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ChapterTwo
Five minutes after her arrival home, Devon’s head whirled. First the job—regardless of how it had come about—and now a proposal?
“Should I take your speechlessness as a yes?” he asked, sliding a gorgeous, cushion-cut diamond from a tiny blue box.
“Oh, of course! Yes!”
Grinning, he slid it onto her finger, kissed her hand, and rose to his feet, drawing her closer while lowering his head for a kiss.
Devon closed her eyes and smiled against Ted’s lips.
A bell dinged.
Devon drew back with a small groan and heard her cell phone ding again. “I’m sorry. I forgot to turn it off.”
Ted kissed her again but released her when it sounded a third time. She bent to find the phone in her purse. “There,” she said, silencing the call without looking at the caller ID.
Devon tossed the phone back into her bag, but within a few seconds, it began buzzing again. “Well, someone is persistent.”
“Answer it,” Ted said, “while I open the bottle and get the celebration going.”
Devon pulled her phone out of her bag just as it began to buzz a fourth time. She frowned at the screen, seeing her twin sister’s name. “Hey, Dara. Now’s not a good time. You’ll never guess—”
“I texted you an address,” her sister said, cutting Devon off. “A helicopter will pick you up from there in forty-five minutes.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Devon asked.
“Dad’s been in an accident,” Dara said, sounding rushed as she spoke. “He’s critical and in transport to the hospital. It’s bad, Dev. Really bad. The woman he was with died at the scene. I’m working out of town but heading out now to meet up with you. We’re taking the Guardian Group jet so we can get to Wilmington faster.”
“Wait, what? Stand still, you’re moving around so much I can’t understand you,” she said, meeting Ted’s gaze from across the room. “Did you say… What do you mean, the woman he was with?”
The noise on the other end stopped, indicating Dara had taken Devon’s advice to stop moving. Still, the emotion in Dara’s voice grabbed hold of Devon and rocked her to her core.
“Dev, Dad was caught—literally—with his pants down. The woman… well, while he was driving.”
“What?”
“Dad lost control and hit a vehicle head-on. Inside was freaking Oliver Beck, of all people.”
Devon sucked in a sharp breath. “The actor?”
“Yes! He’d just left a fundraising event and was in full view of the media when it happened, and Mom is about to find out all the gory details.”
“How do you know the gory details?” she said, struggling to focus with the onslaught of information and TMI she’d just received.
“Because one of our former guards is now Oliver’s head of security and was driving. He’s fine, but when he got to Dad and pulled his ID, he recognized the name and remembered I’m from the area, so he called me at the scene.”
Devon couldn’t process the details fast enough. This couldn’t be happening. “What does Mom know?”
“Only that Dad was in an accident. Look, I’ve already contacted the Babes and asked them to isolate Mom until we get there, but the reality is she could see or hear something at any moment. Get your stuff and be at the address I texted you. I’ll meet you in DC, and we’ll go to Wilmington from there.”
“I-I… Of course.”
The phone clicked in her ear and Devon’s knees buckled beneath her. She sank onto the edge of the couch, nauseous and wanting to hurl whatever might be in her empty stomach.
“That sounded ominous,” Ted said, looking concerned as he made his way back to her side. “What’s going on?”
She closed her eyes and repeated what Dara had told her. “My poor mom. I can’t even imagine… I have to go pack.”
