land on her stomach. The briefest of touches shouldn’t stimulate carnal desires, but there’s no denying them. The tension bristling between us is indisputable, and it’s taking everything I have not to act on them.
My voice exposes this without uncertainty when I ask, “What are you reading?”
“Thoughtlessby S. C. Stephens.” Isabelle breathes out slowly, her tone as amorous as mine. “It’s about two people who shouldn’t be together but are destined to be together. I’ve read the entire series three times already.” When I cock a brow, confident her comment is more a reflection of our teetering exchanges than a book, she tries to brush off her truthful remark with a bit of wit. “You don’t understand the wondrous entrapment you feel when you read about a character like Kellan Kyle. He’s my number one book boyfriend.”
Feeding off her playfulness, I mutter, “It’s guys like him who make it hopeless for a man to date these days. All girls are expecting a guy like Kell…”
“Kellan Kyle,” she fills in, her words a purr.
“Yeah, and instead, they get a guy who comes home stinking of B.O. after working ten-hour-plus days. He drinks beer that smells like it was fermented in old college socks and snores louder than the freight trains running through Philly.”
Our exchange goes from playful to downright dangerous when a giggle rumbles out of Isabelle’s scrumptious Cupid’s bow lips. It’s girly, carefree, and exposes without a doubt that her childhood wasn’t close to the norm but still typical.
