Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 105756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
In fact, he’s given her a week to pack her things and move out.
As a resident in the home, Ada knows she has certain rights but her pride gets the better of her. If Jonathan wants her gone then she’ll go, and finding herself out of options, resorts to sleeping in her car. But she’s a survivor and has gotten through a lot worse.
After a week and still finding no apartments in her price range, Ada is getting desperate. She receives a call from Jonathan requesting she come collect some of her late father’s belongings. She doesn’t expect him to be there when she drops by, and after he takes one look at Ada’s possessions stuffed into her car she’s filled with a sense of shame. Resentment, too, because he’s the very reason her life has been upended.
Being a wealthy investment banker, Ada anticipates Jonathan’s disdain for her situation but it never comes. Instead he mentions a vacant apartment he owns and offers to rent it to her for a reasonable price. Not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, Ada accepts his offer. But what she doesn’t realise is that the apartment is right next door to Jonathan’s, and becoming his neighbour means getting to know him a whole lot better.
Quietly Yours is book #3 in L.H. Cosway's Quiet Love Series and can be read as a standalone
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Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
– The Old Astronomer to his Pupil, Sarah Williams.
1.
Ada
I didn’t expect a painting on the wall of an investment firm to make me feel so overwrought. Just looking at it had tears trickling down my cheeks.
I was normally very self-composed in public places, but I was still reeling from the news of my father and stepmother’s passing. Grief had me acting out of character. Sniffling, I pulled a tissue from my bag and dabbed at the wetness beneath my eyes.
The painting wasn’t anything like the sterile, abstract images you normally saw in places like this. Meaning practically radiated from the canvas. It could’ve been the setting from Wuthering Heights, a vast and moody landscape depicting a rolling countryside akin to the Yorkshire Dales. It made me remember Dad so keenly.
He was a voracious reader and used to say I was made to be a heroine in an Emily Brontë novel, while my sister, Frances, stepped right out of the pages of Jane Austen.
When we were children, the comparison irked me. Why was I the one who ran across the Moors in bare, muddy feet and knotted hair destined for a miserable ending while Frances sat in elegant parlours having tea, taking turns about the room while dancing joyously towards her happily ever after?
It was only years later I truly understood what Dad meant, how well he saw me back when I was too young to truly see myself. I was a Brontë character through and through, prone to bouts of emotion, my personality stubborn and my looks intense, mainly due to my untameable mop of brown hair and my dark, bottomless eyes.
My dad and I had been through our share of issues, but in the end, he was the person who knew me best, probably because we were alike in many ways. And now, he was gone. It felt like thorns were cinching around my heart, pricking the tender organ and squeezing tighter and tighter until I couldn’t stand the pain.
Up until two days ago, I’d been fine—albeit—working long hours managing a care home for the elderly and living in my dad and stepmother’s spare bedroom. In exchange for low rent, I kept the house clean, did all the grocery shopping and tended to the garden. It was hard work, but it was a good deal, especially considering I didn’t want to live on my own. I’d always hated being in an empty house or apartment. I needed the comfort of knowing someone else was nearby doing their own thing. Someone who would hear me cry out if there was an emergency, for instance.
With Dad and Leonora gone, I was no longer fine. The house was disturbingly quiet without them, and it heightened my grief while also exacerbating my phobia of living alone.
Over the years, I’d become a fearful person in certain ways, and I wondered if I hadn’t been bestowed the fate I had, if my accident had never occurred, would I be better equipped to survive alone? Would I be able to sleep alone in a house without worrying about the worst happening?
“Miss Rose?” the receptionist called, breaking me from my inner turmoil.
I glanced up, hoping she was about to tell me Mr Oaks was at long last ready to see me. I’d been waiting for over an hour, and my leg was beginning to cramp. Not to mention I felt incredibly out of place in the waiting area of the shiny corporate office building that belonged to my stepmother’s estranged son. I’d tried getting hold of him over the phone all day yesterday but was informed he was unavailable. I hadn’t wanted to come in person, but he needed to know what had happened to our parents.
He needed to know his mother was gone.
Emotion welled in my throat once again.
Two nights ago, I’d received a call from an official in Thailand. The worst call of my life. My father and stepmother had been there on holiday and embarked on a private boat tour when a storm had hit. The boat had capsized, and everyone on board had perished, except for the tour guide, who was in serious condition in hospital. Honestly, I felt like I was in a waking nightmare. It was the sort of thing that happened in movies, not real life. I was in a state of shock, but arrangements needed to be made, and I was the only one around to make them. Those arrangements included informing Jonathan of his mother’s passing.
I’d seen countless photos of him that my stepmother, Leonora, kept around the house. Through those pictures, I’d observed his evolution from an adorable little boy to a slightly gangly teenager and finally to a handsome grown man with a stern, serious sort of face. The adult pictures were well over a decade old so who knew how he’d changed since. Most likely, he’d become sterner and even more serious, if his mother’s description was anything to go by. We’d never met in person. I was pretty sure Jonathan didn’t even know I existed. He hadn’t been a part of his mother’s life for a long time, which was something I could never get my head around.