Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Alarmed, Rory raised an eyebrow. “Does it show?”
Dana shook her head. “No, you’re talking to the customers as usual, and you’re just as fast. You’re just not you.”
“Later,” Rory said, not meaning it.
What was she going to say? What could she say? She was uneasy and didn’t know why. She wasn’t used to sharing her life with friends. She wanted to learn. She even wanted to settle there in San Francisco and keep the friends she was making. She wanted a family. She wanted to take a chance on Gideon, but everything was falling apart.
Dana nodded, picked up her tray and moved easily into the crowd. Rory, pouring drinks and making small talk with her customers, couldn’t help looking for him. Gideon. She wanted him to come in. Two of his friends were sitting in the back, which was a good distance from her. She recognized them. Ethan and Brian were their names. Both would be considered good-looking men. Hard if you looked at their eyes. She knew few women would see past the tall, ripped bodies. She hadn’t exactly seen them with Gideon, but she knew they were part of his family.
If she were being honest with herself, she didn’t want to know how Gideon’s eye could go from soft sky blue to arctic cold like a dense glacier. There were a couple of times he looked more like a predator than a human when she’d looked into his eyes. She’d blinked and the illusion was gone, but which was the illusion? Man? Or predator?
She read the energy of people around her fairly easily. Gideon was a dangerous man, just as Ethan and Brian were. Javier was extremely dangerous. Yet Rory felt safe with them when she hadn’t felt safe in years. Why was that? And why hadn’t Gideon come to see her? Where was he?
Rory realized, as the hours had gone by and he had not arrived, the tension in her had grown. She had to give that some thought. She wasn’t dependent on anyone—least of all a man. In reality, she barely knew Gideon, yet she couldn’t stop thinking about him. The anxiety she was feeling wasn’t just for herself but for him. Since her nightmare and hearing him call her name, more and more she was becoming certain he was in danger. She just didn’t know where it was coming from.
A man with dark blond hair and brown eyes took the seat directly in front of her when a customer and his friend got up and headed to a table. The blond gave her a friendly smile. He had one lower tooth next to his molar capped in shiny gold. He looked very fit, wide shoulders encased in a tan tee stretched over heavy muscles. He had a darker-colored hoodie unzipped over the tee.
“What can I get for you?” She took one more quick scan of the bar and then another of her new customer. She gave him a bright smile.
“Old-fashioned. Johnnie Walker Black Label. Name’s Scott Tinsdale. Didn’t expect my bartender to look like you.” Deliberately he looked at her hand. “Married? Engaged? I don’t want to step on someone’s toes asking you out.”
“Moving a little fast, aren’t you?” She laughed as she mixed his old-fashioned with simple syrup and two dashes of aromatic bitters. She didn’t look at the tall ice-filled glass but kept her gaze fixed on him.
Something was very wrong. The anxiety that had been growing in her since she’d woken from her nightmare had continued to worsen. Her mind sought Gideon, but she couldn’t touch him. The connection between them seemed to be broken.
“I’m a decisive kind of man. I see something I like, and I go after it,” Scott declared.
“That’s a good way to be,” Rory said, setting his drink on a napkin in front of him. “Thank you for the compliment, but I’m in a very committed relationship.”
Dana was there again, leaning on the bar, gesturing toward her. Rory hastily excused herself and went to the waitress.
“The two men at the table in the back gave me this note for you.” Dana indicated Brian and Ethan. “That and a very healthy tip.”
Rory opened it and read: Something wrong?
She pulled a pen from her pocket and wrote: Please check on Gideon now. She didn’t care if she ended up looking like a fool. She knew something had happened to him. She didn’t know what or how, but something was terribly wrong. She pressed a hand to her stomach, suddenly frightened for Gideon as she watched Dana take the folded note back to the table. Would they even take her seriously?
Both men looked up at her, and then Ethan was up and out of the bar while Brian was on his phone texting. That fast. No one asked questions; they just took her at her word. She let her breath out and did her best to turn her attention to her work.