AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How do you know all that?”
“We hired a detective to give us the basics on your schooling and background, but your place says a lot about you.”
“You hired someone to spy on me?”
Cody raised a brow at her incredulous and shocked tone. “I didn’t want Nate to walk into the situation blind. We had a ton of questions and no answers for why Jessica would hide his child from him. We wanted some basic information. Nate was desperate to know anything and everything about you. What was in the file is nothing compared to what I’ve already learned from simply meeting you and seeing your place. The garden is well tended and thriving because you put a lot of hard work and heart into it. The pictures of you and your friends all show you smiling and happy. You don’t care so much about their family background and bank account balance, like your mother, but that they’re good people.”
She appreciated that he saw more than the surface, but... “How can you tell that from a picture?”
He went back into her room and brought the picture that was on a table near the windows. He set the picture on the counter beside her suitcase and stood very close to her, like he liked her right beside him. For a second, she thought he sniffed her, but dismissed it.
He smelled fantastic. Something light, like lime, sunshine, and rain.
“Look at the picture.”
She’d rather look at him.
“What do you see?”
“Me and four of my closest friends on graduation day. We’d just gotten our diplomas.” She looked at all of them wearing their caps and gowns, arms around each other’s shoulders with their diplomas grasped tightly in their hands. The culmination of four very hard years of study.
She really needed to stop working so much and spend more time with them.
“But, if you look closer, you’re the only one wearing dime-sized diamond earrings and five-hundred-dollar shoes. The others have nice, but inexpensive jewelry. Their shoes and clothes don’t come from a high-end boutique.”
She raised a brow. “How do you know that?”
“I have an ex who liked expensive things.” He didn’t look happy about her, or like he wanted to talk about it, so she left it alone.
“So what if they didn’t come from wealthy families like mine?”
“Exactly.” Since she wasn’t packing, he started for her, pulling down several pairs of slacks from the rod, taking them off the hangers, and placing them in the suitcase. “Your mother has spent her life looking down on others because of what they don’t have. It’s one of the reasons she left your father. You aren’t like that at all.”
“One of the reasons?” She definitely wanted to know what other reasons he knew about.
“We both know your mother wouldn’t have stayed with your father, even if he had been suitably rich. She’d have found another reason to end the relationship. She always does. Her four marriages prove that.”
“Five, now.”
He nodded. “I stand corrected.”
“I don’t like being reduced to just another file on your desk.” She watched him toss three pairs of jeans on top of the four lightweight sweaters he’d added to the suitcase.
Cody held her gaze. “You’re a hell of a lot more than a few facts in a file.”
They stared at each other across the counter with her suitcase between them for a long moment. She wanted to think the looks he’d been giving her meant something, but ultimately concluded that his relationship to her father meant he had a vested interest in making sure she wasn’t out to hurt Nate. “Tell me about your relationship with my father.”
“I’ve known Nate since I was six. I owe him more than I can ever repay. My loyalty to him made me come here with the intention of making sure you weren’t like your mother.”
“Spoiled. Selfish. Greedy.”
“Exactly. But now that I’ve met you, it’s going to be my pleasure to take you to see him. You are going to make him so happy.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because you’re a woman worth knowing. Because you have everything, but what you value can’t be bought. You live a charmed life, yet you know what it feels like to be abandoned, lied to, and hurt down to your core.”
“You don’t even know me.”
