Give in to Me (Heart of Stone #3)(28)
Author: K.M. Scott

In front of me, Varo stood about twenty yards away impatiently yelling Nina’s name. She didn’t even bother to turn around to answer him, preferring to stay facing me.

“Time for me to take the stage,” she said without signing.

Shaking my head, I shrugged to let her know I didn’t understand.

Smiling, she signed, It’s nothing. Just my pretend life. Nina turned to leave and stopped short to sign one more thing. Have a good day, E-t-h-a-n.

It wasn’t what she signed but that I got to hear her speak those sweet words, even if her voice was tinged with unhappiness. I hated knowing what I’d convinced her to do was making her miserable, but I had to tell myself that it was what had to be done.

That didn’t make it any better, though.

She walked away, her pace a little slower than when she’d approached me, I thought. My mind immediately began to spin out of control thinking about where they were going, what they’d be doing, and how I’d be standing there raking. Taking a deep breath, I told myself I couldn’t let that affect me. This was the way it had to be, and that was that.

By six o’clock, I hadn’t seen Nina or either of her bodyguards return home, so I left, needing a hot shower and something in my stomach. I had a newfound appreciation for the people who’d worked on my family’s properties. I’d always been so spoiled that I never once considered what their lives were like. Where did they live? Where did they eat lunch? What did they do when they weren’t landscaping the gardens or cleaning up after my family and me? My stint as Ethan the gardener had made all those people who’d been invisible to me for all those years suddenly come into sharp focus. To say that I didn’t like what I saw was an understatement.

It’s not that Nina or anyone at the house mistreated me. Quite the opposite, in fact. Nina was welcoming, and although Varo and West weren’t altogether friendly, they weren’t nasty or rude. I was, however, invisible there, for all practical purposes. Unlike in my life as Tristan Stone, no one wanted to spend time with me for meals or clamored to hear what I had to say about anything.

The change in my status was enlightening, to say the least.

Standing in the shower, I let the water sluice over me, loving the feel of its stinging heat on my skin. Working as a gardener was much harder work than I’d ever believed, and my body already showed the signs of its effects. Muscles that had atrophied for months when I was in exile now grew again, the result of hours of manual labor. I hadn’t seen a gym in nearly half a year, but I couldn’t remember my body being in better shape. Those muscles didn’t come easily, though, and the hot water only did so much to ease the ache of my day job.

Scotch did the rest.

I relaxed on the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table, groaning as I stretched the tired muscles in my legs. A slice of Tony’s pizza filled my stomach, and I washed it down with a gulp of scotch. Not exactly the right pairing, but I’d forgotten to ask for soda when I placed the order. It wouldn’t have been the same, anyway. Tony’s was great not because it was the best pizza in the world but because it symbolized something far better I shared only with Nina.

My phone vibrated across the top of the table, signaling I had a message. It was the one Nina used, and my heart leaped in my chest at the thought of what she might say. Scooping the phone up, I read her message and instantly felt like someone had my heart in a vice, turning the handle until there was nothing but the purest pain I’d ever experienced.

I miss you. I’ve taken to talking to almost complete strangers because I’m so lonely. Please come back to me.

Fuck. How was I supposed to keep this up? She was tearing me apart. All I wanted to do was text back that I wasn’t that far away. That I was as lonely as she was and missed her more than I could say.

Daryl’s telltale banging on my door shook me from my misery, and I trudged my aching feet and legs over to let him in, ready for him to add to my shitty moment.

“Nice to see you, Tristan. I hope you saved some of that drink for me,” he announced as he brushed past me to take a seat on the old chair that filled out the living room set he’d gotten me.

“Tell me you have something, Daryl. I can’t do this for much longer. Nina’s texts are killing me. She’s miserable, and I’m the reason she’s miserable.”

Grabbing my bottle of Lagavulin, he looked around for something to pour his drink into. “Get me a glass, would you? I’ve been working all day. I need this.”

I found a glass in the kitchen cabinet and returned to hand it to him. “You’re work is nothing like mine, I’m willing to bet. I ache all over.”

He poured himself a healthy glass of scotch and sat back in the chair, grinning broadly. “Never did an honest day of work in your life, did you? Now you know how the other half lives.”

Seated across from him, I watched him relish my physical pain and admitted he was right. I hadn’t worked like this ever before in my life. “Yeah, but can we get to how we’re going to get me back to my real life?”

“Right. I spent the last few days working on this Cordovex business. I still don’t know what I’m looking at, but I can say without a doubt that whatever it is, it’s buried under intentional layers meant to keep prying eyes out.”

“Do we know yet if it has anything to do with my family or Stone Worldwide? I’m worried you’re chasing shadows and wasting time when we could be much closer to finding out what Karl wants if we focused on something else.”

“Like what?”

Shrugging, I silently admitted I didn’t know. It just seemed too far-fetched to believe that some heart drug had anything to do with Karl or the reason why he wanted me and Nina out of the picture. “So what did you find out?”

Daryl took another swig of his drink and set the glass down on the table a little too heavily. The man was just clumsy. His lack of grace made me laugh, confusing him.

“Cordovex is a prescription heart drug, but it had a rough time of it after getting FDA approval. Seems it was killing some people. From what I can tell, it shouldn’t have gotten approval, but somehow it made it through the process in record time.”

“How’s it doing today, four years later?”

“That’s an interesting question. You know how it’s doing, or at least you should know. If you’ve watched TV at any time in the past few months, you’ve seen ads for it.”

“I haven’t seen any commercials for anything called Cordovex.”