Page 11 of This Bitter Sweet Temptation
Just wish he’d warned me how nasty it could get with the old lake house up by Bar Harbor. I didn’t see that one coming. If Ihad, I could’ve saved poor Margot and her new husband a heap of trouble.
Oh well.
Beyond running on autopilot, though, I never got much hint of what his long-term plans were for me. This job has to end sometime, no matter how much I’ve been quietly dreading it.
When Jackie Wilkes called me in today, I was hoping for answers.
Hell, until I got the call, I just figured he was doing me a favor. Giving me a few months of easy street to get my crap in order so Kit and I weren’t left in the cold and I wouldn’t be staring down the barrel of unemployment.
Decent boss.
Decent man.
Decently tight-lipped about everything.
The fact that I’m standing down here in this chilly, climate-controlled room tells me the rest won’t be so simple.
I can’t fathom why the fuck I need to spend another second with Cleopatra Blackthorn.
Just a courtesy, hopefully. There’s still a chance the lawyer hands me my severance package on the way out.
It would be a little cruel to drag me all the way out here purely to lose my job in front of my daughter, but hell, I’m ready to move on. Also, the lawyer didn’t plan on Kit tagging along.
I’m ready, just as soon as the Nile Queen stops standing there looking flabbergasted and collects her prize. Some things never change.
What little Cleo wants, she gets, unless somebody stops her. She always comes ahead of staff like me.
“Whoa, Dad! This is just like those spy movies.” Kit exhales as we approach the second door of the vault—the one I never went past since the day it was finished.
Cleo looks at us, her full lips curling in a smile. Her cinnamon hair falls over her face with that obnoxious white stripe.
Go ahead and call me old-fashioned. Doesn’t surprise me one bit she’s grown into the punk look.
She’s grown up awfully fast, too, from a sulky girl with bad manners to a young woman who could look presentable—if she wanted.
The hair’s new, I suspect. I want to hate it.
Ishouldhate it.
Nothing about her matches my preferences.
But she always was a little heathen, and I’m no stranger to how the artsy types look here in Portland or other cities.
For what she does, it suits her.
That white streak rips through thick chestnut locks like a shooting star. Pale, fresh face with smooth skin, more mature, the baby fat gone.
Violet-blue eyes like winter twilight.
Stranger than I remember. The purple was just a small hint in the blue field when she was younger, but now it’s bright enough to make a man stop and stare.
She’s dressed like she can’t decide if she’s about to meet with her fellow art snobs in some pretentious coffeehouse or she just wants to rock the raven girl look for a day to pay her dead grandfather some respect.
Short, yet colorful nails that still look weirdly sharp. They’re light blue with vivid pink accents, close to her eyes.
Not what I expected.
Not my concern.
