Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 122440 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 612(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122440 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 612(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
This time, he sank down into the chair she’d occupied, taking her with him so that she was pressed to his side. He curved his arm around the back of the chair, his fingers settling under her fall of hair to massage the nape of her neck.
“You have a couple of different things going on here, Harlow,” Rainier said. “I think you’re well aware of it, but you don’t want to deal with it.”
She flashed him a small, rueful smile. “You’re right, Rainier. I didn’t always look at them these last few months.”
“The ones you received from Bale Landry were worded very carefully so they can’t be considered death threats. He was ugly and nasty as only Bale can be, but he didn’t threaten your life.”
“Just my reputation, but that doesn’t seem such a sacrifice. My father’s managed to trash that already.” She tried not to sound bitter. Or tired. But she was both.
She knew Shabina’s father had actually attempted to hire an assassin to kill her when she was a teen and had been kidnapped. Another time, he did his best to make her appear insane enough to be hospitalized by gaslighting her. Shabina’s father was a nightmare. Stella’s had been a convicted serial killer. Vienna’s refused to even acknowledge her as his daughter, and he’d used her as bait to draw out a killer. Raine’s father had been a mobster, and her entire family disowned her after he’d been murdered. Zahra’s father had sold her into a marriage with a man who demanded she obey his every word or be beaten severely.
“Sheesh, Wilder. I think all of my friends and I have daddy issues.” Despite the gravity of the situation, she burst out laughing. “Poor Rainier has to deal with all of us.”
Rainier’s eyes smiled so briefly she barely caught it, but it transformed him from a hard, tough, unbending man to a warm and caring one. She realized Wilder was like him. Zale and Sam were like him. They were all cut from the same cloth. It was no wonder she and her friends were attracted to similar men.
“I consider it a privilege,” Rainier said. “Wilder’s a different matter. Looking after him is a full-time job and much more annoying than it should be.” The trace of humor in his voice tipped her off to the fact that Rainier felt affection for her man.
She sent Rainier a genuine smile, for the very first time feeling true camaraderie with him, the way she did with Sam. That surprised her. She had never considered that Rainier would grow on her, but he had.
“You’re supposed to be on my side, Rainier,” Wilder said, not sounding in the least perturbed.
Rainier’s expression had gone back to that hard, tough man who didn’t pull his punches. “Getting back to Bale. He even worded his threat to your reputation carefully. He’d claimed he’d heard rumors about you and warned that if he heard them, others would too, and you might lose your nursing license.”
“He should get together with the senator,” Harlow said. “That sounds like his threat.”
“The senator is an entirely different matter,” Rainier said.
Wilder tightened his fingers on the nape of her neck as if knowing any mention of her father utterly destroyed her peace of mind. She found comfort in his presence. His strong fingers dug into the knots in her neck, easing the tension out of her.
“Yes, well, he always is.”
“We have a solid wall around you, Harlow,” Wilder assured. “He may come here. We can’t prevent that, but he won’t get to you.”
She hoped he was right. “We’ve dispensed with Bale’s idiocy, and you’ve warned me the senator will most likely come here, which I already knew, so why are we really talking?”
Rainier pulled a sheaf of papers from the inside of his jacket. “This person isn’t playing around. He started out sending you hate mail, and his language and threats worsened with each letter. The earlier letters were mailed from a small Texas border town. The words and symbols were cut out of a very popular magazine that is both online and in print. The words cut out and pasted on the sheet of paper were all from the same publication. Unfortunately, as the threats have increased, the sender is no longer mailing the letters to you. Someone is delivering them in person to your mailbox.”
That was scary. It hadn’t occurred to her that whoever hated her so much would be close enough to deliver the letter in person. “Do you know who it is?”
“I had cameras installed in anticipation of another letter, and one was delivered yesterday by a woman. Guadalupe Brown. Do you know her?”
That didn’t make sense to her at all. She had known Guadalupe for the entire time she lived in Knightly. “Yes. Why would she be sending me threatening letters? We’ve always been friends. At least I thought we were.”