Page 19 of Fiery Romance

Lincoln goes quiet. “You okay?”

“There’s a…” I pick up the knife and start cutting. “There’s a standard that I have for myself and for my kids. I don’t make decisions that endanger my family. And yet Regan could have walked into a bad situation and it would have been on me.”

“You knew it was just a simulation. She wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

“Still…”

“Clay, you can’t keep blaming yourself. Sometimes, things beyond our control happen.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat and change the subject. “Did you call to ask about Regan?”

“No, I called about United Bank.”

I straighten. “What about it?”

“What about it?” Lincoln mocks. “You tell me to buy a bank out of the blue and give no further explanation. The ink’s dry. Bank’s yours and I still don’t have a reason.”

I shove the chopped carrots into a bowl filled with cubed sweet peppers, tomatoes, and onions. “Revenge.”

There’s stark silence on the other end of the line.

“Lincoln?”

“You made me lose sleep and expedite this deal for… revenge?”

I smile at his outrage, having known that he would react this way.

Some would call my executive assistant the Alfred to my Batman but, in all reality, Lincoln’s more suited for the role of Batman.

He’s ex-military too with so many medals he’s practically drowning in them. War is in his blood. If not for that grenade that tore his right leg clear off, he’d probably still be in active duty.

Today, he’s my numbers and ideas guy, amassing a wealth of his own with no interest in taking it for himself. Rather, he donates most of his money to charity. Lincoln frees me up so I can keep my feet on the ground and train with the security company.

“Anya’s mother is on a warpath now that she thinks she has ‘evidence’ of my neglect,” I murmur, glancing up the stairs where Regan and Abe’s bedrooms are. “You know how hard she’s fighting for custody.”

“So the solution was, naturally, to buy a bank?”

“I can hear the sarcasm, Link.” I pour oil in a skillet, wait for it to heat and then set chicken breasts down.

“Look, I’m not saying that what your ex-nanny did was right—”

“She grabbed my child’s hair and called it ugly, Link.” My voice is hard. My fingers dig into the spatula. “Mychild.”

“I know. It’s despicable. But maybe, rather than concerning yourself with revenge on all the people who got you to this point, you should focus on hiring a new nanny. If your mother-in-law ever finds out what happened with Regan today, it’ll be way more damning than whatever sent CPS to your door in the first place.”

Unnerved, I press the spatula into the chicken breasts and listen to the oil sizzle as it fries the skin. “I’m working on it.”

“Cody told me you’d fired someone else today. Will anyone satisfy you?”

“It’s complicated. I can’t just throw money at this problem. I thought I’d hired the best and it was a mistake. Now I have to make sure that whoever takes care of Regan next is someone who’ll treat my baby like her own.”

“Only a parent would die for their child. No one else will have that level of dedication.”

“There must be someone who’d protect Regan as intensely as I would.”

“Daddy.” Regan comes down the stairs wearing a giraffe-themed pyjama set. Giraffes are her new favorite animals.

“Link, I’ll talk to you later.”

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