Reborn to Love Mr. Right novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Blue Bowl

At midnight Annabel confesses the wire to her father and warns him about his heart and his merger, and he tells her Wyatt Kincannon called him at six with the same two warnings.

My father was making grilled cheese at midnight in a cardigan with a hole in the elbow.

He did that when he couldn't sleep.

He'd done it every night for a month after Mom died, and I'd sat on this same stool and eaten every one.

"You're in a ball gown," he said, without turning around. "In my kitchen. At twelve-oh-five."

"It's a formal dress."

"It's a ball gown, Bel. I paid for it."

The last time I'd seen him, he had a tube in his throat and one side of his face gone slack.

Now he was flipping a sandwich with Mom's old spatula and humming.

I put my hand flat on the counter so he wouldn't see it shake.

Mom's blue bowl sat by the stove, full of lemons, the way it always had.

"Dad, I have to tell you something, and you have to let me get all the way through it."

He turned off the burner.

That was how I knew he'd heard my voice.

He sat down across from me and folded his reading glasses onto their cord.

"Go."

"I wired Brock four hundred thousand dollars this morning."

He didn't blink.

"For what?"

"For his startup. Pollard Ventures."

"What does Pollard Ventures do?"

"I have no idea," I said. "I never asked. I think it buys Brock things."

My father looked at me for a long time.

Then he got up, cut the grilled cheese in half on the diagonal, the way I liked it, and slid it in front of me.

"Eat."

"Dad."

"You can be stupid and hungry, or you can just be stupid. Eat."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

I ate.

He watched me.

"So," he said. "Is he still your boyfriend?"

"I told him it was over."

"Did he cry?"

"He tried to put a ring on me first."

My father sat back.

A slow, delighted grin spread across his face, the first one I'd seen on him in what felt like a year.

"Your mother would have paid money to see that."

"Somebody filmed it. You'll probably get to."

"Good." He tapped the table. "Four hundred thousand is a lot of tuition for one lesson."

"I'm going to get it back."

"How?"

"I don't know yet," I said. "But he's going to give it back in front of people."

He studied me.

"You look different, Bel."

"I'm sober and I'm single."

"No. You look like somebody who's already been through it."

I put the sandwich down.

I couldn't tell him I had watched him lie in the ICU and not know my name.

I couldn't tell him I had died in a parking lot.

So I told him the parts I could.

"Two things. And you have to promise me, not just nod."

"I don't just nod."

"You've been just nodding since I was six."

He held up his hand.

"I promise."

"You go see a cardiologist this week. A real one. A scan, not a lecture about salt."

His face closed a little.

"Who told you about my heart?"

"Nobody had to. You take the stairs at headquarters like they owe you money and then you hold the rail."

"That's called being fifty-four."

"Dad."

"Fine. What's the second thing?"

"Somebody is going to leak the Boston merger numbers. Soon. This month."

That landed.

My father was a warm man in a cardigan until someone touched his company.

Then he was something else.

"Who?"

"I can't prove it yet."

"But you know."

"I know," I said. "Just lock it down. Change who sees the offer. Change the passwords."

He picked up his phone from beside the blue bowl and turned it over in his hand.

He didn't open it.

Instead he gave me a strange look, half amused and half not.

"That's funny," he said.

"What's funny?"

"Wyatt Kincannon called me at six o'clock tonight."

The kitchen went very quiet.

The refrigerator hummed.

"Wyatt called you?"

"On my private line. I've never met the boy. I know his father a little, from a board years ago."

"What did he want?"

My father set the phone down on the counter between us.

"He told me to get my heart scanned this week," he said slowly.

"And he told me someone close to my daughter was about to sell my merger."

My mouth went dry.

At six o'clock tonight, I had still been the girl who was going to read his letter out loud.

At six o'clock tonight, I hadn't woken up yet.

"He said the same two things you just did," my father said. "Almost word for word."

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