Page 54 of Fake Wife
Fuck my father and his company.
I couldn’t give a shit if I ever step foot into the damn offices again. Why tonight is the tipping point, I don’t know.
I’m seething in the elevator ride up to the penthouse, handsomely provided by my trust fund. But fuck that, too.
I’m fucking thirty-two years old and I will be the man I want to be, not the man I’ve been groomed to be.
Next to me, Teagan is quiet. She huddles close, and thank God for her. I don’t know why and I’m not asking. I don’t give a shit why I feel so damn good when I’m so close to her, but I like it.
Had it not been for her earlier, after seeing the waste of a robotic woman my mother has become, I might have driven straight to Jill’s house where my father always spends his weekends and nights when he’s not actually working, and throttled him to death. Somehow, Teagan took all the fury boiling in my chest, dug her face into my shoulder, and held on to me like she’d evaporate if I wasn’t fused to her.
The elevator doors ding and open and I stalk out, keys at the ready. I throw open the door to my condo and toss the keys onto the table.
Shoving my hands into my hair, I look around, hating everything in the damn place except what’s been made by my own two hands. All of it can go besides a few special pieces and other items I mentally catalog.
“I need to make some calls,” I snap at Teagan, not meaning to, but too lost in plans to stop myself. “I’ll be in my office.”
“Okay. Do you need a drink?”
She’s at the doorway to the kitchen, beautiful in a bright blue dress. It dips into a deep V, baring enough cleavage that my dick went hard as soon as I saw her. A wide swath of fabric makes her waist look tinier than it is, and then it flares out to just below her knees. It’s fancier than I know she normally wears, fancier than necessary for a dinner with my mother, but it matches her new ring perfectly. She could be wearing a linen sheet wrapped like a toga and she’d still be beautiful. It’s not the way she looks that’s so damn attractive, even though every day I’m around her the urge to get her beneath me increases exponentially, it’s the fact that she seems toknowme.
Like now, standing far away, there’s nothing but a gentle strength radiating from her, waiting to help. To comfort.
But hell if I want comfort. I want to grab her and tangle my hand in her hair and slam my mouth to hers and dive my dick inside of her to expel all the fucked-up bullshit slamming against my skull.
Bad idea. Not now. When I take Teagan, when she comes to me, I’m taking her because she’s giving herself to me, not because I’m an asshole with too much shit in his head to be gentle.
“No.” I heave a breath, forcing myself to calm, but the raging waters deep inside are turning into a typhoon. “Just space, and I’ve got alcohol in my office.”
She licks her lip, her tongue swiping along her bottom lip, and then she bites down. “Okay, then.”
I stare at her, and she says nothing else. She looks as lost as I know I look like a raging beast.
“Good night, Teagan.”
I turn and walk away, head to my office, and close the door behind me. I need quiet. I need to get liquored up. I don’t know what in the hell I need, but I know it’s not what I’ve always thought it would be.
Within an hour, I’m on my second drink, forcing myself not to chug the hell out of my Johnny Walker. I need to do this right, even though I want to throw my hands in the air and shoutfuck it.
I have lists lined up in front of me, my desk looking much like my kitchen table yesterday when Teagan was in full planning mode.
Now I understand. She’s distancing herself from something—someone—who scares the hell out her.
Leave it to Lane men to scare another woman shitless.
Fuck.
My phone rings and I answer it.
“Mr. Merryweather,” I say before he can announce himself. I’ve got caller ID, but I don’t need it.
When the son of the richest man in Portland calls you at home at nine o’clock on Monday night, you call him back as soon as you can.
I won’t miss the way people jump through hoops for me.
“Thanks for getting back to me. I need your help with something.”
“Anything, Mr. Lane,” Eleanor’s lawyer replies. “Is this about Eleanor’s will?”
