The Prince by Tiffany Reisz Read Free Book Online Page B

telepathically with Nora. The first thing he’d tell her would be stop smiling. Trust me on this.
    “I feel like we’ve gotten off to a bad start, Mr. Railey,” Nora continued. “Can we talk inside for a few minutes? Wesley used to work for me back in Connecticut. He—”
    Wesley’s father started forward at a leisurely place. Nothing new with that. Jackson Railey was well-known for doing everything at a leisurely pace. Back when he was a kid, Wesley had thought it meant his father was the laid-back sort, never in a hurry, never rushing himself or anybody else. As he got older, got smarter, he realized his father moved slowly because he liked making people wait for him. He’d make his mind up in a second, but make you wait a minute for the answer. He’d spend hours on something that should take only minutes, to prove he had the time and money to waste…even if nobody else did.
    “I know who you are, Miss Sutherlin.”
    Wesley’s heart raced harder with every step his father took closer to Nora. Things had started out ugly and were getting uglier by the second.
    “A fan? How nice.” She kept smiling.
    “Not quite, madam.”
    “Dad. Let’s go in the house and talk.” Wesley took a step to the side, trying desperately to put himself between his father and Nora. His dad wasn’t the violent type, but he didn’t need to be. Words were weapon enough for his father, especially when he was angry like this.
    “That woman is not allowed to cross the threshold of my home, J.W. And quite frankly, I’m shocked that you’d even suggest it.”
    “That woman?” Wesley stood up straighter and stared into his father’s blue eyes. He’d gotten his brown eyes from his mother, his temperament from her. Most days it was only the similar set of their jaws that betrayed Wesley and his father were even related. “‘That woman’ is my best friend, Dad. She’s also a four-time New York Times bestselling author.”
    “Five, actually,” Nora interjected with a sly wink at him.
    That wink gave Wesley the courage to keep going. No matter what his dad said to her, Nora could take it. In their fifteen months apart, he’d almost forgotten how much fun she had getting yelled at.
    “Sorry, Nor. Forgot about the new book. Multi- New York Times bestselling writer. She’s also—”
    “A whore.”
    The word came out of his father’s mouth and hung in the air between them. Wesley’s right hand balled up into a fist. His dad might not be violent, but he was coming damn close to getting Wesley to that point.
    “Ohh…” Nora said with that wicked smile of hers, that smile that made men either fall at her feet or run for their lives “…he totally went there. I can respect that.”
    “Take that back, Dad.” Wesley leveled his coldest stare at his father. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “I know exactly what I’m talking about, J.W. Did you think your mother and I believed it when you said you just wanted to come back home to Kentucky because you were homesick? You spent two years telling us how much you loved it at Yorke, how much you wanted to spend your whole life in Connecticut, how happy you were, and then one day it’s ‘I’m ready to come home.’ You think we bought that? Your mother did, because that’s what she wanted to believe. I knew better. Did a little digging—”
    “Jesus, Dad, you investigated me?”
    “Had to be done. And I did it for your own sake.”
    Nora laughed softly. “Can I take a moment here to tell you both how cute your accents are when you’re angry?”
    Wesley and his father both looked at her, Wesley in shock, his father in disgust.
    “Okay, that’s a ‘no’ then. Carry on.” She took a step back and waved her hand at them to continue.
    “You think this funny, don’t you, miss? Well, it’s not funny to me. Or to my wife. Our son was a wreck when he dragged his tail back down here. I had an uncle come home from Vietnam looking less shell-shocked than my