Page 21 of Bitter Secrets

She shrugged. “I’m just saying, if you can handle him, you can do anything.”

Sarai pursed her lips. “I have dabbled in something…”

“What?”

Sarai looked a bit sheepish as she admitted, “Writing.”

She sat back. “Well, shit.” Now it all made sense.

“I’m not serious about it,” Sarai said quickly. “I just have ideas and I jot them down from time to time.” Sarai looked down at the table and scribbled an invisible message on the table with her finger before she asked, “Can I ask about your stats?”

Sarai ignored her scowl and plunged ahead.

“You make seventy percent in royalties and I imagine you sell a couple hundred copies a day. Or is it thousands? Either way, that means you’re averaging around…”

She threw her hands up. “Oh my God, you sound like my sister.”

Sarai lit up. “Which one?”

She nearly did a facepalm. “You’ve researched them too?”

“Of course.”

Sarai’s interest in her and her family was starting to unnerve her. “You have Ariana’s personality, but Colette’s brain.”

Sarai looked touched. “Aww, that’s so sweet. I’ve been following your sisters’ careers for years, even before I met Roth or read you. The year Colette took over Hennessy & Co, she did that deal with Malcolm Smith. She doubled her profit that year. My dad told us to be more like her, but…” Sarai shrugged. “We’re different people. I can’t imagine the pressure Colette feels from both parents. It’s a lot to live up to.”

“That’s an understatement.”

From what she had seen of Colette’s mother, she was just as cold, detached, and disapproving as Maximus. Colette’s mother left her with Maximus and moved onto her next marriage and never looked back. Being the heir of not one but two massive fortunes pushed Colette to the breaking point as she tried to prove she was worthy of both legacies. Colette had a swarm of step and half siblings on her mother’s side trying to sabotage or use her to get ahead. It made the Hennessys look downright civilized. When Colette’s mother died, all hell would break loose.

“And you?”

She pushed away thoughts about whether Colette’s mother had seen Polara and refocused on Sarai. “What about me?”

“You didn’t try to meet your father’s expectations.”

She felt that niggle in her chest, that uncomfortable sensation of being put on the spot by someone she had let in a little too close. She learned to keep people at bay, not because she was a snob, but out of necessity. Not many could understand the unspoken rules of their world and what was required of them to keep up appearances. Sarai knew because of her background, but she was pushing her luck.

“I tried at first,” she said in a quelling tone Colette would have been proud of. “But being compared to my sisters, I had no chance. I have no talent for the business world.”

“You broke the mold and created your own world,” Sarai agreed. “By the way, are you still going to publish under Minnie Hess? My favorite on that side is your young adult fantasy novels. I’m waiting for book three.”

She relaxed. Minnie Hess was a much safer pen name to discuss. It wasn’t half as popular as Thalia Crane, and was pure fiction with nothing borrowed from her personal life. She hadn’t written under that name since she started writing about the affair, but she vowed that one day she would go back to it.

“I’ll continue that series once I finish this one.” Her brows arched. “I don’t know how I’m going to accomplish that when I get woken up at three in the morning and dragged across the globe. Where are we going anyway?”

“London.”

She glanced at Roth as the irony of that struck her. She hadn’t visited London since she walked out on him, and now she was returning with his ring on her finger. At least this time, she already knew they were doomed to fail.

Roth opened his eyes and stared at her, aware and alert. She immediately looked away, mortified to be caught staring at him like a creeper. Oh, God. She hoped he didn’t think she was mooning over him. That’s the last thing she needed; him thinking she was falling for him again.

As he got to his feet and stretched, she noticed Sarai had a foolish grin on her face. She scowled back. What the hell was so funny? She was so focused on ignoring him that she didn’t realize he had closed in until it was too late. She yelped when he picked her up, took her seat, and draped her sideways on his lap. Sarai pressed her hands to her chest, clearly touched by the spectacle Roth was making of them.

“There are other chairs,” she pointed out.

Sarai’s dreamy expression vanished and her mouthed dropped open in outrage.

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