 by Lani Lynn Vale.jpg)
Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 66929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66929 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
He claws his life back from his brother-in-law who’d taken over his business during the years he’d spent as an inmate at Huntsville Penitentiary. Though it is hard, he puts his life back together in Accident, Florida.
There, he hires new employees, joins a motorcycle club, and becomes wildly successful overnight.
Seems like the perfect life, right?
Wrong.
Because one of his first clients is a beautiful, curly-haired woman that reels him in from the moment he first lays eyes on her. Only, before he can work his charm, she forms an opinion of him based solely on the person that he chose to work at his side, day in and day out. That opinion? Utter disgust.
***
Matilda Deveraux has been dealt blow after blow her entire life.
First with the death of her mom. Then living with a stepfamily that despises her.
Her entire life she’s been known as different. The “weird girl that creeps everyone out.”
It’s not her fault that she’s different, yet everyone, including Etienne’s assistant, treats her like she’s a menace to society.
Like she would be better off in a loony bin than gracing the streets of Accident, Florida.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER 1
Silent but smiling. You might want to run.
-Facts of life
ETIENNE
“Hello?” Jenna, more affectionately known as Genocide to the rest of my family, including me, grumbled into the phone.
I grinned.
Deep down—and I mean as far down as you could possibly get—Jenna was a good person. You just had to get past the hard, steel-infused, nearly impossible-to-penetrate outer shell.
“I’m out.”
Jenna paused. “That’s the only reason I answered the phone. I heard that was a possibility.”
That was true. Jenna wasn’t going to spend money to ever answer a collect call from the prison. I was lucky she even answered this call, not knowing who was calling.
“You just didn’t know that it was me,” I said in a sugary sweet voice, allowing my Cajun French accent to thicken to almost unintelligible in a way that I knew she would hate.
Jenna and I were from Cajun country. We were born and raised in a white antebellum home on one of the largest plantations in the southern continental United States.
“Don’t speak like that,” she hissed.
I grinned at the wide-open road that I was currently walking down.
I’d gotten out yesterday and had started walking. There was no way in hell that I was staying in that place any longer than I had to.
Why I’d gotten out early, I had no clue. But I would fuckin’ take it.
Even better, I would be a good little boy and no longer do bad stuff—even if it was to a bad person—just so I could make sure that I never had to go back there again.
Well, that was kind of a lie.
If what had happened to send me there happened again, well, there would be no way in hell that I would be controlling my anger.
There was only so much a man could handle.
“I’m guessing you think that I’ll come pick you up.”
I would’ve laughed, but I knew it would only piss her off.
A lot of things pissed my sister off.
My laugh. My accent. My face. My existence.
“No,” I snorted as I heard a car approaching. “I can get home on my own.”
I’d already started on the way to my destination.
I’d hitchhiked.
Sure, people say that it’s dangerous, but for a six-foot-four, two-hundred-sixty-pound man? It wasn’t all that dangerous.
“Good,” she sounded annoyed that I’d interrupted her. “Then why are you calling?”
That was my sister.
“Just telling you so you can tell your husband,” I warned. “I’ll be home soon to check everything over with Jeffrey. I’m giving him time to get his shit in a row. Then I’ll be relieving him of duty.”
There was a long, silent pause. Then I felt my sister’s demeanor crack.
“You’re shitting me.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I told you that I was going to get out and fire his ass.”
“You did,” she confirmed. “But I didn’t believe you.”
“Well believe it,” I grumbled. “Just tell him I’m out. That’ll light a fire under his ass.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. “Is this your new number?”
“For now,” I said. “I have to get a new debit card, and then I might buy a better one.”
I had to get a lot of new things. A new ID, because mine was expired. A new cell phone. Debit card. Clothes.
The pants I was currently painted into no longer fit. As in, they were so damn tight that I worried for the integrity of the seams with each step that I took.
But that was all I had when I got out, and with a small amount of cash, paired with not having anyone’s number but Jenna’s to call… I was screwed.
The first guy that I’d hitchhiked with dropped me off at a Walmart not far from where he’d picked me up. I’d gotten a cell phone by the checkout counter, a bag of Swedish Fish, and a new shirt that wasn’t skintight. Though, the new one wasn’t much better. There was only so much to choose from at a local neighborhood Walmart, the cashier who’d checked me out told me.
With the remaining thirty dollars in my pocket, I’d caught a ride from a trucker to the county line of my destination—Accident, Florida. Which led me to now, walking down a two-lane road, with the smell of salty water getting closer and closer the more steps I took in the town’s direction.
The smell of the water, no matter that it was in a different state, brought back memories of home.
In New Orleans, where we’d spent our childhood in the bayous and the Pontchartrain, we’d run wild through the Gulf of Mexico. Hell, at one point in time, I’d head to all three all in one day.
So hell yes, just the smell of the salt brine in the air was enough to soothe something in my soul I hadn’t realized I was missing.
Tomorrow, or as soon as I could arrange it, I would get my company back—once I had wheels and an ID preferably—and everything would be golden.