"You do?"Her forehead furrows.
"You need to see this."
She blows out a breath and follows me.I head inside, to the bedroom, take my collar from where I’d placed it on the bedstead.I slip it on, then turn to find her poised at the doorway.
Her face pales; her jaw drops.
"You’re a…a—"
"Priest."I nod.
"B…but," she opens and shuts her mouth, "you weren’t wearing a collar at the wedding yesterday."
"I’m a diocesan priest.I wear the collar when I have anything pastoral to do.I don't usually wear it when out with friends."
"I see."She shrugs off her blanket, folds it over her arm.Her gaze skitters away."I knew it was too good to be true.Of course, it is."She retreats into the living room, drops the blanket and her book on the couch and begins to pace."I mean, just once, things couldn’t be easy for me, right?Everything has to be complicated.Just this once, couldn’t things have worked out the way they do for everyone else?Of course, not."She throws up her hands."This is not fair, not fair at all."
"Are you…" I follow her as she stomps back-forth-back, across the length of the floor of the living room."Are you talking to yourself?"
"Shh.”She turns to me and frowns."I’m trying to figure this out."
"By talking aloud?"
"Hey, don’t mock it until you try it.Did you know talking to yourselfhelps you organize your thoughts?"She shoves her purple-tipped hair back from her face.
Who dyes their hair purple?Ava does, that's who.
"According to psychologists, talkingout loud toyourself helps you clarify your thoughts," she mumbles."It helps to figure out what's important, and firm up any decisions you're contemplating."
"Ah," I allow my lips to tip up, "and what decision are you contemplating right now?"
She flushes."I am not sure you want to know."
"Don’t I?"
To find out what happens next get Billionaire’s Sins HERE
Get Sinclair and Summer’s story in The Billionaire’s Fake Wife HERE
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Read an excerpt from mafia king
Karma
"Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day…"
Tears prick the back of my eyes.Goddamn Byron.Crept up on me when I am at my weakest.Not that I am a poetry addict, by any measure, but words are my jam.
The one consolation I have, that when everything else in the world is wrong, I can turn to them, and they’ll be there, friendly steady, waiting with open arms.And this particular poem had laced my blood, crawled into my gut when I’d first read it.Darkness had folded into me like an insidious snake that raises its head when I least expect it.Like now.I'd managed to give my bodyguard the slip and veered off my usual running route to reachWaterlow Park.
I look out on the still sleeping city of London, from the grassy slope of the expanse.Somewhere out there the Mafia was hunting me, apparently.
I purse my lips, close my eyes.Silence.The rustle of the wind between the leaves, the faint tinkle of the water from the nearby spring.
I could be the last person on this planet, alone, unsung, bound for the grave.
Ugh!Stop.Right there.I drag the back of my hand across my nose.Try it again, focus, get the words out, one after the other, like the steps of my sorry life.
