I don’t want to say her name, not here and now, when we’re huddled so close together, two royally screwed up human beings instead of a billionaire and his trophy wife, but I guess the only way out of this is through.
“Away. Somewhere else. Delaney has a video of me crashing your car. She said she’d go public with it unless I convinced you to hire her back. I couldn’t risk it. CPS could take the girls.” I reflexively tighten my grip on his hand, and he hisses. I try to let him go, but he won’t let me. “I had to do something. They won’t take the girls from you if I’m not around.”
He blinks for a few seconds, processing, and then he says, ice cold and perfectly calm, “That is not happening.”
Now he lets me go, rising to his feet and digging in his pocket for his phone with his left hand. As he stalks toward the French doors, he snaps, “Gideon—”
When he steps out onto the veranda, I can’t hear the rest of what he says. Gideon is the oldest, the de facto head of the business and the family. Everyone knows he’sconnected. Lucian has always felt like the most dangerous brother to me, but Gideon certainly has the influence to make this go away. Why didn’t that occur to me at the library? I could have talked to Kendra.
Or Adrian, for that matter.
The synapses in my brain are firing again. Of course, Adrian can handle it with a phone call. He’s a Maddox. I really short circuited when Delaney said CPS.
I nudge the blackened bouquet on the charred rug. There’s not much left to salvage. A scrap of ribbon. An iris that miraculously escaped unscathed.
Adrian strides back inside and comes to stand over me. He holds out his good hand. I take it, and he tugs me to my feet.
“You don’t have to worry about Delaney anymore. It’s handled.”
I tilt my head. It feels like a cold wind has blown all the cobwebs in my head away, and the room comes into crystal clear focus—the poker on the floor, the shattered glass on the hearth, the burnt patch on the rug. It’s like a scene from a crossover episode ofReal HousewivesandClue.
My eyes find his. He’s blanked them out, and I can’t read them anymore, but I don’t need to, either. My sense of him is working now like touch in the dark.
“I don’t think I’m okay,” I tell him. “I’m really messed up.”
“I’ll take care of that, too.”
I choke out a laugh. “That’s not how it works.”
“You’ll see.” He leads me, slower this time, out of the library to the kitchen. I lean by the sink as he gets the first aid kit. While he runs the burn under the water, he keeps me by his side with his good hand on my hip.
“We should call Dr. Farhadi to treat that burn,” I say.
“It’s not that bad.”
“The girls are with Kendra.” I’m not sure if I told him.
“I know. Martinez told me.”
“He called you?”
“Yeah. And that lawyer. Chad Masterson.”
“Drake Chambers.”
“Isn’t that what I said? You’re done with him, by the way. He sold you out because he doesn’t want to piss me off. He’s a coward.”
“The lawyer you gave me when we got married sold me out, too.”
“Well, he’s fired, too. They’re all fired.”
“All the lawyers? We don’t need them anymore? What about the prenup?”
“I told you—the prenup is cancelled. We have a new deal.”
“Oh yeah?”
He turns off the faucet and shakes his hand to dry it. I flip open the first aid kit and root around for some Bacitracin or Aquaphor.
