Page 8 of My Orc Contract Husband
“Well, poop.” Sharon frowned briefly. “Forgive my harsh language, but it’s been a while since I had my girls together.”
Rivenwaspicking up more shifts lately, and we both knew why.
Sighing, I began to spread another cracker. “How’s she doing? I haven’t been able to hang out with her that much.”
“Because she’s always working. The Waterfront is nice, and I’msoglad she was able to find a kitchen job here on the island, honestly, I am. I know Eastshore isn’t anything like the big city, and the fact she was able to find work at all…”
“Yeah, but there are no benefits.” That’s what got her into this mess in the first place.
“And the pay is nothing like she’s used to.”
I held out the finished cracker. “The debt?—”
“Is more than she’s ever going to be able to pay.” Aunt Sharon snatched it from me and popped it in her mouth. “And she won’t accept my help,” she said around the mouthful.
Sighing in frustration and commiseration with her, I played with the stem of my wineglass. “Would she take money fromme?”
My aunt made a noise between a growl and a snort, shaking her head.
“I know she’s stubborn—she gets that from you,” I teased. “But wouldn’t it be better to be in debt to me than to the hospital?”
Two years ago, my cousin—a popular and successful private chef—had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Since our family has such a history, we were all anal about mammograms, and Riven’s was caught early, thank God. But without health insurance, the cost of her treatments—lumpectomy, reconstruction, radiation—was astronomical.
She’d moved to Eastshore to live with her mother to save money during her treatments, but she wasn’t ever going to make enough to pay off the debt. Not working as a junior chef at the Waterfront.
“It wouldn’t bedebtto you, Sami, and you and Riven both know it.” My aunt shook her head as she brie’d another cracker. “You’d just give her the money, and Riven doesn’t want that.”
“Well, I don’t want her living in hell if I have the means to stop it.”
Sharon sent me a mock glare. “Hell? You think it’s hell to have to live withme? A safe place, a roof over her head?—”
I couldn’t hold a straight face anymore and began to giggle. “Oh yeah? How often does Brooke come to visit you?”
At the mention of her older daughter, who lived on the West Coast, Aunt Sharon rolled her eyes. “I don’t think evenshewould call living with mehell, you ungrateful niece.”
Still grinning unrepentantly, Ipingedmy glass against hers, where it sat at her elbow. “Brooke is just busy with her job. She visits when she’s able.”
“And one day, she’s going to move to Eastshore. Mark my words.” Sharon wiggled her finger at me. “Between the three of us, we’ll figure out a way to get Riven out of this debt.”
“She could just take money from me.”
“You don’t have that kind of money either. YouknowI’m proud of how well your business is going, but Eastshore isn’t the city. Real estate does well here, but notdiamond purses and bodyguardswell.”
“My father?—”
“Will never know about this,” Aunt Sharon snapped. Then her shoulders slumped, and she sighed. “I mean it, Sami. You cut ties with that man for a reason. Any man who wouldforcehis only child into a marriage just because it would benefit his company…” She shook her head. “He doesn’t know you’re here on Eastshore with me, and all of us want to keep it that way. And it doesn’t matter if you did have that much money—Riven won’t take it. So it’s definitely not worth getting involved in your father’s world again.”
She was right.
My father’s world…it was scary. My earliest memories of him, from when I was very young and he still smiled occasionally, were of a driven man. Once he partnered with Pierce T. Montgomery III, he became not just successful, but heartless. In his drive to own more property, to gain more money, he didn’t care what humanity he left behind.
It had taken me four years after my mother’s death to gain the courage to leave that world, and I would never forget the fury on his face and the coldness in his eyes when we would fight about that horrible marriage contract.
You’ll never amount to anything without me! If you walk out that door, you’ll starve to death, and I won’t care!
But I hadn’t. I’d hidden my tracks, planted false leads, and taken care to stay offline. I hadn’t changed my name—that would be a legal trail—but the name on my realtor business wasn’t really mine.
I was determined that my father would not drag me back to his world.
