Breaking Stone: Bad Boy Romance Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

the day. Who knows? There might be a gold star or a cat sticker in it for me.”
    He left the room, and in an effort to brush off his displeasure, I spent the next hour setting up my office. Seated at my new desk, I decided that there would be areas of this assignment I was going to enjoy. Other parts, not so much.
    I contacted Sarah and had a lengthy back and forth via email with her about the things she wanted me to do. Her first question was: Is he writing? I told her he absolutely was, though I honestly had no idea what he was doing. For all I knew, he could have been sitting in the tower knitting a scarf.
    When I’d finished with Sarah, I spent the next hour going through her requests and making up a list for Stone. I printed it off and went to find him. Without established rules around his writing, I had no idea whether he didn’t want to be disturbed or if there were certain times I could and couldn’t enter his office.
    My heart gave two anxious beats for every step I took up the stairs to the tower room. The door was closed, so I knocked, waited, listened, knocked again. I pressed my ear against the door, breathing in the scent of aged wood and varnish, and couldn’t hear a thing.
    Finally, I called out. “Mr. Logan, are you in there?” There was no response. Perhaps he worked while listening to music, with noise canceling headphones or something. The door was unlocked, so I cracked it open a few inches, then pushed it wide. Stone wasn’t there, and although I didn’t want to intrude on his private domain, I did take a moment to have a good look at the place where the magic of those books had come to fruition.
    The desk was a mess, not a single drawer properly closed, and papers and coffee mugs were strewn about. His laptop slept. A stack of books partially hid a photo of Lily Clarke on a sun lounger, one leg bent up, her hands rising as if to cover her laughing face. It was candid, and she looked stunning. There were what looked like x-kisses drawn in lipstick on the glass. Bookcases lined the walls, along with more photos of Stone with various celebrities he seemed to be friendly with. A large leather armchair was the only other furniture in the round tower room.
    I closed the door and decided to search the house. I called his name a few times, feeling uneasy about poking into too many rooms, wary about coming across his bedroom, but it soon became clear he wasn’t around. The jeep blocked the driveway, so even if he had another car, he hadn’t used that. I stepped out onto the back patio and set off for the small gate at the bottom of the garden. Through that, I could see a set of footprints on the river bank. Without much thought, I followed them.
    I was heading in the opposite direction of Stone’s closest neighbor. This direction, the next house seemed about a mile away. The acrid smell of smoke hit me before I could see it, and as I rounded a group of trees, a figure just ahead came into view.
    Stone was messing about with a trash can that contained a blazing fire. I quickened my pace, my phone in my hand, ready to call 911.
    “Is everything okay?” I called out.
    Stone appeared to be stoking the fire rather than trying to put it out. He didn’t respond to me, though I’m sure he’d heard. My heart sank as he took a swig from a bottle, then poured some of the contents into the fire, causing a fresh eruption of flames before he finally looked at me.
    “Poppins, you found me. How about a drink?” He brandished the whiskey bottle at me.
    I approached cautiously. Had he gone mad?
    “What are you doing, Mr. Logan? I’m sure there are some ordinance rules which say you can’t set fire to trash cans. Tell me it wasn’t you who set this fire. Do you need help putting it out?” I waved my phone at him as if it would perform magic and make whatever was going on here go away.
    Stone crouched again, and it was then I saw the stack of A4 paper. He took a handful, feeding a sheet into the fire.