Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Like the one he was shooting me right then.
Dressed in his usual black jeans and a black button-up, he had a bit of a professional appearance. But the skin that peeked out from his clothes was covered in tattoos.
Including the backs of his hands. One had a skull. The other had a bold “AC” inked into it.
For the Alcazar Cartel.
That he ran.
After breaking away from a cartel he’d grown up in while in Mexico.
He smelled good, too.
Kinda spicy, but not overwhelmingly so. Maybe just soap. Or very lightly applied cologne.
“Hey, mama,” he said, giving me that smirk I’d mentioned.
Gaze moving down, I saw he’d brought one of his mutts with him.
A was a big fan of dogs. Lots and lots of pitbulls. Which, objectively, were probably a good idea when you had a massive, sprawling property that you couldn’t have a guard on every inch of.
“You can’t bring your dog in here,” I told him, bringing my attention back to my leg, ripping the material wider, since they were trash now anyway.
I didn’t even see him move, but when my gaze lifted so I could reach for some gauze out of my desk drawer, A was towering over me, glancing down at my leg.
“Whose ass did you kick today?” he asked.
And, damn him, it was nice to hear a man admit in even an offhand way that I was capable of kicking ass.
After so long with my coworkers, I expected nothing but criticism and teasing from people within the office walls.
“Lost a fight with some rusty scaffolding,” I admitted, shrugging.
“You’re still standing, aren’t you?” he asked. And it was a very Andres way of saying Seems like you won to me.
I didn’t want to soften to him at all, but after the night I’d had, hanging off of unsteady scaffolding in a half-renovated office building to try to get pictures of the CEO banging his secretary, then nearly falling to my death, yeah, it was nice to hear anything halfway decent from someone right then.
“Mr. Alcazar!” Mike’s voice called from somewhere behind me, making me immediately stiffen, something I knew didn’t escape A’s keen gaze.
But he said nothing, just straightening and moving a more professional distance away.
“Please, don’t let Hope distract you,” Mike added, making me bite my cheeks and kind of wish for that Lockjaw.
Each passing day, it seemed to get harder and harder to keep my cool, to not rise to the bait they were all dangling in front of me.
“She ain’t bothering me,” A said, and I chanced a look at him, finding his brows pinched a bit.
“Good. Good. We have the meeting room all ready for you,” Mike said, the picture of charm when there was a client with deep pockets in the building.
Mike Mason was the son of the man who’d first hired me, claiming he’d liked my ‘spunk,’ and thought that the all-male crew could ‘benefit from having a woman around.’
Unfortunately, his son hadn’t been as welcoming. And when a little heart trouble meant Mr. Mason had needed to hang up his hat and, for the most part, hand over the reins to his son, my work life had pretty much become hell.
Mike looked like what I imagined his dad would have looked like in his thirties. Tall, a little stockily built, his brown hairline already starting to recede, with light green eyes.
He was dressed a little more formally today than usual in a button-up and brand-new dark-wash jeans.
He had on cologne as well, but unlike A, he didn’t know how to apply it conservatively.
“Cool,” A said, shrugging.
I’d started to get to my feet since if it was an all-hand-on-deck situation, I had a set of them too.
But Mike’s bark stopped me.
“Sit your ass down. You’re not coming.”
Anger, familiar enough that it was easy to mask, flooded my system as I glared at Mike for a second.
It was the next emotion that worked its way through me that had my heart hammering and my neck and face warming.
Embarrassment.
Normally, the bad treatment from my coworkers was a sort of private shame that I stubbornly tolerated. No one I knew in my personal life had ever bore witness to it.
And while, sure, Andres Alcazar wasn’t exactly in my personal circle, I did know him outside of work.
It felt like there was suddenly a spotlight on my abuse.
I was acutely aware of my bloody leg, of my greasy hair, of the way I was still only halfway to a standing position, not sure if I should stand in defiance, or drop my ass back down onto my seat.
A said nothing, but his brows were raised. I didn’t know him well enough to interpret what that look meant.
Deciding defiance was always my best option in the face of shame, I jerked my chin up and stood up.
“I was going to get some triple antibiotic,” I snapped at Mike, moving around my desk to yank open the small file cabinet that was against the wall between my desk and the next one, dragging out one of the first aid kits we had lying around.