Read Online Keeping His Promise (Year of the Billionaire Part 3) by K.C. Falls - Free Book Online

had to happen someday. I can't live in my parents' house forever." Tristan nodded in agreement. "They've been great. I know how much they sacrificed for me--for all three of us. I'm the only one who got a four-year degree and even though I got some scholarship money and a couple of loans, they still paid more for me to go to school than either of my sisters."
    "Your sisters didn't go to college?"
    "Olivia dropped out after two years. She spent the next two years getting ready to marry Ben. Ben's done very well and Olivia has played the supportive junior league wife to his successful small-town attorney. They have two children. A perfect set of one boy and one girl. Of course, the boy is the first born. Olivia wouldn't have it any other way."
    "Do I detect disapproval? Even disdain?"
    "A little," I admitted. "Olivia is smart and she's beautiful. I love Ben and the kids. It just seems like such a . . . calculated existence. She had a plan and she executed it with surgical precision. There's nothing spontaneous or unpredictable about my oldest sister's life."
    "You, on the other hand, do spontaneous quite well."
    "Trust me, that's a newly acquired trait."
    "What about your other sister. Amy?"
    "Amy is the sweetest person in the entire universe. She wasn't the academic type and neither was her husband Phil. She worked for several years as a warehouse clerk for a heating and air conditioning company right out of high school. She met Phil there. He had come to make his fortune in New York. When his father died he left Phil his hardware store in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. He asked Amy to marry him and the two of them run the store now. Phil also has a pretty lucrative handyman service going."
    "Children?"
    "They haven't had any luck conceiving."
    "I think it would be very hard to want a child and not be able to have one."
    "It is hard on them. They've been married for four years and . . . nothing. They've kind of stopped talking about it."
    "What about adoption?"
    "I don't know how they feel about it."
    "If I wanted a child and couldn't have one, I would adopt. For sure."
    "I asked you once before if you wanted to have children. Do you remember?"
    "Yes, I do. I dodged the question."
    "You dodged it and shut down."
    "I know." He cleared his throat. "I've always wanted to have children. But my motivation may be a false one. I've always wanted to give a kid a better father than I had. Even if my mother had lived, I'd still feel deprived. I guess part of me wants to prove I can do better."
    "That's not a great reason to become a parent."
    "Oh, hell, that's not the only reason. It's just part of it. Believe it or not, I really like little kids. I'm drawn toward innocence. There's so little of it in my world." He looked at me when he said that and put his hand over mine on the tablecloth.
    "You still insist on calling me innocent after what we've done together?"
    "I told you before, innocence is more than a lack of experience and it doesn't mean naiveté. Innocence is a way of seeing the truth of the world and reacting to the world in truthfulness."
    I laughed at that. "You need to spend more time around children. My nephew and niece are natural liars. 'Not me' is the perpetrator of all naughtiness in Olivia's house. Who broke this vase? 'Not me.' Who ate the last cookie? 'Not me'."
    Tristan chuckled. "Right now, I would like to perpetrate some naughtiness with you, my queen. Shall we move our little party upstairs?" He helped me to my feet. On the way out he asked me to wait a minute. He spoke to the maître d for a moment and then we pushed the button for the ancient elevator.
    I was more than ready to get back to the room. I wanted to feel Tristan's warm skin against mine again. There was never enough of him. Each sensuous adventure was a journey of unbelievable discovery about myself and my capacity for passion. He had opened doors that I never wanted to close. They were portals into depths I didn't know I possessed until his touch