Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
What I didn’t plan on doing was taking Jennifer with me.
I knew it’d be a fight, but I didn’t really care at this point.
Even the thought of my Nonnie being in Jennifer’s presence made my stomach churn.
My Nonnie was what you would call softhearted.
She loved everyone and everything.
I had no doubt that Jennifer would get my Nonnie to love her.
Jennifer was a manipulative bitch, and she’d use absolutely anything to get closer to me.
To sink her claws in further.
“You should go into the protection business or something,” Annie supplied as I turned to survey the room.
I looked down at her twinkling eyes, and snorted.
“You do know I’m a DEA agent, right?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I guessed you were by the shirts I see you wearing on your way to work,” she teased.
She was out in her yard every morning watering; I saw her every morning as I left.
It wasn’t a surprise that she knew what I wore to work.
“Here you are,” Francine said from behind me.
“What the hell?” I asked.
It took them less than three minutes to get it done.
“It’s on the house, too. I snagged another order so you wouldn’t have to wait any longer,” Francine explained.
I nodded.
“Oh, okay. Thank you,” I acknowledged.
Francine smiled a little wobbly.
“You deserve that and so much more,” she said emphatically.
***
Annie
I watched Mig talk to Griffin as surreptitiously as I could.
“What are you looking at?” My sister, Tasha, asked me.
I tilted my head in the direction of Mig and Griffin.
“The one on the left. With the tight black jeans and black t-shirt that says DEA on the breast pocket,” I whispered.
My sister’s eyes went to Mig, and she smiled.
“That’s your neighbor, isn’t it?” She confirmed.
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s him.”
“Who’s the other guy?” Tasha asked.
I glanced quickly in their direction, then turned back to my cold burger and limp French fries.
“The other one is Griffin Storm. He’s married to Lenore, you remember her, right?” I asked.
“She’s the one that owns Uncertain Pleasures, correct?” She said, popping a cherry tomato in her mouth and looking at me with a raised brow.
I nodded in confirmation. “Yeah.”
I’d met Lenore when she was dating Griffin and then became friends when I’d bought my shop that was directly next to her sex toy shop, Uncertain Pleasures.
We’d hit it off, and now we swapped services.
I cut Lenore’s hair, or gave her a massage, in exchange for her giving me free sex toys.
Or condoms.
Or anything I wanted, really.
I’d not moved beyond the former two, though.
I was too chicken to try any of the more adventurous stuff without having that little push in the right direction. And without the right man, that would never happen.
“I thought you said Mig was married,” my sister asked.
I looked up at her. “He is.”
She gave me a questioning look.
“Then why is he looking at you like he wants to eat you alive, one slow, luxurious lick at a time?” She questioned.
You know those times that you know you shouldn’t look?
Like, with everything in your being you want to look, but you know if you do, you’ll be caught looking?
Well, I was caught looking.
And I liked it.
The way his eyes met mine made me feel like we were the only ones in the entire diner instead of it being filled with nearly fifty people.
He held my eyes for a long time.
So long that I knew it would be considered more than just a glance.
The only thing a married man should be doing, anyway.
“Maybe he’s not happily married,” Tasha offered when Mig finally looked away from me.
I shrugged.
“She yells at him a lot, and he just takes it. I don’t know if they’re happy or not, but I know from what I can see, it isn’t all sunshine and roses,” I answered, trying in vain not to look back at Mig.
Except when I did, he was leaving, and I was left feeling bereft.
I watched the muscles in his back play with the movement of his arms.
Watched the muscles bunch as he reached his arm forward and pushed open the diner’s door.
Then I licked my lips as I watched him walk to the SUV that I hadn’t seen until now and drop in it.
I’d have had to climb into it.
But Mig was tall.
Really tall.
At least six foot three or more.
He rolled his window down and looked in the direction of the diner once more, and my breath caught when his eyes met mine.
He smiled.
A quick, almost imperceptible flash, but I saw it.
And I blushed.
His grin got wider.
How he could even see that from where he was, I didn’t know. But I knew he knew what he did to me.
With one last look, he slipped a pair of shades over his eyes that reminded me of the ones baseball players wore, the sporty type where the lens came to a point at their cheekbones.