Unspoken Epilogue Read Online Free PDF Page B

distraught. When we finally figured out what had happened, Noah and I had combed that park for the damn dog for days but couldn't find him. Finally Noah offered to get a different dog for Nathan. Nathan refused. He didn't want a different dog. He wanted Hobo, as Nathan had dubbed him.
    Several months passed and Nathan had been despondent but he still returned to the park, leaving little bits of bones and bread. The food was always gone but we'd figured other park creatures had taken it. Finally, a month before Christmas, Nathan had forced his nanny to take him out again in the cold and there was the dog, one ear missing, limping and so scrawny it looked like a rat. Nathan wouldn't leave without that dog and he sat outside in the cold for at least two hours until Noah left work to come and get him and the dog.
    Hobo was old, although we didn't know how old, and lived in relative doggy luxury. No other dogs lived in the Jackson household because Hobo was the only one for Nathan. So yeah, if Nathan felt that way about Charlotte, there were a lot worse options.
    "No sex until she's thirty, though," I said.
    Noah shook his head. "Let's just hope they avoid teenage pregnancy."
    "I swear you are trying to give me a heart attack here and then AnnMarie will kill you, destroying Freedom Funds and making our kids orphans."
    "Thanks, Disaster Dave." Noah clapped me on the shoulder. "Let's get the captain up here doing what I pay him two-hundred dollars an hour to do and you and I drink some Evan Williams 23 bourbon I brought."
    Later that night when AnnMarie and I were both boneless from our lovemaking, she rolled to her side and propped her head up on her hand. "Did you see Nathan staring at Charlotte today?"
    "Yes," I grunted. The thought of it still got my blood boiling. "Can we send her to a nunnery? Mal's in Dubai. I think Charlotte would look good in a burka."
    AnnMarie pinched me. "No nunneries; yes, let's visit Mal in Dubai; no to the burka. We aren't Muslim."
    "I don't like those answers."
    "Seriously, though, is this new? I've never seen him act like that around her," AnnMarie said.
    "Like what?"
    "Awkward, confused, a little mean." She dropped down next to me and placed her head on my shoulder. I pulled one of her legs over mine and savored the warm feel of her wrapped around me. I liked positioning AnnMarie so that her softness was artfully arranged around my body.
    "A little mean?"
    "Yeah, when they got out of the water, she was shivering and Nathan threw a towel at her saying she should wear more material in her bathing suit if she didn't want to be cold."
    Huh. "So he's just now developing feelings for her and it confuses him. How long do you think the mean stage lasts?" I pulled my fingers through AnnMarie's dark hair, marveling at the shininess. I liked wrapping it in my fingers and around my cock. Having it hang on either side of my head like a privacy curtain as she moved on top of me, her little hands pressing into my chest as she moved up and down.
    "Why?"
    "If it lasts a long time then maybe Charlotte will start avoiding him."
    "You can't keep her a little girl forever."
    "I don't want to. Just until she's like thirty or so."
    "We had sex in our twenties."
    "Okay," I acquiesced. "Twenties then."
    "You feel really magnanimous, don't you?"
    "Yup."
    AnnMarie laughed.
    "Do you know how much I love you, Bo?"
    "Yeah, but I like to hear it. How much?"
    "I would give up Freedom Funds if I had to, to keep your love."
    "A half-billion dollars, huh? That's it?"
    "No, that's not it. I'd give up everything in my life but you and Charlotte. I feel like we could be happy as long as we were together, no matter what."
    I hugged her. Security meant so much for AnnMarie. The money meant security for her. It meant she didn't have to rely on anyone but herself but I liked that she felt she needed me. That I was her security because she was my whole world. Her and Charlotte. For all my complaints to Noah today, I wouldn't trade my girl