Page 21 of Evil Queen

“Oh, yeah,” he replied. “He called me from an unknown number, and no matter how long it took me to answer my phone, it just kept ringing and ringing.”

“Yeah, that’s a common telemarketer’s tactic because so many people will just let the call ring out. Debt collectors, too, because missed calls read differently than declined calls, so they want customers to either decline or answer.”

Nathan pulled a little water up over my chest, and I breathed in the warm feeling of it washing over me. “Wow. I had no idea. How do you know that?”

“That’s how my grandma made her millions,” I replied. “Her company buys and sells old debts. Those debts that most companies would write off or ignore, her company buys them out and then goes through the painstaking process of entering into litigation against the debtors. Most people think that’s too much work unless the debt is over a certain dollar amount, but she knew it could pay off because if the debtors didn’t show up for court or respond to the subpoenas, she could collect all of the debt plus interest, whereas most debt collectors settle.”

“Wow,” Nathan replied. “I knew she was in finance, but I didn’t know it was all of that.” He went quiet for a minute. “You know a lot about it.”

“She taught me a lot about it. I think, ultimately, her plan was to train me to be in the company, but I don’t know. It’s too many numbers and stuff for me. It’s not my field.”

“Do you think she’d sell it to me?”

I twisted my head as far as I could to look back at Nathan. “The company?”

“Yeah. My dad’s business is similar, but not in debt collection. I think there’s an untapped market there, though. We have the manpower for it, plus we have an entire legal department. You could oversee it, but you wouldn’t have to be directly involved.”

My heart started to beat so fast that I thought it was going to start blending the bathwater. “I-I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to her about it.”

He must have noticed my hesitation. “Oh, yeah, and I know we have a lot going on right now, so don’t worry too much about it. Just thinking about the future. When I brought running the company with me up to Deon, he hung up on me.”

“That’s rude,” I said.

“Yeah, but I guess I can’t blame him.”

“Why, did you say something nasty to him?”

“Not in particular. We, uh,” he chuckled, “we ended up reconciling a bit, I guess.”

“Reconciling how?”

“Well, we just sort of talked about everything. About how wrong things went with Cherri, about how I felt when he left and went back to North Postings, and about me approaching him when he first came back to school this year. Things got really messed up and crazy between us, and most of it was my dad.” The sigh that left his lips after that was warm. “He did it begrudgingly, but he admitted that he loved me as his brother and said he probably would have tried to patch things up if I hadn’t gone in so hard at him when he first showed up, so there’s me making even more mistakes.”

“You couldn’t have known that,” I replied.

“Yeah, but I also didn’t really have any reason to behave so aggressively. I mean, I’d already done what I thought would hurt him the most.” He started to laugh. “Although, he told me he probably would have forgiven me for that, too, and been happy for us if he thought we were into each other.” I watched his hands ball into fists on either side of me. “I don’t get it. How did he end up being so much better of a person than me?”

“He’s not that much better than you.”

He laughed. “He is! He’s charismatic, and people love him. He’s so understanding and calm. When he first came to live with us, people gravitated toward us, and when he left, so did everyone else.”

“Kyle didn’t,” I said. “I didn’t.”

Nathan’s fists relaxed back into hands, which he wrapped around me once again. “No. You’ve always been by my side. Thank you, Nikki. I don’t deserve it.”

I wanted to tell him he did, but the truth was, I didn’t know if he did or not. There wasn’t much I understood for the time being except just how much I loved the guy behind me. Instead of continuing that conversation, I leaned my head back against his shoulder. “I’m getting sleepy.”

“Yeah, me too. Should we get out and go to bed?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

Nathan and I slowly worked our way out of the bath and dried off before climbing into his bed. It was more comfortable than any bed should be, even more so when I had Nathan’s arms wrapped around me, holding me close. He had dozed off within minutes, and I allowed myself one final night of sleeping with him next to me. As much as I knew I should get up and leave, I was hanging onto Nathan for dear life, and I didn’t want to let go. With my brain pretending as if there was nothing standing between Nathan and me, my eyes grew heavier than my heart, and I slowly but surely drifted off to sleep.

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