Page 50 of Wrangled
“Girl, I don’t dress up for anyone but myself.”
I grin, lean in, and give her a quick hug.
When I pull back, she takes me in. “Well, you look pretty good.”
“You don’t need to sound surprised. Turns out freedom looks good on me.”
“Well, I spent the last few nights worried you’d been hacked in half.”
“Like a magic saw trick gone wrong kind of thing?”
She rolls her eyes. “Like a you live with a gang member kind of thing.”
“If you were really worried I’d been chopped in half, which is oddly specific by the way, how come it’s taken you a week to come check on me?”
She huffs out a sigh but doesn’t answer.
“He’s a good guy, Jen. I’m not saying he was always this way. Far from it, and he’ll tell you that himself. I’m saying he’s trying to turn his life around. I can respect that.”
“Calliope. I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“Do you trust me?”
“You know I do.”
“Then trust that I know what I’m doing. Please?”
Her eyes slip closed while she mutters something about patience. After a minute or two, she opens them and nods. “Fine. But if he hurts you, I’ll feed him to your pigs.”
“I don’t have pigs.”
“You should get some, just in case. Great for getting rid of bodies.”
I laugh, slipping my arm through hers. “And people think I’m the one they need to worry about.”
“I just hide my crazy better than most. Talking of things that make me crazy, I’ve got a mountain of paperwork for you to sign. I need to get it out of the way before next week.”
“Oh, that’s right. Hubby is taking you away for a weekend of debauchery.”
“That’s the plan. Though we both work so hard, we’ll likely sleep most of it away,” she admits with a wry grin. I lead her into the house. “Where do you want me?”
“I’d say my father’s old office, but the room gives me the creeps.”
She scowls. “What better way to reclaim that space than sign a multi-million-dollar deal to screw him over?”
I laugh and shrug. “Alright. It’s upstairs.”
“Let’s go then. Time is money.”
I follow her, amused that she’s leading even though she doesn’t know the way. Yet somehow, I’m not surprised when she walks right to his office as if she’d been there a million times before. Sometimes I have to wonder if she has some witch in her, too.
She twists the handle and opens the door before stepping inside. The room smells musty, so she walks directly over and opens the window as I take in the space. It’s exactly as I remember it as a kid, though less daunting without my father’s presence.
The mahogany desk dominates the room. The matching bookcase lining the perimeter makes it dark and foreboding. Not even the weak light pressing in through the dirty window can change that.
I close my eyes and picture myself growing up, how I avoided this room like the plague because nothing good ever happened in this office. I’ve run, crept, and crawled past this door to avoid detection, but there were times escape was impossible. Forced over the desk, I became the paper destined to tear, his whip became the pen designed to leave its signature mark. My blood was the ink that bled from my wounds into the grain of the wood, staining it with misery and despair.
“Calliope?”
