Persuading Her: A Modern Persuasion Retelling (Pemberley Estates Book 2) Read online

  A Modern PERSUASION Retelling

  from his side

  Keena Richins

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Eight years later

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Persuading Her Copyright © 2018 by Keena Richins. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Keena Richins

  Photo stock from Shutterstock.com. Used with license.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Keena Richins

  Visit my website at www.keenarichins.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: Oct 2018

  Prologue

  Rick stood at the door of the empty musical room, his eyes on the piano. The girl wasn't there. He eyed the long hallway, devoid of people, half expecting her to pop out from one of the many doors lining the school hallway. But she didn't appear. Nor did anyone else. He wasn't surprised. Why would anyone stay once school let out, especially in this elite high school where everyone had a car to escape this place. Still, every time he had come for the free GED practice sessions, he had heard her playing the piano.

  It was the tune that had first caught his attention. In such a prestigious place, he had expected stuffy, classical music. And while it might still be considered classical, it had such a haunting feeling to it, he couldn't help sneaking to the door to see who would dare play such a sad song, and was surprised to find a girl, maybe a year or two younger than him, bent over the piano, eyes closed, and playing as if her heart had found its voice through the piano.

  He checked the hallway again. No students. Or teachers. He slipped inside the empty musical room, filled with a semi-circle of empty chairs. The grand piano lay further into the room and he had to weave his way through the maze of chairs to reach it. He kept checking the door as he went. If anyone spotted him, he was sure they'd throw him out. His experience with the wealthy or people in authority was that they always condemned first. Clarifications and questions happened later, if at all. He would only be a few minutes, though.

  When he reached his target, he dropped onto the somewhat sturdy bench and eyed the wide expanse of black and white keys. The girl created such tangible music from these random keys, music that tugged at his heart. There was one song she played in particular, her fingers somehow pouring out a cry that his own soul had answered. He plucked a few notes, trying to find the start of her song, but he did a terrible job. He had never touched a piano in his life and had no idea what sound went to each key. Undeterred, he plucked more, determined to discover that haunting tune. And maybe learn what it was that mesmerized him so much.

  Someone cleared their throat from behind him and he realized he'd forgotten to keep an eye on the door.

  He jumped to his feet, defiant, ready for the authoritative person to lay into him, to condemn him. But it wasn't anyone like that. It was the girl!

  He didn't know what to do, so he resorted to his habit. Defy everything! "What do you want?"

  The girl stared at him. No fear in her eyes. No anger. Just an intense curiosity, the deep brown eyes seeming to stare straight into his soul.

  She nodded at the piano. "I like to play, too."

  He looked at the piano and back at her. He didn't like that intense stare of hers. It didn't match anything he had ever experienced. People looked at him with fear, disgust, or pity, not this intense stare.

  "Where is your teacher?" Good change of topic. "Is he coming?" That would give him the perfect excuse to get out of there.

  She shifted that intense stare to one of the metal chairs, her long, soft curly hair fluttering about her face like braided silk. "She...died."

  "Oh." He felt like an idiot. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't--I'm sorry." That was why she played the piano so passionately. And that haunting song--it expressed her grief. He looked away, wishing he had known someone that he would have missed that much. Or, even better, wishing someone would miss HIM that much. "Did you, uh, did you know her well?"

  "She was my mother."

  It was as if she had punched him. This beautiful girl had lost a mother, too? She seemed so normal, though. Nothing like him and his mess. "When?"

  "Last year."

  That was even worse. "I'm sorry." He cradled his head. "I really am. I..." He was rambling. Why was he rambling? "I never knew my mother." He rarely talked about it. No one ever seemed to care.

  "You didn't?" She looked at him as if he'd announced he had cancer and was dying tomorrow.

  He resented that look. Everyone always gave him pity, but no one ever actually cared. He turned to the piano and pecked at some random keys, keeping his voice light-hearted. "Died from complications from a fall. Or so my Dad used to say." He'd been only three when she had died.

  "Used to?"

  Hot anger bubbled inside him, but he fought to keep it under control. He didn't want to scare this strange girl staring at him. "He died three, four years back. Drank himself into oblivion." He jabbed at the keys as if he could find a reset button. None of the notes expressed the swirling frustration and anger boiling inside him. If only his dad had cared more about his living children than his dead wife or that he had managed to get his life together long enough to take care of said children instead of passing them off to whoever would take them. Sometimes, Rick wished his dad had died sooner. Then Rick wouldn't have been forced into the foster system as an angry, messed up, unwanted teenager boy. Then maybe someone would have adopted him instead of being passed from home to home like ticking bomb.

