Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
So, when she’s fired from her job and flees home to hide from the world, she isn’t interested in anything but wallowing with a good book in her childhood bed.
She absolutely has no plans to share a drunken kiss with a completely inappropriate man at her cousin’s birthday party.
She’s definitely not interested in starting any kind of relationship with him, considering everyone thinks he belongs with someone else.
Sebastian Banks doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. After years of knowing Harper, he suddenly can’t look at her without remembering that kiss.
The chemistry between them is like nothing he’s ever experienced before.
He just has to find a way to convince Harper that taking a chance to see where things go is worth the inevitable drama that ensues.
Neither of them realizes is that a sense of failure isn’t the only thing that followed Harper home from her last job. There are forces at work that are bigger than they know.
If they don’t unravel the threads tying Harper to the danger that follows her, their chance of a happily ever after will end before it can even begin
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
Harper
My brother called me a brainiac. My parents liked to slide in little comments about grades, test scores, and eventually my career into any conversation they were having. Even my grandparents liked to mention how the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree when first my grandpa, then my mom, and then I had shown an extraordinary acuity with numbers and patterns. My intelligence was just a fact. Like my brown hair and my blue eyes. Like the glasses I’d worn since I was nine and the way I could bend my thumbs back to touch my wrist.
“You’ll find something else,” I muttered breezily as I flew around the room, packing the few items that actually belonged to me. “This isn’t the end of the world. You’re a freaking rockstar. Companies will beg you to work for them. It’s not like Paige will fire you.”
The furnished corporate apartment was still available for the rest of the week, but now that I’d walked out on my project, I was anxious to get on the road. Well, to the airport, really. I was currently driving a company-provided rental car that I’d also have to give back.
While it was pretty generous of them to give me a week to return everything, we both knew that they were trying to keep me happy. After the way they’d tried to get me to skew numbers and interpret data the way they wanted, they were lucky that all I’d done was quit. I’d signed an NDA, but that didn’t apply to criminal investigations. I’d been playing phone tag with my boss for the past four days, trying to update her on the situation, but eventually I hadn’t even felt comfortable inside their building anymore.
I’d worked for my firm for four years, but this was the first time they’d sent me to a business that didn’t actually want our help. I was a problem solver. I studied a company’s records to find where they were excelling and where they were falling short, whether it was in sales or investments or a hundred other ways. I didn’t tell them how to fix the situation, that was someone else’s job. I just followed the patterns. Numbers didn’t lie, and while you could skew them to look a certain way, there was a limit to what I was willing to fudge.
There were far more noble ways to end up in prison.
The entire situation had left a bad taste in my mouth, and I couldn’t wait to get back to Eugene.
I missed my parents and my brother. I missed being able to go out for a drink with my cousins or stop by my grandparents’ house around dinnertime. I missed the fresh air and the way the trees smelled when it rained.
I’d traveled all over the United States, sometimes staying in one place for a week and sometimes for months, but nowhere had ever felt like home. Not like Oregon.
Hurrying to the bathroom, I scooped everything off the counter into my toiletry bag and glanced at myself in the mirror. My glasses had fallen down my nose, my hair was huge, and I’d spilled something down the front of my shirt.
Super professional and polished.
At least I hadn’t looked like that when I’d gone into the office that morning and told the CEO, “just call me Max” Graber, that I would no longer be working with his company. To say he’d been pissed was an understatement. He hadn’t yelled, if anything, he’d spoken more quietly than normal—but the look in his eyes had been awful.
That look had followed me back to my soulless apartment. I couldn’t seem to shake it.
He hadn’t implied any sort of retaliation. He hadn’t even tried to convince me to stay. He’d just pointed me to the HR department and shut his office door. It was all very civil.
So, there wasn’t any real reason that I’d changed into travel clothes and frantically started packing my bags the minute I’d walked through the door. It was just a feeling. An instinct. Something in my gut that said I needed to get the fuck out of there—even if I couldn’t explain it.
I knew better than to ignore it.
Within an hour of getting back to my apartment, I’d booked a flight, packed my things, and was pulling my large suitcase and carry-on to the elevator in my building. My flight wasn’t for a few hours still, but I’d feel better once I’d returned the rental car and made my way past security.
The drive to the airport was a nightmare. Traffic didn’t seem to let up, no matter what time of day it was, so I was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for forty-five minutes. The hair on the back of my neck was still tingling, and my sense of urgency felt like a living, breathing thing as I inched forward on the freeway.