Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
I melted deeper into him, “That’s a lovely thought, Jamie. Feel free to suggest it, and I’ll make sure he knows, if he wants to be home for a while, he’s still welcome here.”
“We have a plan,” Jamie murmured.
I kissed his jaw, then his chin, before I parroted, “We have a plan.”
He rolled us to our sides and tangled our legs together.
“Since we’re taking a break from fucking,” he started.
“A short break,” I put in.
His blue eyes were dancing when he stated, “I’m not a machine, woman.”
“You’re my pleasure machine.”
He burst out laughing.
“Well, you are,” I declared.
He continued laughing and only stopped in order to press a hard kiss on my mouth.
“So, while I recalibrate,” he started again, his lips still twitching.
“Yes?” I urged him to go on.
The residual amusement swept from his features, and he said quietly, “I’m pulling back from AJ.”
I felt my eyes go wide.
“He might get the insurance and live another day,” Jamie continued. “He might not. If he doesn’t, the ranch will be mine, and I can make decisions then, and now I can do it while talking to Morgan about how he feels about it. But at this point, he’s a lost old man, stripped of everything he had, everything he was. His two sons are dead, and he put them in the ground. His daughter can’t stand to be in his presence. I was after vengeance, for Mom, for Judge, for me, and I got it. Continuing to go at him now is just cruel.”
My morally upstanding Jamie.
“I think the same about Paloma,” I admitted. “Seeing her with your father, it was just… pitiful.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
“And you have Morgan now.”
He did.
Since Morgan was clearly hoping to make up for lost time, he called Jamie every day, even if it was simply to share the news they got rain down in Texas.
I loved that for Jamie.
No, I adored it.
As such, Morgan had told his sons. They took it as expected, being Morgan Rawlin’s boys, shock but quick acceptance. They were all discussing when we’d go back at a time when Judge could take Chloe and JT, which wouldn’t be long from now.
And they’d already accepted our invitation to come to the as-yet-unscheduled adoption celebration for Dru and Jamie.
The whole family.
AJ didn’t need to factor in that.
Paloma didn’t either.
“Whatever they can do to us now will be like a needle thrown at armor,” Jamie said. “They can’t hurt us. I couldn’t live with myself if I kept up the drive to hurt them.”
“Agreed.”
Jamie tucked some of my hair behind my ear, a sweet look on his face.
Then he asked, “Want a snack?”
“Please,” I answered.
“Stay here.” He gave me a quick kiss before he knifed out of bed. “I’ll be back.”
He pulled on some joggers and left the room.
I watched him go, then stretched languidly on the bed, before I pulled the sheet over my lower half.
And I waited for my man to get back and feed me.
Definitely my version of happily ever after.
It was the next day, Sunday morning.
We were in the kitchen, sitting on the stools at the bar by the window.
Jamie had made scrambled eggs, bacon, potato hash and toast (he was an excellent cook, even breakfast, then again, his mother taught him).
He was reading The New York Times.
I was fielding texts about the next Sunday lunch, to be held at Allegra and Darryn’s, something she wanted to do soon, so we’d have a chance to check in on how Nico was doing.
Therefore, I was on my phone when the call came in.
Elsa.
“Elsa,” I told Jamie (and the brows he’d raised at me) as I took the call. “Hello, dear.”
“I’m going to send you something via email,” she said. “I’d suggest you go to your computer to watch it. This definitely needs to be consumed on a larger screen.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Just…enjoy,” she replied.
And with that, oddly, she rang off.
I turned to Jamie. “She’s sending me something to watch, and she says I have to do it on a computer.”
“Something bad?”
I shook my head. “No, considering she sounded like she was trying not to laugh the short time we were on the phone.”
“I could always use laughter,” Jamie noted.
I could too.
We took our coffee and left our plates when we went to the PC in the study.
I woke it up, pulled up email, found the one Elsa sent not minutes before, and clicked on the link.
It was a video from a gossipy news site.
And the still was of Ryan of G-Force sitting in what looked like a living room.
“Well, shit,” Jamie said.
Shit indeed.
I hit play.
The video started in a newsroom, with the commentor saying, “It appears things are going to get complicated for the struggling AJ Oakley after several men came forward to report the cash sales of some of the Oakley estate’s prized possessions. Reportedly, this happened only weeks, and in some cases, mere days before Oakley’s son, Jefferson, allegedly set fire to the entire compound on the ranch known as Oakbilly Gulch.”