Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 35349 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35349 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
He was hoping to find something that would make taking Meghan justifiable. Instead, it only made him feel like a long line of people who’d helped her sister hurt her.
Running fingers through his hair, he was fucking pissed, and now he didn’t even have any guilt for the fact he’d put Rose to work, nor would he.
No one had made Rose pay, but he would.
Meghan was going to be treated like a queen with him.
Chapter Five
Shopping was still one of Meghan’s most hated activities on the planet. She put the last dress she’d been forced to purchase in the closet and stood back, admiring all of her new purchases in the overflowing space for clothes.
She shook her head. Half of the clothes she’d never wear, yet Rex had been determined to make her purchase them. It was like he was this weird person who forced women to do what they hated. She didn’t get it. Weren’t men supposed to be super happy at the thought of having a cheap woman who didn’t like ordering anything?
Meghan walked out of the small bedroom and immediately went to the kitchen. It was late, and she was hungry. Rex sat in the living room, flipping through a newspaper as if she didn’t exist.
Opening up the fridge, she tried to hide her gasp of surprise and happiness when she saw more than milk past its use by date. Living with her sister, buying groceries was hard to do.
Many times, she came home from work to discover her ungrateful sister had cleared out the fridge and left her with nothing but a note telling her what to buy.
Don’t let her get to you.
Thinking about her sister made her rub the tip of her foot against her ankle. The scar wasn’t so severe anymore, but every now and then, she’d get a twinge of pain. A reminder of all that she’d lost.
Her parents hadn’t believed that Rose had hurt her on purpose, but she knew the truth. Rose had hated her dancing, at being good at it.
Once again, she pushed those thoughts out of her mind. Her parents had told her many times that anger and resentment only made for bitter companions, and she needed to know when to keep her thoughts to herself. Rose was still and would always be her sister.
She grabbed some chicken out of the fridge along with some pine nuts. She couldn’t believe Damon freaking Travers had pine nuts in his fridge. They seemed like such a fancy ingredient, and he had them. She’d already noted the parmesan cheese, garlic, and basil.
Simple, chicken and basil pesto pasta it was.
She loved cooking, or at least, she used to enjoy it in the kitchen with her mother.
Every single year, her mother would bake the best cookies in the world, and they’d always, without fail, be a mega-treat. Whenever Meghan cooked or baked anything, it always reminded her of her mother and helped her to stay calm.
One day a few months back, she’d had a splurge, purchased the flour, sugar, eggs, chocolate chips, and pecans, determined to make her mother’s cookies, only she’d arrived after classes and found Rose, with one of her many boyfriends, had had a food fight. The eggs were cracked all over the floor. Flour and sugar sprayed everywhere and they’d eaten the chocolate chips.
Afterward, Rose had told her not to be so upset or uptight and to consider it a gift because her ass was ever-expanding.
Her size sixteen ass wasn’t a problem though, not to her.
Once again, she’d spiraled down bad memories, and now she felt like shit.
Don’t let her get to you.
You’re better than that.
Pushing those thoughts aside, she focused on preparing the chicken. She placed all the ingredients for the pesto into a food processor, and started to whizz it up as she drizzled in some extra virgin olive oil. She didn’t add too much because she loved to add a zing of lemon juice. To her, it always brightened up the pesto.
The moment it was finished, she had a quick taste, and then added a spoonful to the chicken, smooshing it in the bag to marinate for a few minutes.
She was bringing a large pot of water to boil when Damon finally arrived home.
He came to the kitchen and watched her.
“I hope this is okay,” she said. “Dinner shouldn’t be too long now, you know.”
“What are you making?”
She told him, and he nodded.
“I do love pesto.”
“Excellent. Will your arm breaker be staying?” she asked, glancing past him to the sitting room.
Rex burst out laughing.
“He doesn’t always stay for dinner,” Damon said.
“Great. I don’t have enough for him,” she said. The last thing she wanted to happen was to like the man who’d hurt her sister.
You should never be happy that he broke her arm.
“I need him to stay tonight. I want a word with him in private.”