AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I spotted the waiter heading for our table and carried Elizabeth back. By that time, Blaine had recovered. She sat up straight, chin up, lips moist with beads of lemon water, and ignored me completely. I might as well have vanished from the table, Blaine didn’t look past her right shoulder to glance in my direction. She focused solely on her conversation with Sienna and Elizabeth.
“—Daddy buys me a new one every year for my birthday. It’s in two months. Want to come?”
“We’d love to,” Sienna said.
“Last year, I got Paisley. I put secret notes in her belly,” said Elizabeth, the most trusting member of the Merchant clan. “I’ll show you. Daddy, where is she?”
“She’s in the car.”
She held out her hand. “Keys, please.”
She’s polite with her demands. Never let it be said my stubborn princess didn’t know her manners.
“You can give up all your secrets after dinner. Speaking of.” I slid a look to the back of Blaine’s head. “Mackenzie, weren’t you going to tell us more about you and your time at Caddell House?”
Blaine replied without sparing me a glance. “Pretty sure I wasn’t.”
My brow twitched. From daring to call me an asshole to dismissing me for blocking her clumsy advances, this kind of drama was exactly why I didn’t date below thirty.
“If you don’t wish to talk about the past, how about the future? Where will you go after you leave us?”
I might as well have spoken to the dead lamb on my plate.
Kenzie lifted her shoulders in what could have been a shrug, or she was just picking up her water. “Tricky—”
“Elizabeth.”
“—what do you say we upgrade from stuffed animals, and I sew you a leather jacket with a unicorn flying on a cloud of flames and fairy dust?”
Elizabeth gasped. “Really? Yes! Yes, yes, yes.”
My daughter climbed over Sienna and threw her arms around her. While I sat there, dropping and lifting my arm on the booth, drumming my fingers on the tabletop. Kenzie ignored me completely, and irritation welled in my chest.
“Don’t make promises to my daughter unless you intend to keep them,” I said after Elizabeth let her go, not letting her hear. “You claim you’re hopping a bus back to your old life tonight. I doubt sewing a leather jacket will be high on your list of priorities.”
For the first time in thirty minutes, she faced me. “I’d never tell a child I was going to do something unless I meant it. I was raised on broken promises— Oh, look, you succeeded in getting me to talk about my past, but that’s all you’re going to get because it’s not me who’s holding back, it’s you.
“I picked it up on the balcony with Sunny and then you confirmed it when you said how much I got to know you depended on if I was accepting Sunny’s offer. You admire me for turning down the money and walking away, when it’s the easiest decision I’ve ever made. You don’t trust me. Neither one of you has told me what you do, or what you expect me to do to flush out the dangerous psychopath that commissioned a murder.”
I raised a brow. “This is what has you riled up?”
“Yes. Why? Did you think there was another reason?”
My ego weathered the knockout blow. “You can’t expect me to spill my life’s story to a stranger with one foot out the door.”
“You can’t expect me to put my and my sister’s life in the hands of a couple of strange men who’ve proven they’re happy to lock me up in their tower when the mood strikes them. If you even want me in your tower. I still haven’t gotten a straight answer on if you want me to stay.”
“I want you to stay.”
Sienna, Elizabeth, and Rico, our waiter, paused and stared at me. I spoke louder than I intended.
“I want you to stay,” I said, softer. “Someone tried to kill my youngest brother, and they would’ve succeeded if not for you. I discovered in the worst way last night that for all my security measures, guards, informants, and men, they’re not enough to protect my family from this threat. Sole believes you can help, Blaine. I’m not in a position to refuse.”
She studied me for a long time.
“Give me a reason, Hunt.”
“We’re giving you seven hundred and fifty thousand reasons.”
“That’s why I should do this for me. Why should I do it for you?”
“Elizabeth.”
Blaine softened, smiling at her. “Alright, good answer. But I already trust her. Give me a reason to trust you.”
“Because when Lizzie was a baby and she woke up in the middle of the night, I’d turn on the psychic network while I rocked her to sleep. I like expensive cars but only one type, it’s a Rolls or it’s not worth my money. My father was a carny and he taught me to walk a tightrope at five years old. When I was very young, very drunk, and very stupid, I walked around the compound going from balcony to balcony—on the twentieth floor.
