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She hadn’t meant to, but it stung.
Before Pepper, my life had routine and purpose, but it had been dull. I felt . . . empty. As if something had been missing. A Pepper-shaped hole. To go back to that would be worse than anything else I’d gone through in my life. When did she become my world? Why would I ever want to go back to that time of loneliness?
I tipped her chin up so she was forced to look at me. This beautiful and brave woman.
“I don’t.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Pepper
I don’t havetime for this.
Yet here I was in the elaborate lobby of the office of Kane Zegas, one of the most high-profile attorneys in the city.
“This isn’t necessary,” I whispered.
Teague was undeterred as he held my hand. “That SOB who sent you that letter won’t know what hit him after Zegas is done with him.” He squeezed my hand. “Daniel said that. Not me. And he’d know.”
I appreciated how they’d all rallied around me, but I didn’t like dragging the Elliotts even deeper into my problems. When it came to the dogs, there was nothing I wouldn’t do, my pride be damned.
But this was personal.
And embarrassing.
I had a family who never wanted me, and yet, they expected me to pay their bills after they were dead.
They didn’t have the decency to ask me for money when they were alive. Well, not since I’d left town.
There was a dull ache in my chest that hadn’t gone away since I’d read that letter.
The news that my parents had been alive all this time still seemed impossible.
Where had they been? Why had they left me with my aunt? How had they stayed away?
Aunt Sally barely spoke of them. There’d been a few pictures around her house, and that was all I’d known of the two people I thought died in an accident on a lake right after I was born.
Had the whole town known they weren’t really dead?
No wonder they all thought I was a fool.
Stupid Pepper was too dumb to realize her parents had abandoned her, not died. Because nobody wanted her. Not even her aunt.
Why had my aunt bothered to raise me? She didn’t want me. And now I’d likely never know the answers to any of it.
They were all dead.
This time officially.
“What’s running through your head?” Teague’s voice was deep and soothing and not judging. His concern was in every syllable.
“A million questions.” I wanted to pull my knees to my chest, but it wasn’t appropriate to put my shoes on the expensive leather of the chair. “Do you think my parents were in town the whole time?”
“No. Someone would’ve said something to you.” The sympathy on his face caused me to turn away. “People can’t keep their mouths shut.”
Deep down I knew he was right, though part of me wondered if the whispers behind my back had been about how I wasn’t an orphan but abandoned.
“Come with me.” A man in a pinstripe suit strode through the glass front entrance. He exuded confidence and power. His gray hair was peppered with streaks of black. He was strikingly handsome, probably knew it, and didn’t seem to care.
