All Chapters of Solid Gold (Unseen Enemy 8): Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Dr. Finn stood to greet them, his blue eyes warm. Cordelia gazed up at him, feeling nothing but trust and respect for this man. He specialized in a type of laser surgery that delicately, painstakingly, removed what were considered inoperable brain tumors by most doctors, and when he’d told Cordelia and Sully that Sean was an ideal candidate, Cordelia had felt something that she hadn’t felt for a long, long time.She had felt hope that Sean might have a future.And this man had handed her that hope. If he told her that she needed to cut off her own damn leg to help Sean, then she’d demand that Dr. Finn hand her the knife on the spot. Anything he said, anything he did, Cordelia was on board.“Hi,” she said to him now, then gestured at the test results. “How are things?”“Good, Cordelia,” Dr. Finn said. “Really good.”She and Sully both relaxed. Dr. Finn knew that they didn’t want anything but the main point, and so that’s what he gave them, no preamble or faffing around.“We got it all,

Oh, not in the beginning, of course. She’d been so defensive and damaged about her voluntary double mastectomy, so sure that no man could ever find her attractive after the removal of both breasts, that when Luke had shown interest in her, she’d shoved him away as hard, as fast as she could.Thankfully, Luke Rhodes was one stubborn bastard, and he hadn’t accepted Selena’s protests or her rejection. And once he’d learned of the reason for her fears, he’d been nothing but more interested in her, more impressed by her. After all, if anyone in Selena’s life understood what it was like to carry on with pieces of yourself missing, pieces that were lost and which would never come back, it was Luke.Now, though. Now, she talked to him about everything. But since she’d just had her second breast reconstruction surgery a few weeks earlier, she’d shut down a bit. Not completely, but enough to make him worry.“Selena?” he said now, making sure to keep his voice low and non-confrontational. She g

Dallas stared at Mark and Griff across the conference room table, utterly stunned. Not much took Dallas Foreman by surprise, but he had to admit that hearing about Claire-slash-Caitlin and all the events of the previous night resulted in one doozy of a story. He sipped his black coffee, listening intently, taking mental notes and making decisions.“And so,” Griff said, wrapping things up at long last. “I’m taking her for lunch today at Antonio’s.”“Right,” Dallas said absently, but the other men weren’t fooled for one second by his sleepy tone. Dallas wasn’t half-paying-attention. The man was always paying total, full, complete attention, and his vague tone was the conversational equivalent of him switching mental gears. Sure enough, his next words were as crisp and no-bullshit as ever: “What’d you think of her, Hayden?”Mark shrugged, settled his bulk back in the chair. “She was hurt, man, so she was a bit vulnerable and teary and cagey. But on the whole?” He paused. “I thought she w

“It is. It’s also a cheaper option than having me produce sketches and proposals, so people can still get the ring they want without the added costs. I just really want people to get their ring, you know?” She sighed. “The program isn’t close to being done, though, and the guy is also designing a website for me. The site will have the ‘make your own ring’ feature, a gallery of rings I’ve already done, and a link to my shop. But now that my materials are gone, I’m going to have to halt the program and site design, and use what cash reserves I have to buy new materials. Not that my reserves are nearly enough to replace what was taken.”“So what will you do?” Griff said, genuinely concerned despite himself. “Cole will front me the money,” she said quietly. “But it’s a major financial setback for me. Those materials were for rings that have already been ordered, so they have to be made and delivered. Buying everything twice… it’s a serious chunk of change. It’s – it’s going to hurt me.”

And that lie would only be the first in a long, long line of lies to come. She’d have to lie about her marriage, of course, and her whole life in New York, and what was happening with her ex now. She’d have to lie about anything and everything that could link her to that goddamn mess that Wilbur was in and which she’d fought so hard to extricate herself from. It would be lie upon lie; lie after lie. It would be a tower of lies and it would just be a matter of time before it collapsed around her, crushing her under the weight of her own deception.It was no way to love someone. That she knew first-hand, as someone who had so recently managed to crawl out from under the rubble of a collapsed tower of lies.But that was really only the first problem, wasn’t it? The second problem was the alternative: telling the truth.What if she met a man that she believed in, body and soul? And what if she thought that he believed in her, too… that he looked past her fake name and past her fake hair c