Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 43827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
***
“Is the girl doing okay Brady?”
“As well as can be expected I imagine.”
“How the hell did this happen, and what the hell are you doing about it?”
“What would you like me to do dad? I can’t very well challenge the boy to a duel now can I?”
“There ought to be something to be done. Can’t we get him for breach of contract or something?”
“Dad, Cami doesn’t want that, she just wants the whole mess to go away.”
I heard the harrumph that followed that statement just as I entered the study. My grandpa is one of my absolute favorite people in the world, but he can be a trial. “There you are. What’s this I hear about you shooting and missing? At least one of them should be molting at the undertaker’s.” The old reprobate glared over his half glasses at me.
“Nice to see you too grandpa, fancy seeing me from behind plate glass do you?” I leaned over to kiss his cheek and get one of his hugs that have been making everything right in my world for as long as I can remember. “I’d have got you out of the country before they ever touched a hair on your pretty little head. I can still arrange something…”
“Dad, please don’t encourage my daughter in any illegal activities. You do remember you’re still the county’s sitting judge don’t you?” That brought on another harrumph. “One has nothing to do with the other, this is personal; somebody hurt our little girl we ought to get our pound of flesh.”
“No need grandpa, I’m over it already.” He studied me like a specimen under a microscope. “Boy wasn’t worthy of you in the first place. Now how long you plan on moping around here over the likes of him? Never let it be said that the Sutherlands were brought low by that miscreant and his side piece.”
“Grandpa by any chance have you been smoking or drinking this morning?” I kept my first smile in days under lock and key. He tends to see such things as facetiousness. “A little of both why? I don’t see what that has to do with the price of beans.” Grandpa has what you might call convenient glaucoma. It only surfaces when the need for a good toke hits him, which is about twice or three times a day according to the maid mama and daddy planted in his mansion to spy on him.
The old cuss has had more than his fair share of falls in the past, but he refuses to give up the bench, or his independence, by moving into a home or here on the estate with us. So mama and daddy came up with the next best thing. He’d made a fuss to be sure but they’d stood their ground, and when that didn’t work, they’d sent me in to play on his heartstrings.
“Nothing, you just seem a little more bloodthirsty than usual that’s all.” He badgered me for the next ten minutes to be sure that I wasn’t just paying lip service when I said that I was okay, and then the talk turned to business and I was able to relax with the spotlight off of me.
“I wonder who that could be.” Daddy paced to the study door at the ring of the doorbell. I heard the familiar voice as the butler answered the door. I was trapped, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. I tried to squelch the butterflies that were running riot in my stomach and to hide the look of horror that I was sure was plastered all over my face.
I wasn’t ready to face him yet. Okay calm down Cami, no one knows but you two and he’d be daft to bring it up in front of daddy. I calmed myself as best I could and braced for my first sight of him since he’d screwed me and disappeared. I ignored the prickling of my skin, and the acceleration of my heart, I was probably just coming down with something, some kind of summer bug.
“Judge Sutherland, Camille.” He greeted us both in that snooty tone of his that made me want to smash his face in. How dare he come here like nothing happened? How dare he look so cool and unaffected when my life had been turned upside down?
“Brady you wanted to see me?” I kept my gaze trained anywhere but on him as he and daddy carried on their conversation. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. It was on one of my perusals around the room that I caught grandpa looking at me squinty eyed. I didn’t like the way he looked from Grant to me and back with a lift of his brow. He opened his mouth to say something but I waylaid the nosy old fart before he could start trouble.