Star Promise Read Online Free PDF Page A

into his hold. “I’m hungry enough to eat it. I worked through lunch.”
    “I didn’t,” he replied. “I had to bribe Bridget with nuggets so she’d be quiet in the office.”
    I looked up at him but Adam didn’t meet my eyes. “You went to work today?”
    “Only for a few hours,” he replied. “I had a few things that couldn’t wait until tomorrow.”
    Jean-Luc’s visit suddenly made sense. No wonder he was pissed. The only thing that would’ve infuriated him more than Adam being a no-show would’ve been Adam turning up with Bridget in tow.
    I suddenly felt incredibly selfish. Taking Bridget to the office would have been a nightmare. I’d tried it once, and vowed to never let her set foot in the gallery again. How had Adam coped?
    “What did Bridget do while you were there?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “Played with her girls and typed emails on a calculator.”
    “And what did you do?”
    He looked at me. “What do you mean?”
    “I tell you about my job all the time. You never talk shop. I don’t even know what it is that you actually do.”
    Adam kissed me, connecting with my lips at the exact time that the microwave dinged. “It’s just not that interesting, Charli,” he murmured, breaking our embrace. “To either of us.”
    I used the time it took him to plate up dinner to think his words through. I had always been under the impression that Adam was cagey about his job because it was complicated and stressful. The truth was much simpler: it bored him.
    “I’m interested,” I insisted. “Will you tell me?”
    He turned around, a plate in each hand. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” he replied. “And then we’re going to bed.”
    ***
    Adam Décarie was a corporate lawyer. That much I knew. What I didn’t know was exactly what that meant. His explanation was an education and a half. Liaising between companies, negotiating mergers and drafting agreements sounded seriously hard-core. It also went a long way to explaining the ridiculous hours he worked.
    “Did you always want to be a corporate lawyer?”
    His dark blue eyes lit as he smiled. “Always.”
    “Why?”
    “You ask a lot of questions, Mrs Décarie.”
    I took a sip of wine. “You’re not usually this open with me,” I told him. “I’m taking advantage of your candidness.”
    “My plan for tonight was to take advantage of you.”
    His grin was distracting, but I wasn’t quite done. “Why corporate law?” I asked.
    He let out a sigh. “Because it’s less adversarial than other aspects of law,” he explained. “I don’t usually deal with wronged parties or criminals or people who’ve been ripped off. It’s all about negotiating and closing amicable deals.”
    “So, you like your job?”
    He grinned. He knew I was trying to garner some sort of confession out of him. “I like lots of things.”
    He pushed back his chair, making room for me on his lap. “Give me an example,” I demanded.
    “I like you,” he murmured, slipping his arm around me. “I like you a lot.”
    “And?”
    “And our kid,” he added.
    I smiled at him. “I like her too.”
    Adam dropped his head, whispering his next words into my ear. “Can we please go to bed and make another one?”
    After toying with the idea for a year-and-a-half, the decision to have another baby had finally been made a month earlier. Meeting my little brother was the clincher. Convincing Adam that the time was right took no effort at all. If he’d had his way, we would’ve had a flock of free-range babies by now – and they probably wouldn’t have been growing up in New York.
    ***
    Running with the good cop, bad cop style of parenting only seemed to work for us some of the time. The biggest problem was, the little crook favoured the bad cop. Adam was much stricter with her than I, but Bridget relished the challenge.
    The latest battle in the very long war played out over breakfast. Bridget was still keen to offload the small fortune her