  "I'm sorry," she said. She started toward him, that sad, pitying look on her face. How he hated that look. "That's terrible."

  He gave a short, bitter laugh. "It's life." He repeated what everyone else always told him. "You deal with what you've got."

  "And that's terrible advice."

  He jerked, staring at her. Did she really...just say that? The pitying look was gone, replaced with a no-nonsense look. He laughed. It bubbled out of him without any warning. He hadn't laughed like that in ages. "Yeah," he agreed, still chuckling. "It sure is." He looked up at the ceiling, thoughts of all the people who had constantly delivered that lame advice. She was right. It was terrible. But it was the only mantra that made sense for his rotten life.

  "Why are you playing the piano?"

  He flushed and hid it with a shru
g. No way was he going to confess it was because of her. "Thought it would be useful," was the first thing he could think up. "I'm going into the navy in two months." Well, once he got his GED, he would. And he knew he would. He was smart enough. It was the constant changing of schools, of fighting with stupid teachers who only saw him as trouble, and battling school bullies who assumed they were better than him, that had ruined his high school career. "Maybe I could help start a band or something," he continued and flashed a grin at her, warming to the new topic. "Maybe I'll get famous. Become a concert pianist!" He posed at the piano like some stuffy, old guy with the powdered wigs he'd seen in portraits.

  She laughed. He jerked in surprise. It was such a free-flowing, delightful laugh, her brown, chocolate eyes dancing with delight. He'd heard such laughter but never directed at him. He snapped back into his pose, though. He didn't want her to realize how much he had liked that laugh of hers.

  She stepped closer to the piano and a flush crept up his neck. She was too close; it made him nervous for some reason. Not the nervousness when authority bent down to lash down consequences or the nervousness when trapped in a situation he couldn't figure a way out. A different type, where all he wanted was to make her laugh again, to impress her and not look like an utter fool.

  "You're going to need to play better than a chicken then."

  He dropped the pose and raised an eyebrow. Was she teasing him?

  "What, you want to teach me?" He joked, trying to pretend he could care less about her response. No way would she say yes. She was the rich, snobby kid while he was the poor, nearly homeless ex-foster boy. The two didn't mix.

  To his shock, she sat down next to him on the bench, back straight, hands poised over the keys like he'd seen in old portraits. If he had any artistic skill, he'd paint her right now, with that crook of a smile on her lips and twinkle in those chocolate eyes. And he'd take it with him everywhere, so he'd never forget this moment.

  "You want to learn?" She shot back as if daring him to say yes.

  A grin spread across his lips. He doubted this would last long. Fate would intervene, rob him of this delightful girl, but if there was something he knew about fate, it was to hoard whenever it gave anything.

  "Yeah." Rick met her chocolate eyes. "Yeah, I do."

  Eight years later

  Rick leaned back in his chair and twirled the fork in his hand. "I have to hand it to you. That was a great find. That little invention will fit perfectly with our goals this year." He wagged the fork across the restaurant table at his friend, Brandon, a near twin of himself: tall and lanky with brown hair, but he had green eyes while Rick had brown.

  "Mr. Bingley," Rick continued, "is going to sing your praises for the next month and totally forget you work under me."

  Brandon smiled but it didn't reach his green eyes. Then again, it rarely did. "I got lucky. That's all."

  Rick shook his head. "You need to take more pride in your work Brandon. Be bold. Assertive. That's how you move up the ranks."

  The smile grew rueful. "And I need to move up the ranks...why?"

  Rick laughed. Between the two, Brandon earned more in a year than Rick had earned in his lifetime. Retired early from the navy, Brandon had stumbled into a startup that sold for over four times its value. Now, he worked solely to give himself a reason to get up in the morning and tended to dress like the country bumpkin he once was: in faded jeans and years-old shoes, though he did add a nice polo shirt for the occasion. Rick, on the other hand, wore dark dress pants and a light blue dress shirt under a dark blue blazer.

  "To help ME move up the ranks," Rick shot back with a grin. "I'm the one that got you this comfy job so you owe me."

  Brandon waved him off. "You're doing fine. Bingley knows your name--"

  "He knows everyone." Bingley was the nicest fellow Rick had ever come across. The man knew practically everyone in the company despite being the best friend of one of the big bosses and having a very hefty workload. To NOT be known would be an insult.

  "And you're on a first-name business with Miss Woodhouse," Brandon countered, naming Rick's other boss.

