Page 103 of The Bad Boy Prince in Love

“I was out for a drive one night with one of my closest friends, Rickard, otherwise known as the Marquis of Wender.It was a winter night, the temperatures well below zero, and the car slipped along ice encrusted the roads.Also, my friend had had a few drinks, and long story short, we crashed into a pole.I got off easy, but Rickard nearly died.He lost his arm, and his face is covered in scars from flying shards of glass.”

“That’s awful!”Hallie exclaimed.

“I suppose it made me rethink drinking and driving,” Luke said.“It could have just as easily been me driving that night.There had been plenty of other times when we’d go for a drive, thinking we had it all under control even though all of us were completely hammered.”

“That was the thing that got you sent away from Sarkadia?”Hallie asked.“Wasn’t it?”

He nodded.It made Hallie wonder whether she should tell him about her worst moment.

Much like him, getting caught made her realize the seriousness of the situation.It had made her clean up her act, but was it only the fear of everybody knowing about her crime that kept her from acting out again?

“Do you think a person can be good just for the sake of being good?”she asked Luke.

“No,” he said without hesitation.

This made her laugh out loud.“Of course you would say that.”

“We all want something,” he said thoughtfully.“It would be hypocritical to say we do things for the purpose of being good.We usually just avoid doing bad things so that others won’t judge us.”

Maybe he was right, Hallie thought.She wanted to believe she was a good person, or at least not the worst person ever, even if her motivations weren’t always highly moral.

“And what do you want?”she asked.

He gave her a look worthy of a thousand swoons.“Do you have to make me say it?”

***

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKINGabout, you big goof?”Terry said irritably to her husband.She gritted her teeth, trying to hold Rob up as he muttered incomprehensible words.

Maria came from behind the bar to help support the collapsing man.“Sorry, I should have cut him off three drinks ago,” she said.“But he was so miserable.Bill, why don’t you stop acting ridiculous and help us here?”

“What the hell is going on here?”Bill wondered.He looked less irate and more puzzled.

“Can’t you see, Rob’s had too much to drink?”Maria shouted.“Terry was just helping him.She’s not cheating on you, dumb-ass.”

“Oh.”Bill’s broad face took on a more meek expression.“Sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” Terry said, “You’re going to be doing my laundry for the next three months, mister.How could you think I was cheating on you?”

“Well, how was I supposed to know?”he retorted, helping her by supporting Rob’s limp body.“You’ve been acting kind of funny lately.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”Terry hissed.“Never mind.We’ll talk later.Let’s get Rob home before he passes out on the street.”

As they drove to Rob’s house, Terry kept glaring at her husband just to put him in his place.Inside, she was elated!Things couldn’t have worked out better.

She was glad she had cut her trip to Austin short.Her plan to have mama and daddy appear suddenly at Hallie’s housewarming didn’t work out the way she had hoped, and it had put her in a foul mood.But as she drove home, leaving Bill to hang out with her dad in Austin, Terry had decided to stop by the Cactus and say hello to her friend Maria.It was pure luck that she overheard Rob spilling the tea on Hallie’s teenage shenanigans.

But now that the information had landed in her lap, she surely knew how to use it.