Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
“What did he want, anyway?” Naz asked.
“Uh ...”
“Roz.”
She sighed. “I guess there’s a girl he’s found that needs a good mentor behind her. She’s from New Jersey, but he’s been placed at the same school I attended until graduation. They don’t think she’s going to stay there for very long though. Seems she gets kicked out of every school her parents send her to.”
Naz straightened against the sink, and considered her words for a minute before replying. “Sounds like maybe someone’s parents should stop sending their kid to someone else to take care of, and start taking care of her themselves. But what the fuck do I know?”
Roz cleared her throat. “I looked into them—called Kyla back the next day to get some information. They’re old money from Jersey, and yeah. It could be rich-kid syndrome, but that also just means they have enough money to satisfy a spoiled kid, Naz. Which you know, is exactly what people do when they don’t want to deal with a kid they can’t handle. They send them away to prep school, and give them enough money to keep them quiet until they’re old enough to get them out of their hair altogether. Instead, she’s been sent to schools for the arts—and they don’t bring her home at all. That doesn’t explain anything to me. Not why she’s rebelling like she’s hurting, anyway.”
Naz shook his head because yeah, she had a point. And this right here was Roz in a nutshell. He knew now why she stopped in England, and whether she wanted to admit it or not, it probably had very little to do with Kyle. More like, his sweet woman found someone she thought needed help, and just being who she was, couldn’t walk away without seeing if she could be the one who might be able to help the girl.
How was he supposed to get mad about that?
He couldn’t, really.
“All right,” Naz finally murmured, staring at himself in the mirror. A few extra hours, that’s all. He just had a few more hours than he was expecting to have to wait before he’d have this woman back in his arms—they could start this thing called life together, finally. What were a couple more hours in the grand scheme of things? He could wait that long, surely. “Just call me whenever you’re on a flight on the way here. So I know, babe.”
“You got it.” Roz laughed nervously, adding, “I might have a little surprise for you, by the way.”
“Might? Either you do or you don’t, Roz.” Naz chuckled. “Not that I need anything, babe. Just having you back in New York is going to be enough for me, if that’s what you want, too.”
“Of course, that’s what I want.”
“Then that’s enough for me.”
“Well, we don’t really get a choice in this surprise. It’s coming one way or the other.”
“What—”
“Oh, there’s a cab. Okay, I’ll call you in a couple hours to let you know the new flight time, okay?”
Naz was still trying to figure out what her other words meant. “Roz—”
“Love you, Naz.”
He could figure it out later.
“Love you, Roz.”
The Surprise
Naz POV
“I thought Roz was supposed to be getting in sometime this evening,” his father said to his right. “I know it was tonight because you made it very clear that if I called your phone at any point in the next seventy-two hours, you were going to come over here and ...” Cross made air quotes as he said, “... personally gut me like a pig.”
Not that the threat really fazed his father. Nothing ever did. Naz still tried to give his father a warning every once in a while.
Cross glanced over at Naz with an arched brow. “That is what you told me, wasn’t it?”
Why wash is father such a prick?
“Rub salt in the wound, Dad,” Naz muttered. “I told Ma why Roz was going to be late, so don’t act like she didn’t tell your nosy ass the first second she could.”
“First of all—”
“You are nosy,” Naz interjected.
Cross scowled. “And secondly—”
“You gossip like a fourteen-year-old girl at her first dance,” Naz said.
“I don’t know where you get that mouth from. It doesn’t come from me.”
Naz laughed. “Lies.”
“All lies,” the man in the wicker chair to Naz’s left said with a smirk around the cigar in his mouth. Zeke side-eyed Cross like he was waiting for his friend to punch him for that comment. “You should have seen your father when you were all of maybe ... five, Naz, and you told the neighbor to fuck right off, then when he wouldn’t throw your ball back across the street for you. Your mother was horrified—your father?”
Cross grinned. “I remember that.”
Zeke shook his head. “Cross laughed, and told the asshole the same thing you did before he took you to the mall and bought you a whole bag of balls to throw in the guy’s yard. We sat on the porch and watched while you threw your balls across the street, and he called the cops on a five-year-old. So, there’s that.”