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He decided to cloister himself away in the garage. He’d unfolded an old camping cot and retrieved a sleeping bag from one of the large cardboard boxes stacked in the corner. In the musty, darkened space, he’d fallen into a fitful sleep.
Plagued by dreams about a girl with chameleon eyes, he’d woken up a damned mess.
He was a pitiful squatter running on empty.
He needed a plan. He required direction. There was so much on the line. But he couldn’t see past the misery of his current situation.
He strummed the guitar and glanced at the papers next to the cot.
The contract.
The damned contract.
His ticket to everything he wanted.
It never made it to the courier.
The Luxe lawyer was probably going out of his mind. Mitzi probably knew by now.
There would surely be a shit-ton of messages on his phone. But the joke would be on the lawyers and his manager. His phone was blessedly out of commission, thanks to an Italian thunderstorm.
The only way someone could get him a message was via pigeon. And that’s if they could figure out where he was.
For all intents and purposes, he’d been off the grid since returning to Denver.
He plucked the strings mindlessly, trying to piece together a melody that could save him from this agony, when his wedding band glinted in the hazy light.
The vice around his heart tightened.
He wasn’t supposed to be living in this hellscape.
He was supposed to be living the good life as a loving husband.
He’d been so sure his romance scale of devotion gesture would have washed away the timestamp on their marriage and ushered in the beginning of their forever as a family of three.
Christ, he was wrong.
He’d lost a piece of his heart when she’d gotten into that cab.
Another slice had whittled away when he saw Aria the following day.
The kid had woken up bright-eyed and raring to take a morning walk along the water’s edge with her aunt and her uncle and found only her gloomy uncle at the breakfast table. He’d manufactured a grin and told the kid her aunt had to go back to Denver early to take care of something for their new music.
It was a bullshit excuse.
But bullshit appeared to be his only currency.
Tomás and Bess had been there when he’d mumbled the words. He’d observed the concern etched on his foster parents’ faces, but he didn’t have the mental strength to make up anything better. Luckily, neither pressed for details.
And surprisingly, Aria hadn’t either.
His niece had eyed him as one would assess a science project. He didn’t have to be a genius to see the wheels turning in her head. Perhaps she’d picked up on his cardboard smile. He’d figured she would have called him out on it. Aria Paige-Grant wasn’t one to hold back. He’d braced for her interrogation, but the child had said nothing. Instead, she’d slipped her hand into her pocket, fidgeted with something, then asked Bess if she could have leftover cake for breakfast.
His pint-sized ball-buster of a niece had let him off the hook. He didn’t have the foggiest notion of why she’d given him a pass, but he was grateful, nevertheless.
He’d left a few hours later on a flight that was supposed to be the precursor to his next surprise.
With Aria missing school to spend more time in Italy with her grandparents, he’d planned a kid-free staycation at his Crystal Hills estate.
