Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
See?
Hilariously obnoxious.
“Honey!” Nancy shouted back. “Everyone needs a break once and a while.”
See?
Totally sweet.
“All at once?” Tex boomed.
Nancy looked in our direction from where she was bussing a table and grimaced.
Yeah, time to get back to work.
“I’ll do a water round,” Harlow said.
“You got a new table, Loon,” Raye told me.
I scanned the space and headed out, saying, “We can talk among ourselves about Byron. Text chain.”
“What about Byron?” Jess asked.
“I’ll fill you in,” I heard Raye say as I rounded the bar to approach my new table.
I noticed Tito watching me from behind his sunglasses.
I smiled at him.
He touched his fingers to the panama hat that had little turtles printed on it which he was wearing (see? eclectic wardrobe), then went back to his iPad.
I went to my table.
Before I hit the doorbell when I got to Knox’s after work, I heard him shout, “It’s open.”
I walked in carrying a box with four of Willow’s cupcakes in it.
He was standing in the kitchen, doing what, I didn’t know, because the first words out of his mouth were, “Good. You’re here. Now I can shower and you can change my dressings.”
Oh shit.
Knox in the shower.
Naked.
Me taping bandages on his bare skin.
I’ll repeat…
Oh shit.
I made it to stand across the counter from him, set the box of cupcakes on it, and watched his lips curl up in a sexy, contented smile when he saw them.
I ignored that (or tried to).
“If your door is open, does that mean you’ve had lots of company?” I asked.
“Men have been in and out all day,” he answered.
“So is there a reason you saved the shower and bandage changes for me?” I pushed.
“Not gonna ask one of my buds to hang while I shower and then tape my wounds,” he replied.
“Uh, why?” I kept pushing.
“Babe.”
That was all he said.
Babe.
“That isn’t exactly an answer,” I told him.
“Best I got considering you don’t have a dick so I could talk for a year, and you wouldn’t get it.”
How much more dude-like could these dudes get?
“I’m perfectly certain it would be no hit to your manhood to have Cap or Javi or Gabe hanging out, listening on the off chance the big body of a dude fell in the shower,” I informed him. “And I’m absolutely certain that they wouldn’t give a shit about taping some gauze on you.”
“And this is what I mean about you not getting it,” he said as he hobble-walked toward the stairs.
“Knox, I don’t really have a lot of—” I began.
When he interrupted me, he was two steps up, doing them one-footed. As in, he put his right foot on the step while he leaned into his crutch on his left, hefted himself up, and then right foot again.
It looked onerous, tedious and precarious.
No wonder he only did it once (or today, twice) a day.
“It’ll only take half an hour. Can you wait half an hour?” he asked.
I could wait eternity for him, which was the problem.
“It’s gonna take you that long to get up the stairs,” I noted.
“If you don’t want me to try to prove you wrong, don’t issue a challenge.”
God, he was a pain.
I rolled a hand. “Take your time but get on with it. I came here before going home to Jacques, and we both know he’s a very good boy, but it’s not nice to make him wait.”
Knox continued up the stairs, saying, “If I gotta be home, you should bring him over in the morning. I’ll look after him. Once I get more mobile, I can take him for walks, and he can use my backyard in the meantime.”
I turned to the windows that pretty much made up his back wall.
The woodwork around them was painted black. It looked good with the rest of the space.
As mentioned, although the development Knox bought into had no personality, the inside did. I’d been uber impressed the first time I’d walked in.
He had super good taste.
The gray cupboards of his kitchen, with the black metal open shelves on the back wall and black industrial lighting over the bar. The big dark-gray tweed sectional (he even had toss pillows!). The wood accent walls. The small but totally pimp backyard with its built-in outdoor kitchen and its also-small pool, which had one of those things on it that you could turn on and it shoved water at you so you could do laps, even if you didn’t get anywhere.
We’d had sex in that pool (without that water thing going).
And once we established I’d be spending the night every night, Jacques had been with me.
He’d missed his Uncle Knox when he was gone.
It would be awesome if my furry baby had company all day.
What are you thinking!? My brain screamed.
And…
Yeah.
Sure, friends looked after friends’ dogs, and it would probably be helpful for Knox to have company while he was cooped up at home recovering. Not to mention, a good excuse (not that he’d need it) to take regular walks.