Page 25 of Reckoning

“Once she’s sober enough to remember meeting you.”

I checked my watch. It was only just ten o’clock, and Madeline was on her fourth drink of the night with no signs of slowing down. She hadn’t done anything too mortifying yet, thank God. I walked behind the girls as they wandered into another room, glancing over the items I was apparently interested in buying and crossing out almost all of them. Shawn laughed at me.

“Now you just look cheap. Why don’t you reel her back in?”

I was angry enough that I’d been thinking about grabbing her by the hair and walking her out of here so I could fuck her in the back of my car. The state she was in, she’d probably let me. “You only want me to do that so Anita will come talk to you.”

“Guilty as charged. But listen, I want to talk to you about something.” He put his hand on my arm, stopping me mid stride as the girls disappeared around the corner. I had the distinct feeling of being a dog walker who had just lost the leash. Not that I had ever walked a dog in my life.

“What’s up?” I forced myself to turn and face him, ears cocked for the sound of something expensive crashing to the floor if Madeline finally tripped too hard over her own feet.

“I’ve been approached by an investor. A serious investor.”

He handed me a piece of paper with a figure on it, a number followed by enough zeros to make even my head spin. I stared at him in disbelief.

“This much? For what?”

He tore up the paper and shoved the tiny pieces in his pocket. “They have some new business they can bring to us. Someone willing to pay much more for our items than some royalty. Certainly more than the US government.”

“What’s the catch?”

“They want proceeds of sales from this group. Fifty percent.”

I nearly spit out my drink. “That’s ludicrous.”

He nodded. “That’s what I said at first. This is serious money, though. I ran some scenarios. We’ll still turn more profit than we’ll make on similar sales.”

“I assume you drew up a contract?”

He looked mildly offended. “Of course.”

“Okay. Put it on my desk Monday, and I’ll take a look.”

He nodded again, satisfied, when we heard the sound of glass shattering on the floor.

“I’m going to kill her,” I muttered as I walked as quickly as I could toward the noise, but neither my sister nor Madeline were anywhere to be seen. Two staff members had apparently collided at the entrance to the kitchen. They were currently arguing in tight whispers while shards of glass lay spread across the floor. I kicked away a particularly sharp-looking wedge.

“Thank God for small miracles,” Shawn chimed in, scanning the room with me for the girls. They were standing on the far wall, craning their necks to see what had caused the commotion. Madeline’s face was flushed; her hands were temporarily free of a drink as she twirled her long hair around a finger and held it off her neck while she fanned herself with the other hand.

“Let’s go before they actually cause the next problem,” I said, making a beeline for them before Madeline spotted me and ran away again.

When I got close enough, I reached out to touch her arm. She jerked away and stumbled against the wall, causing a few people nearby to glance over. Her eyes were completely unfocused, and she had the tilted posture of someone for whom the world was spinning faster than usual. I grabbed her, holding her up, while my free hand dug her ever-present hair tie out of my pocket. She took it from me, looking confused.

“You stole this?” She couldn’t hold my gaze. I let her go and pulled back her hair. She didn’t fight me; instead, she just held my bicep for balance. Her hand burned through my jacket.

“I found it. You almost left it behind in your effort to make it out the door ahead of me.”

Her hair was too silky. It slipped through my fingers as I tried to figure out how to tie up her hair. How did girls do this?

“I always get hot when I drink.”

“Most people do.” Her hair twisted through my fingers, tangling in the elastic.

She knocked my hands out of the way and effortlessly pulled her hair into a ponytail. “I bought a horse.”

I sighed. “No, you didn’t. I crossed it out.”

Her lower lip jutted out. “But you have a stable. We could have a horse.”

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