Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
They broke, Riggs came and claimed me, but I didn’t say my farewells since Riggs called, “We’ll be right behind you. See you at your place,” to Cade.
After he said that, he turned me down the sidewalk with Ledger jogging off the other way between Jace and Jess.
“Is something up?” I asked.
“We’re not gonna have the chill day I wanted us to have,” he answered.
“What’s going on?”
“Cade has something to share with me. We’re going to theirs.”
“Something?”
“He’s an FBI profiler, or he was. He’s retired. Word is, he’s one of the best ones they ever had.”
“Whoa,” I said. Then asked, with a little shock, because if he was the best, this was not much to merit his attention. “Is this about the wine burglars?”
“Nope. It’s about the Whitakers.”
Interesting!
I suddenly had a pep in my step as we kept walking.
“That’s not all,” Riggs said.
“What?”
“Storm asked if he can come over, or if I can hit his. He’s made a decision, and considering it will affect Ledger, he wants me to know what it is.”
“Oh boy.”
“Yeah.”
“Is that what all the activity was about on your phone?”
“Some of it. Others were buds wanting to know if we can have a get-together at my place tonight. I’ll text them later that’s not going to be a thing.” We kept walking, me under his arm, mine along his waist, thumb hooked in the loop of his belt at his other side, as he looked down at me. “You up for that next Saturday? Mom can take Ledge, and we can blow it out.”
On the one hand, I wanted to meet his buds.
On the other hand, I wasn’t a partier.
“Maribeth will be here. She’s coming on Wednesday and staying the weekend,” as a hedge, I reminded him of something I’d already told him.
“All the better,” he replied.
In the Maribeth department, it was, seeing as she was a partier, even if she was now a married lady with two kids.
“Murphy’s also coming out,” he shared. “That’s another of the texts I got. Looks like Mom also got to him, and he’s not gonna waste time checking you out.”
I didn’t know if this elated or terrified me.
Riggs pulled me tighter to his side. “He’ll like you.”
If he was like Riggs, and I huddled in a chair, sipping a gin martini, while other women were throwing their bras into the pines, I wasn’t sure about that.
“I don’t want to change a hair on your head, honey,” Riggs remarked. “But I do wanna have a go at teaching you how to let it down. Your girl and my boy in town, that says party.”
He was right.
It did.
“Okay. I’m in.”
He shot me a big, happy smile.
It was only then I was truly in.
“Well, not a chill day, but an interesting one,” I noted.
“I wanted to hang with you and my kid before dropping my boy off at Dustin’s at four, then spend the rest of the day in your bed at the cabin. Now, due to the Cade and Stormy parts of this shit, Jace and Jess are gonna take him to do something, so I lost the Ledger part of that.”
“We deal, then we get on with it,” I reminded him.
He looked down at me. “Yeah, honey. And another reminder, on other important fronts, you’re not doing much of that.”
Hmm.
It was occurring to me that Riggs thought he was sitting on the emotional ticking time bomb of me.
Truth.
He was.
So he was right.
I had to deal with that.
But first I needed to learn how to party.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Eternity
Nadia
The Riggs boys owned a lake.
The Bohannans occupied a bona fide compound on a lake.
Their lake was probably ten of Riggs’s. It was huge, and they didn’t own it.
But they did inhabit some impressive properties at one end of it.
As we drove up, Riggs told me Delphine and Cade occupied the main house. Cade’s daughter, Celeste (who was at the first marathon screening of season one of OMitB, something that had started at six that morning), lived in a smaller pad close to it. And Jace and Jess occupied cabins across from each other a ways up each side of the lake.
Upon entering, I discovered the interior of Cade and Delphine’s house was impressive, and attractive, if not as interesting and eccentric as Riggs’s house.
Though their view of that lake was smack-you-back spectacular.
Delphine moved off to make us coffees as Cade led us to his office.
It, too, was impressive. And unlike the rest of the house, which was gorgeous, but gender neutral, this space was entirely masculine.
I’d had the opportunity to do a full-house tour of Riggs’s place, and he had an office too.
However, unlike the rest it (I’d learned he’d somehow miraculously and painstakingly renovated it in only three years between jobs, commissions, having Ledger and having a good time), his office was a small, dark, cramped, untidy room at the very back of the level where the kitchen and dining room were.