Page 67 of Perfect Pursuit

She trips on the squeaky-clean floor. I catch her before she face plants. “Christ. Are you raking in that kind of money at your second job? Maybe I should come to work with you instead of this place.”

My whole body shakes at the very idea of the brilliant, scholarly, Dr. Clarabel Lam answering phone calls for people who want to be spanked. She wrinkles her nose. “Yeah. Forget living at the Biltmore. I’m good at my apartment.”

I chuckle at her reaction as I take a sip of my coffee. “You know what I like about you, Clarabel?”

“I’m easing the strain of your mother’s life as part of her care team in this new clinical trial since I ran away from my life?” Clarabel shared with me not too long ago she was the head physician at a prominent charity—Send Me an Angel in New York City. What she didn’t know was that I know the charity—and its benefactor—well.

Once we realized we had that connection, we both opened up. Over the months of my mother’s treatment, we each shared our darkest secrets—mine about my second job instead of just asking Austyn for the money, hers about how her family shamed her after she broke up with her fiancé after she walked in on him cheating on her. As I told her, “Whatever the reason that led you here, I’m grateful you’re by our side.”

Still, I wouldn’t mind if Ethan went and punched out her ex-fiancé if we ever go to New York to see Austyn and her husband.

Clarabel blows across the top of her coffee. “Are you going to take it?”

“To be honest, it was a generic recruiting email.”

“Like ones from Indeed?”

“Exactly. I mean, how many of them are out there for phone sex…” I pause when one of the nurses comes in to snag a bottle of water. “Operators. You know?”

She frowns. “It doesn’t seem like there’s a huge market for that.”

“I wouldn’t think so either. Besides, nothing about my working at DL has to do with money.”

At that, Clarabel’s brows skyrocket. “It has everything to do with money. You’re just not seeing a dime of it.”

I lift my coffee in acknowledgment.

She stares down into her cup. “Are you planning on telling your boyfriend?”

“About Mama?”

“About all of it, Fallon.” Her distraught eyes meet mine. “As much as I understand why you’re doing this, what would he do if he ever found out?”

With her simple question, the airy kitchenette feels closed in. I set my coffee down before choosing my words carefully. “Ever since Austyn became famous, he’s been protective.” Not to mention his niece’s father coming back into her life, finding out his own father deceived all of them, and his beloved niece almost dying, I think to myself.

Clarabel’s eyebrows skyrocket. “And you don’t think he’d flip about this? The woman he’s claimed is getting people off on the phone for money.”

My eyes flit away. “How, Clarabel? How do I tell him?”

“You just do?”

My eyes meet hers. “How do I tell him when I swore to my mother I wouldn’t share with any of the Kensington’s until she told me it was okay to?”

She opens and closes her mouth. “Why? Would she do such a thing? Place you in such an untenable position?”

I scrub my hand across my forehead to relieve the tension as I recall her snapping the order at me before the first weekend I spent away with Ethan, when I held him and wanted to blurt out everything. “She said it’s her choice, not mine.”

“Fallon?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never broken an oath.”

“I figured as much.”

“I’ll pray for a miracle.”

“Please do.” That’s my only hope—that a miracle happens so I can quit my job at Devil’s Lair or Ethan miraculously understands. As it stands, there’s no way this ends well regardless of the fact that I love them both.

---