Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Toni didn’t wait.
She took off toward Ally, Ally turned when she got to her, and Toni said while they walked away, “Girl, can we stop on the way home to get a drink? I’m parched. And by the way, you grew up badass. I’m impressed.”
“Thanks. Now, are we talking cosmo parched, or beer parched?” Ally asked.
“You’re drivin’, you choose,” Toni answered.
Their voices faded away.
This left me in a dark hall, alone with Darius.
It had been five months since his near-fatal run-in with Ally’s stalker.
In those months, we’d negotiated a visitation arrangement, doing this using our son as an intermediary.
Yes, that was weak.
No, obviously, I didn’t have it in me to do it differently.
Now, Liam shifted every week between his father’s house and mine.
And it was Liam who delivered my envelopes to me. But it was no longer cash. It was a check, signed by Darius.
I had received reports about Darius’s recuperation progress, but I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him.
Until now.
“Follow me,” he grunted.
“I have my car,” I told him.
“You follow me to my truck, or I carry you to it, Malia. Your choice. Two seconds.”
He couldn’t be serious.
I guessed my two seconds were up, because he stalked toward me.
And he was serious.
I put both hands up.
“Okay, okay. Yeesh. I’ll follow you.”
He scorched me with a look, turned on his boot and prowled way.
I followed him.
When we got outside, he beeped the locks on a black Silverado and headed to the passenger side door, probably afraid I’d run if given the chance. He held the door while I grabbed onto the hold and hefted myself up.
He slammed the door on me and rounded the hood.
He angled in beside me.
I turned to him. “Darius—”
“Shut it,” he ordered tersely, his focus on starting the truck.
Oh no, he didn’t.
“Don’t you dare speak to me that way,” I hissed.
He turned to me. “Have you not heard of all the shit that went down with Indy, Jet, Roxie, Jules, Ava, Stella, Sadie and you gotta know what went down with Ally since I got a hospital stay from some of her shit.”
“I read the articles.”
Though, they hadn’t included Ally’s business, or whoever Sadie was.
However, Liam had filled in those blanks, also proud as all heck about his dad being the hero of those scenarios (because he’d also been in on Sadie’s rescue).
I was proud too. I just wasn’t admitting that to myself.
And scared to death, because all of that was dangerous, particularly Ally’s situation, and he could have died, and I couldn’t tamp down the fear, even though the bad guys got caught and the good guys were okay.
He jutted his chin to indicate the building we just vacated. “So what the fuck are you up to?”
“We were just going to look through a few offices.”
“Breaking and entering is a felony.”
“You’d know all about felonies.”
He clamped his mouth shut, and I wished I could reach out and grab those words and shove them back in my mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “That was uncalled for.”
He turned, started the truck and put it into gear. He then twisted and put his arm behind my seat to look behind him in order to back out.
His arm that close to me gave me happy shivers.
I tried to ignore the shivers.
I failed at ignoring the shivers.
I decided to focus on something else.
“Darius, truly, I’m sorry. You just surprised me, showing like this. And I haven’t seen you and emotions are still high.”
“You got emotion?” he muttered like he was talking to himself, faced forward and put the truck in drive. “Coulda fooled me.”
“That’s not fair either,” I said carefully.
He had no reply.
“Are you still watching me?”
“You’re still my boy’s momma. You’re still prone to doing stupid shit. So yeah, I’m still watching you.”
I decided it best at this juncture to ignore the “stupid shit” comment, so I targeted something else.
“Um…like…personally?”
“No, like I got tracking on your car.”
What?
“And your cell,” he added.
“You track my car?”
He again said nothing.
“And my phone?”
“Not your calls, just your location.”
“Why?”
“I just caught you in an empty office building about to commit a felony to look into a client who’s hinky. My experience, if someone acts hinky, they are. More experience, if they’re hinky, they don’t want people discovering why. More experience, they can do some pretty shitty things to people who poke around trying to find out what’s hinky about them. You might be done with me, babe. But I didn’t survive navigating the underbelly of Denver for fifteen years to stand at my son’s side by his momma’s casket at her funeral.”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t come to that,” I murmured.
“Ask Jules how sure she was when she walked into a living room and got shot twice. And Sadie, when she was roofied, kidnapped and nearly taken out of the country. And Stella, ask how sure she was that her apartment wouldn’t explode.”