I considered punching him. No one would know. He wouldn’t remember in the morning.
“Well, it ended in your apartment—
“As all dates should.”
“—so what does that tell you?”
He paused a second, before shooting back up to give me a sudden kiss on the cheek.
“I’m sorry about your date, Abby.” He dropped back down on the bed, twisting the covers around himself once more. “It’ll never happen again. I swear.”
“What?” I couldn’t help but smile. “My date? Or you interrupting?”
His eyes fluttered open then closed.
“...that’s the spirit...”
Without another word, he drifted away. Dreaming about lobsters, no doubt, and the things he could do to save them. The same things that would surely make my life a living hell.
I grabbed a spare blanket out of the closet, and curled up on a chair by the base of his bed to sleep. Kicking off my wet heels onto the floor.
Just another uneventful day in the world of Nicholas Hunter...
Chapter 5
If I was hoping for a better day tomorrow, the next morning didn’t bode well.
A throat cleared. The floor shifted. A sudden stab of light burned the backs of my eyes.
I swear, if this has anything to do with lobsters...
But it was something far, far worse. I opened my eyes to find myself in a room with not one man in the Hunter family. But with two.
“Mitchell!” I leapt to my feet in alarm, relieved as hell that, while an impromptu visit from the head of the company was never a good thing, at least my dress had finally dried. “I’m so sorry—I wasn’t expecting you!”
A pair of dark eyes swept me up and down. There was no hint of a smile.
“Clearly.”
Mitchell Hunter may have been Nick’s biological father, but the similarity between the two men stopped there. One was all light and whimsy. The other was dark. Frighteningly so.
The first time I’d been summoned to corporate headquarters (yes, summoned), I’d waited a full two hours in the lobby as a meeting ran into over-time. It wasn’t until I heard muffled crying from the conference room, that I ventured cautiously down the hall. The door was open, and against all my better instincts, I leaned forward to peek inside.
After years of shuddering at the covers of magazines and walking subconsciously quicker every time I passed by a news stand—I finally saw Mitchell Hunter in person.
It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.
He was sitting in a chair at the end of a long table, only, it wasn’t a chair the way he sat in it. It was a throne. And it had to be said, he looked the part. Tall. Compact. Silver-grey hair slicked back with expert precision. Eyes dilated so wide that they appeared almost black, and a rigid set to his jaw that spoke of a man who could never be moved enough to smile.
On the other side of the room, a group of men and women were huddled together—like passengers on a sinking ship, staring at the one man in charge of the life boats.
“Mitchell, please.”
It was one of the strangest things about him. That a man so cold and far removed from the rest of society, insisted that people still call him by his first name.
The man who had stepped forward tried again.
“If you give us one more quarter—just one more quarter,” a shattered breath caught in his throat, “I know we can make this right!”