That was Addison McDowell’s credo.
It was the only reason she was at this damned party tonight. She’d promised her financial advisor and her attorney—her Texas advisor and her Texas attorney—that she’d show up, so she had.
Doing what you said you would do was The Proper Thing. And doing The Proper Thing was important. She’d stuck with that ever since she’d decided that she was an Addison, not an Adoré.
Girls who grew up in run-down trailer parks might be given that awful name, but she’d left those days far, far behind.
She had become all that the name Addison implied.
She was successful. Sophisticated. She owned a Manhattan condo. Well, she had a fat mortgage on one, anyway. She had a law degree from Columbia University. She dressed well.
Only one fly in the ointment the last few months.
Her reputation was better suited to an Adoré than an Addison, and wasn’t that one hell of a thing after all her efforts to escape that miserable trailer park and its sad heritage of silly, round-heeled women?
Addison raised her glass to her lips and took a sip of merlot.
If only Charlie had not left her that damned ranch.
If only he hadn’t died.
He’d been the best friend she’d ever had. The only friend she’d ever had. He hadn’t wanted her for her body, he’d wanted her for her intelligence, and to hell with what people thought.
Charles Hilton, the multimillion-dollar lawyer, had liked her. Respected her.
They’d begun as business associates, though she’d been only a junior member of his legal team, but as they’d gotten to know each other, Charlie had looked past the obvious: the glossy, dark hair she wore severely pulled away from her face; the silver eyes; the curvy figure she did her best to disguise within severely tailored suits.
Charlie had seen the real her, the one with intelligence and the determination to succeed. He’d become her mentor.
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She hadn’t trusted his interest. Not at first. But as she’d gotten to know him, she’d realized that he loved her as the daughter he’d never had. In return, she’d loved him as the father she’d had and lost.
And when he’d grown frail and ill, she’d loved him even more because he’d needed her, and being needed was a wonderful feeling.
There had never been anything even remotely intimate between them, unless you counted rubbing his aching shoulders near the end of his life.
It was obscene even to consider.
But blogs and gossip columns didn’t care about truth, not when fiction was so much more juicy, not in Manhattan or, as it had turned out, not in Wilde’s Crossing, Texas.
She’d kept a low profile since coming to Wilde’s Crossing, but that didn’t mean a thing.
People watched her whenever she showed up in public.
She’d known tonight would be the same, no matter what the Wilde brothers said.
People would stare. Or try to be stealthy about it.
Either way, eyes would be on her.
“Wrong,” Travis Wilde had said.
Addison sipped at her wine.
The one who’d been wrong was Travis.
She was getting lots of looks. And, hell, maybe she deserved them.