Page 21 of Rosabel and the Billionaire Beast

Bills, bills, bills.

And look, whaddya know? More bills.

Could medical care really cost that much? Medicines, doctor visits, in-home care—it all piled up faster than dirty laundry. Pair that with the debts Dad had accrued before all of this had happened—he’d decided to get a Master’s Degree and had gone back to school at the ripe age of fifty-nine and hadn’t yet paid off the students loans—and I was barely keeping my head above water trying to manage both my finances and his.

Now, I’d gone and quit my job.

“I know,” I told Dad, turning off the burner on the stove and moving the pan away from the heat so the steaks didn’t burn. “You’d tell me not to put the cart before the horse. You alwaystold me to slow down. Be deliberate. Don’t make major decisions based on feelings.”

This decision had been unequivocally impulsive and feelings-based. Duncan had looked smoking hot and had been acting like he was all that and a bag of chips. Walking in on him with his shirt off and seeing every single gorgeous ridge of his muscles? I could have sworn steam hissed from my ears.

With a fetish for martial arts, the man worked out on the regular, got in fights on purpose, and put all other shirtless men to shame.

Too bad his interior wasn’t as pretty as his exterior.

I hated when he put on his bossy pants—appealing as his attire always was—and used his status to lord things over me. To throw quitting at me like that, as though he didn’t think I’d do it. Ha!

I had to let him know he didn’t own me. I had to let him know he couldn’t manipulate me.

So I did. And I couldn’t forget the look on his face. He’d gaped at me as if I’d just confessed to stealing all of his money like the villains at the end ofScooby-Doowhen the bags were pulled off their heads to reveal who they really were.

“He’ll get over it,” I muttered.

I’d find something else. It would be easy. It wouldn’tpayas good as Duncan Hawthorne did, but who needed a large income anyway? Pfft. Money was for the birds.

I retrieved the plates from the cupboard and dished up the steaks and broccoli.

“There’s something else bothering me about Duncan,” I muttered, staring at the cupboard door.

The look in his eyes wouldn’t leave me alone. He had alluring eyes. Soulful. He was smart, and every glance reflected his intelligence, even when he was being his nasty self.

Today, though. Today his chest wasn’t the only thing that had been stripped bare. His gaze had lost whatever mask he always wore. It was almost like he was hiding something from me. Something he’d wanted to share. Something he held himself back from revealing.

When I’d told him I was quitting, he’d looked tortured. He’d looked desperate. The vulnerable emotions had lasted only moments before vanishing and being replaced by his usual venomous intent, but it’dbeen there.

I shook it away.

“Don’t imagine a heart in that copper chest,” I muttered, digging into the drawer for utensils.

During my musings, Dad stood and wandered into the living room. I followed, guiding him from his recliner back to the table once more.

“We’re eating in here, Dad,” I told him.

It took some coercion to get him to sit down again. Finally, he did. I offered a quiet prayer—not only in gratitude for the food, but a plea for help to get me through the mess I’d made.

“If only Mom was around,” I told Dad, cutting into his steak first and then mine. Then again, if she were here, Duncan was the kind of man she would have warned me away from.

Dad stared at his plate for at least a full minute before lifting his fork and taking a bite.

I sighed. Mom would have known what to do. She would have told me I was better off. She would have lectured me for not leaving my job sooner.

But she wasn’t here. She’d passed away over a year ago.

My parents had struggled with conceiving and didn’t have me until Mom was much older. Neither of them had seemed to care in the slightest about the age difference between themselves and other parents. They’d called me their miracle baby, andI’d been raised with the perfect combination of love, kindness, affection, and firmness.

I’d never thought anything of their age, not until Dad’s Alzheimer’s had struck in his sixties. Gradually, he’d lost interest in woodworking, in seeing friends. He’d become confused and had difficulty telling one color from another.

Little by little, I’d watched the disease take its toll. He was closer to seventy now, and the emptiness in his eyes broke my heart.

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