  "That's nothing. She's a noisy busybody and knows I'm single--"

  "So am I," Brandon said, the sadness in his eyes deepening. "But she doesn't get excited to see me."

  "You don't humor her like I do."

  "And that's why you don't need me to move up the ranks," Brandon finished, leaning back in his own chair as if he'd solved the world's problems. "Give it another year and I'd bet you'll be promoted to a boss."

  "Nah, that will require me to have a desk job and stay in one spot. You know I can't stand that."

  Brandon raised an eyebrow. "Still not happy, then?"

  Rick focused on twirling his fork. It was an old topic between the two, one they'd hint at but avoid bringing up fully. Both had too much emotion for the topic.

  "You said you had a reason to meet me today?" Rick asked.

  That sadness in Brandon's eyes deepened and he pushed aside his half uneaten plate and leaned on the table, suddenly looking more like forty than his twenty-eight years. "As an acquisition manager you travel a lot, meet with a lot of different inventors, right?"

  "Yes."

  He pulled out a somewhat crumpled, folded piece of paper from his back pocket and slid it over to Rick. "I've been looking for something with this name."

  Rick unfolded the paper. "Elisheba? Is that a person's name?"

  "Maybe. Or perhaps a name of a now-defunct company. Or an invention."

  Ricked eyed it for a long second. "This has to do with Lisa?"

  Brandon clasped his hands, that sadness deepening in his eyes. "I believe it has to do with her invention. She was trying to get it patented before she..." he let the sentence die. Rick didn't need him to finish it, anyway. He knew the history. The love of his life had been an engineer with lofty plans of changing the world. But money was needed to turn those dreams into a reality and she, unfortunately, had been born with certain defects that made it difficult to hold a job. He'd volunteered for the navy and had been sending funds to her for several years until he suddenly heard she'd committed suicide. Rick knew it ate at his friend, being unable to know why she took her own life. She had always struggled with depression and her defects, but her letters hadn't hinted of any despair. Quite the opposite for she had believed she finally had an invention worth patenting. But she never gave the details, reserving them for when he came home. Unfortunately, she was dead by the time he arrived. To add salt to the wound, the sole reason he was away from her side, he now had beyond abundance. But he knew Brandon would give up every penny if it meant he could have Lisa again.

  Rick folded the paper and slipped it into his wallet. "I'm not sure what I can do but I'll keep an eye out for it."

  Brandon smiled. It still didn't reach his eyes. "Thank you. I know it's not much, but all my leads have gone nowhere. I figured with your luck--"

  "I'm not that lucky--"

  "You seem to get everything you want without much attempt."

  Now it was Rick's turn for his smile to grow cold as the face of a chocolate eyed girl swam into view. He shook his head. He was over that. Far over it. "I'll try my best, but I'm sure it will be your perseverance that will ensure the success."

  "Let's hope." Brandon stood up. "I have to get going."

  "To what? Your limousine?"

  Brandon chuckled. "You can have it if you want. It's too hard to park."

  Rick laughed at the old comeback. "Send it over, then. I'll ride it in style when I meet my sister." He dropped a few dollars on the table for a tip and stood up as well.

  "That's right," Brandon said, adding a few dollars himself. "Your sister is moving back to the States. Have you heard where she decided to live?"

  "She said she'd call when they finally have a place. She wants me to visit."

  "Are you going to?"

  "I should. We haven't seen each other in years. And, well, she's the only family I got."
<
br />   Brandon nodded, an orphan as well, entering the foster program as a teen like Rick. They'd bonded over their similar background during their military days, pretending to be the brothers they never had. And since they looked so similar, people even believed they were real brothers.

  They exited the restaurant and Rick waved Brandon off as he headed down the street, probably to take public transportation. The man was too humble, the complete opposite of Rick. When he could no longer see Brandon, Rick pulled out his phone. It had dinged during their conversation, but he respected Brandon too much to check it. Luckily, it wasn't an urgent message. Just an email from Caroline, Bingley's secretary. Another pile of leads he needed to research. He opened the attachment and loaded the first applicant--then caught his breath. The proposed invention was in Rhode Island.

  The memory of that chocolate eyed girl swam into view. Rick crushed it. She'd given up on him so he refused to waste a single second on her. He swiped the application out of view. He'd only investigate that one if he had absolutely nothing else to do.

  He meandered down the busy street, eyes on his phone as he browsed through the other applicants, trying to decide which one would most likely produce results his bosses would approve, when his phone abruptly vibrated and a feminine version of his face popped up onto his screen: his sister. He grinned and put the phone to his ear.

  "Sophy!"