Playboy's Secret Wife novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Trust

Eleanor Hargrove had breakfast laid out for three, and she hadn't touched any of it.

She sat at the end of the long dining room table in Lake Forest, in a grey cardigan, with the morning sun on her silver hair.

It was the first time I'd seen her without a suit.

She looked like somebody's grandmother, and I didn't trust it for a second.

"Sit," she said.

Lucas didn't.

He stood at the head of the table with both hands on the back of a chair.

He'd been quiet for the whole drive.

"Mother," he said.

"Whose rule was the three years?"

"Grandfather's," said Eleanor.

"That's what you told me, and that's what Chad's lawyers said, and that's what I told Callie in a Las Vegas suite."

"Is it true?"

Nobody breathed.

A clock ticked somewhere in the hall.

"Where did you hear otherwise?" Eleanor said.

"From a pregnant woman in my living room, who heard it from Chad."

"Is it true?"

His mother folded her napkin in half, and in half again.

"No," she said.

Lucas let go of the chair.

"Your grandfather left you the shares outright," Eleanor said.

"No conditions, at thirty."

"On your thirtieth birthday you came to this house and told me you'd never marry."

"Do you remember?"

"I remember."

"You said it was the last thing you'd ever do."

"You had a photograph in the paper that week with some girl on your arm, and another the week after."

"You were buying a company a month, and sleeping in none of the houses you owned."

"I sat in this room, and I looked at my only son, and I thought, he's going to be sixty and alone in a very beautiful tower."

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