Page 26 of Family Bonds- Emma & Warren

“Can you please just slip his room number in the text?” she asked. “He went to you for my number.”

“Emma,” Hunter said. “There are several reasons I can’t do it and you know that. We use discretion here.”

“I knoooooowwww,” she whined.

“Are you going to give him your last name and tell him what you do for a living?”

“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “Probably. It depends on the reason he wanted to reach out to me. I’m not easy, you know. Don’t think that.”

“Considering I don’t know the last time you left this island for something that wasn’t a family event forcing you to go, I wouldn’t think you were. He doesn’t live around here and doesn’t have a lifestyle to move around as much as you might think. At least not once training camp starts.”

“Training what?” she asked.

“Look it up,” Hunter said. “Also, if you tell him who you are, if he digs enough, he’ll see who you are related to.”

It was hard not to find out she was an heir to a billion-dollar fortune.

Many thought that was the only reason she was as successful as she was.

She didn’t buy that.

She had her mother’s genes in her.

But it was a damn good thing no one knew her mother was thriller writer Steve Spencer, or they’d compare them even more.

It was one thing she wanted in her life—to be successful on her own, not because someone else got her there.

“I know he might,” she said. “And since he came here looking for me, he might do that. I’ll figure it out. Bye.”

She hung up on him before he could say another word.

Everyone in the family was used to her doing that.

First order of business was a shower, so she raced to her room, into her bathroom, turned the shower on to warm the water up, and then into her closet to grab shorts and a T-shirt.

She wasn’t going to doll herself up for anyone. He saw her the way she normally presented herself and she was going to continue that way.

After removing the clothes she had worn for almost twenty-four hours, she hopped under the hot shower, dunked her head, and washed her entire body, even shaved since she hadn’t done so in days.

The benefit of being a recluse: no one saw you and you didn’t have to worry if there was stubble on your legs or not.

When she bent down to put sandals on her feet, she noticed she needed a pedicure and ditched them for canvas sneakers without socks.

She needed to do some serious self-care pampering soon.

Once this book was done, she told herself.

Her stomach was growling loudly, so she ran into the kitchen to look for fruit.

The last time she got groceries was almost three weeks ago on her way home from one of her shifts at The Retreat.

Anything fresh was gone.

She marched into the pantry, her eyes searching the shelves filled with boxes of coffee K-cups, protein bars, and bagged and boxes of snacks.

At random, she snagged a blueberry protein bar and was out the door with her purse and ready to go.

Until she was at the bottom of her driveway and realized her music wasn’t playing and she’d left her phone somewhere in the house.