Decode (Luke Series, #7) Read Free Page A

night taunts
me. I grab my phone off the nightstand and I’m appalled to find
that it’s 12:42 p.m. local time.
    I hop out of bed and
quickly pull on my robe so I can go to the living room to see if
the kids are awake. I find Violet and the kids in the dining room
eating what looks like a light lunch.
    “Good afternoon, Mrs.
Maxwell,” Violet says without looking up from the plate where she’s
busy picking the stems off a bunch of red grapes for Rhianne.
    “Why didn’t anyone wake
me? We have so many things to do today.”
    “Lu—Mr. Maxwell said not
to disturb you, that you needed your rest.”
    Taking a deep breath, I
try not to make a catty remark about her almost calling Luke by his
first name. I kiss both the kids on the tops of their heads and
wish them a good afternoon before I leave to get showered and
dressed as quickly as I can.
    Luke’s final meeting ends
at two p.m. We were supposed to finish our sightseeing by then so
he could join us downstairs for afternoon tea. Rhianne has been
dying to do this ever since I bought her a tea set. She was beyond
excited when I told her Daddy would be joining us for tea. Now
we’ll have to put off the sightseeing until tomorrow and Lucas will
be upset.
    Luke will also be
disappointed. We had plans to go over my speech for tomorrow’s
charity dinner. He wants me to discuss Maxwell Computers’ new Give
Love website.
    The Give Love Foundation
is something we both envisioned to help boost individual donations
for any non-profit organization that meets the minimum
requirements. Consumers can trade in old computers and electronics
from any manufacture and those devices are then refurbished by
Maxwell Computers and donated to schools, veterans, and low-income
households. But the biggest potential comes from the Give Love app
and plugin. People can download the app or plugin so that a certain
percentage of every purchase they make goes to the charity of their
choice.
    Just like Blaze
revolutionized the way people interact with every device in their
homes, we think this will revolutionize the way people spend their
money. We just need a lot more corporate support.
    Maybe we can squeeze in a
quick trip to the London Eye today before we have to be back for
afternoon tea at three.
    I shower and dress as
quickly as I can, leaving my hair loose and purposely messy so I
can hide behind my hair if I suspect someone has recognized me. For
this same reason, I don’t bother putting on a whole lot of makeup.
It’s a little annoying to have to constantly think about this sort
of stuff when I want to go out and do normal things, like
sightseeing. I don’t really do it for myself; I do it for the kids.
Luke and I have managed to keep them out of the spotlight and
that’s the way we’d like to keep it. If no one recognizes me, then
we’ll be anonymous; just your average group of American
tourists.
    I ask the hired car to
drop us off on Belvedere so we can stroll through the Jubilee
Gardens. As soon as we exit the car, the August heat presses in on
me. I hoist Rhianne into my arms as Violet takes Lucas’s hand. Her
hair is pulled away from her face in two braids that meet at the
back of her head, while the rest of her hair falls in perfect waves
down her back. She’s dressed in jeans and a soft blue T-shirt
today—maybe she’s beginning to understand Luke better than I had
anticipated.
    The bodyguard Luke hired
for us exits the vehicle behind ours once we’ve gotten at least ten
meters from the car. Luke knows I don’t want the bodyguard too
close so the children don’t feel they have a reason to be
frightened.
    I once took Lucas to the
Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle when he was four years old. The
bodyguard stayed close to us, on my orders, and Lucas—always being
a bit precocious—asked if he was there to protect us. It dawned on
me at that moment that if my four-year-old child already understood
the purpose of the bodyguard, that he would always see this fear of
being