King's Treasure (Oil Kings Book 3) by Marie Johnston (great novels .TXT) 📗

The idea sent my pulse racing. We’d tried to connect while we lived under the same roof and we’d failed. I couldn’t quit my job and race after him. I couldn’t leave one mess behind to chase another.

“Sapphire,” Chief’s voice broke in. “I need you to get started on the paperwork for the King-Abbot Security contract negotiations.”

God, how I hated putting together Chief’s ever-changing paperwork: I was killing more trees than I was saving. “Gentry King said yes?” Did Xander know? Had they talked during the last six weeks?

Chief broke into a rare smile, one that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “He just sent word. We need to work out the terms before we can officially get started.” Before he left the sitting room, he turned to me and said, “Good work.”

Good work. My first instinct at hearing those words was to jump up and down and pat myself on the back. Chief was actually proud of me! But it wasn’t from anything I’d done other than get a little too tipsy and marry someone with the right last name. I wanted to be congratulated for doing more than spreading my legs.

To be fair, I’d been married for two and a half months and hadn’t spread my legs since.

Good work for marrying Xander and helping Chief land a contract? Did Chief see the irony? The guy who’d told me to think through my actions my entire life had given me a rare atta boy for the most impulsive thing I’d ever done.

Regret welled up like it always did. For the first couple of weeks after Xander had left, I’d been incensed. He’d abandoned me because he wasn’t getting laid.

Regrets. Looking back, I might’ve done things differently. Packed a bag and gone with him. But I couldn’t fly halfway around the world and find him in some country I’d never been to before where I couldn’t speak the language. My two years of French in high school wouldn’t get me far.

He’d sent me the address of where he was staying in Kosovo. He’d gone to work for that interpreter friend of his, but if I couldn’t face him in my own house, I couldn’t face him thousands of miles away.

I was sitting on the couch, staring into the fireplace, when Mother walked in and stopped.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She glanced around, probably searching for what I was concentrating on when she’d busted me and the wall having a face-off. “I thought I left my reading glasses in here.”

She barely came in here to relax and hardly ever watched TV, but Chief had been home last night, a rare Saturday night with his wife.

“I haven’t seen them.”

Mother hesitated, her shrewd gaze raking over me. Then she closed the door and took a seat on the overstuffed chair by the couch I’d spent way too much time on the last six weeks.

“How are you doing?” Her voice was full of motherly concern.

“Fine.”

She tilted her head, calling me on the lie as easily as she’d done when I was five and had gotten caught coloring on my bedroom walls. “Sapphire. You haven’t been fine for a month and a half, and I don’t think you’ve even talked to Pearl about it.”

I’d talked to Brady. Suck it up with Chief until you can afford a plane ticket to Kosovo. Nail down that money, Sav.

So, no. His advice wasn’t stellar.

My throat thickened. I never talked to Mother about my love life. Never. I’d seen who they’d rather have their girls date and marry and it wasn’t who I was interested in. It was easier not to discuss it and save my energy for the wedding battle that I had ended up preempting anyway.

So what made me want to talk to her today? I was already married? I had a husband who’d left me and Mother had managed to stay married to a hard man like Chief so maybe she knew something I didn’t? Maybe it was that I needed a mother more than a sister or friend right now.

“Xander figured he might as well go since I refused to quit working for Chief. He thinks I’m too scared to move out.”

“Are you?” So much for the That’s absurd! motherly support.

“No. Maybe,” I whispered.

“You’ve had plenty of time to think. Have you changed your mind about staying here, or staying married to him?”

Tears burned. I wanted to be mature around my parents, but in the end, I was in the sitting room, crying about a boy.

She exhaled and wrapped her hands around her knees, sitting forward. “It wasn’t the fairy tale you expected?”

“I didn’t expect a fairy tale.” Had I? Handsome man sweeping me off my feet. Promises of kings, castles, and rescuing. “But I expected . . .” I closed my eyes as I said what Pearl had guessed before. “I wasn’t sure I could be enough for him and it was easier not to try than to find out the hard way that I’d failed.”

“Whatever makes you think you’d fail?”

“You and Chief.” I covered my lips with my fingertips. I hadn’t meant to say that.

Mother’s face didn’t dare wrinkle with her surprise. “What about us?”

“You’re beautiful. You’re intelligent. But all you’ve done is house stuff and Chief calls the shots.” I opted for chewing the inside of my lip instead of gnawing it between my teeth.

Mother’s sharp inhale was followed by a long, weary exhale. “I was happy you didn’t want to go to Georgetown.”

The sudden subject change left me shaking my head. “What?”

“I was. I would’ve paid for it, but I wanted you to have the chance to get some real world experience.”

I sat forward. My melancholy morphed into simmering anger. “Like being too broke to buy food?”

“Sapphire, don’t be silly. We’d never let you starve. Your father and I kept an eye on you.”

“You made me move back home.”

She lifted a meticulously manicured brow. “How did we make you?” My mouth worked but nothing came out. “Chief wanted you home. He’s such a worrier.”

“Mother.