Todos os capítulos de Stranger in my Bed: Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 36

Erica's POVThe pounding on the door didn't stop.It was heavy, a fist hitting wood like it had a personal grudge against my front door. Every blow rattled through the floor and up the soles of my feet. Heather had gone completely still at the other end of the couch, one hand clamped over her mouth. My own heart was doing something violent against my ribs.Malcolm. Malcolm Vale is standing on my porch.I started to rise, to do something, anything, but Naya was already on her feet, the blanket sliding off her shoulders."Don't panic," she said, and her voice was so steady, so oddly grown-up, that I almost didn't recognize it. "I'll take care of it.""Naya, wait…""It's okay, Erica. He's all bark." She tried for a smile that didn't quite land. "Trust me. I've been handling him my whole life."She crossed the living room, rolled her shoulders back like a fighter about to step into a ring, and pulled the door open."WHAT," Malcolm's voice detonated into the house, "do you think you're doi

Erica's POV "Left at the next light," Naya said.I flicked the indicator and obeyed. We had been driving for twenty-five minutes through a city gone quiet and amber under the streetlights, and with every turn the buildings had grown farther apart, the hedges taller, the gates fancier. Naya sat in the passenger seat with her knees pulled up and her sneakers on my upholstery, which on any other night I would have addressed. Tonight I let it go."Then straight until you see the stone lions," she added. "Don't take the first road. Everybody takes the first road.""Stone lions," I repeated."They're ugly. Dad hates them. They came with the house."Came with the house. I kept my eyes on the road and my mouth shut.I had spent the entire drive talking myself down. You are taking a scared child home to her father. That's all. You are not going to marry anyone. You said something stupid because a man made you angry, and you will explain it calmly and apologize, and then you will fix the actua

Erica's POV "You own Vale Hotels.""With my son. Yes. Which means that I am, on a good day, here for about forty hours a week." He rubbed his forehead. "I'm in Dubai one week, Singapore the next. I leave before she wakes and I return after she's asleep. I'm not telling you that to excuse it. I'm telling you because it's true. If Naya stays with me, she will be, in all the ways that count, alone. More alone than she was with her mother." He shook his head. "She'll be neglected, Miss Vandell. Not through cruelty. Through absence.""Dad," Naya whispered."It's all right, sweetheart. She should hear it." He turned his gaze to the window, where Malcolm stood with his back half turned. "My son is getting married. In a matter of months. He'll be building his own life, his own home, and God willing, he'll be happy. He has been wonderful with her. But he can't stay and watch over a teenage girl. He shouldn't have to."I felt the weight of the words settle on me. They were true. That was the w