King's Treasure (Oil Kings Book 3) by Marie Johnston (spanish books to read txt) 📕

laptop but the screen had gone dark. No happy bubbles careening around. No pictures of my privileged life ping-ponging from corner to corner. Nothing. I could change the screen saver from the default, but I didn’t. It fit my mood.

I sniffled.

I might as well give into the tears. I wasn’t going to accomplish anything else tonight. I just hoped it wasn’t the first sign of many failures to come.

Xander

“It’s a cold bitch out there.” Dawson toed his boots off and shuffled across the hardwood floor on his stockinged feet. He tossed a big envelope down. “Something, uh . . . came for you.”

He didn’t run away, but he backed away slowly.

I scowled and ripped my gaze away from the computer. I’d been here for over two months, soaking up Dawson’s Wi-Fi and getting my shit together.

I guess it took a wife leaving me to make me grow the fuck up.

I had a website set up, but I was still learning the damn thing. If I’d waited for a few more months, I could have paid someone else to do all this, but there was a sense of accomplishment that came with watching how-to video after instructional YouTube to build something that was purely mine.

My time was bogged down because I was tying a lot of revenue streams into this website. I had a blog. I hadn’t written a damn word for it, but I had my portfolio loaded onto my site. My business wasn’t officially live, but it was all under my real name. No hiding. If Savvy could own her wealthy background in a field where it’d be held against her, I could too. I had an account on every social media site and ideas on how to use them. I had yet to post. I had plenty of past pictures and notes to work with, but no plans for the future.

My future was a big, black, gaping hole of unknown.

Savvy had left Montana and according to my past, I should’ve been gone too. One plane ticket to anywhere was all I needed. But I hadn’t left. All those years, I’d taken off, but whenever I’d come back, everyone was still here, in King’s Creek.

My brain knew that Savvy wasn’t from here. Nothing tied her here other than the great time she’d had before she’d been so pissed and disappointed in me that she’d left and told me to figure shit out.

I’d figured it out. But unlike me, she hadn’t come back.

My chest grew tight when I thought that I’d left for fucking years before showing up again. That I’d ignored written messages and voicemails while doing my own thing and . . . hiding from the world.

That was what I’d been doing. Hiding. Not taking responsibility. Blaming everyone else for why my life wasn’t working out when I’d tried something different.

Not my wife, though. She’d been stranded in a big city with no way to get home and she’d sucked it up and asked for help. She’d taken a job she didn’t like to make ends meet. Then when I’d left her behind, she’d packed it up and found me.

And she’d been right. I hadn’t given her credit for any of it. She’d done all the changing and I was still me. Irresponsible.

Dawson disappeared and I frowned. I helped him out in the mornings and evenings, then retreated to the house to get work done. Usually after he came in for supper, he pestered me about what I’d been doing all day on the computer. Talking to him was always easy and he’d had some good ideas for my business plans. But tonight, he’d dropped the envelope and vanished.

My gaze landed on the mystery mail. No one but my family knew I was here, yet it wasn’t unusual to receive a parcel of mail every once in a while.

The official return address caught my eye. A legal office. In DC.

I sat back and air eked out of me like a tire with a slow leak. My mind turned into sludge and refused to think. I stared at the address. My name in official letters. Xander King. I had no initials, no title. There wasn’t “Asshole who fucked up his marriage” behind my name. Just me.

I ripped it open like tugging a Band-Aid off. Now I knew which one hurt more.

The papers were as official as the envelope.

I set them down. Slumping back in my chair, I stared at the far wall. One of Mama’s pictures hung next to the fireplace.

She’d be so ashamed of me. The kid who’d never learned to deal with his emotions without hurting someone. The kid who didn’t have a fucking job and lived with his brother and had just been served divorce papers.

I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually Dawson emerged from his master bedroom on the first floor.

He took one look at me and stopped at the edge of the short hallway. “You hungry, man?”

“She wants a divorce.”

He puffed out a breath and scratched the back of his neck. “I was afraid of that.”

“She could have millions and millions of dollars, but she’d rather divorce me.”

Dawson crossed to the table, but he didn’t say anything. We sat, two bachelors staring at the wood grains running through the surface.

Funny thing was, I didn’t feel like going anywhere. I could take Fool’s Gold out. I could walk into the airport and pick a flight to board. I could ignore these damn papers until the year mark passed and I got millions.

But the thought that I might not get the money whipped away the blanket of deception I’d been hiding under. A part of me had thought I’d land on my feet. I wouldn’t be the ultimate disappointment and let the neighbors get what my grandparents had worked their asses off for.

The envelope in front of me upended all that. I had no plan. Without at least the idea of that money to cling to, I was nothing. I was turning thirty soon and had been