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)
He shrugged. “If I have the time, and if I can do it, whatever you ask.”
“For one date?”
“You can get me the date, but you can’t control if your sister is going to like me.”
Too true.
“I need to think on this,” I told him.
“Take your time.”
“And I’ll reiterate, I’m gonna tell the Angels about you.”
“I figured.”
“And get up in the shit of the Nightingale guys because they didn’t tell us about you,” I went on.
“That’s their problem, not mine.”
It so was.
“Okay then. Nice chat,” I said.
He smiled then requested, “Can I get another dirty chai?”
Well, Byron was a lot more interesting than I would have guessed.
But in the end, Byron was Byron.
“You got it,” I said, got up and headed behind the bar.
Willow and Raye were right in my space before I even got the chai out.
“So?” Raye asked.
“Staff room. Five minutes. Get a conference call going with the Angels.”
Raye looked excited.
Willow did too.
After I dropped the chai on Byron, I met the girls in the staff room.
Raye had her phone up between them, and I could see it was engaged.
“Right, Luna’s here to brief us about her sit-down with Byron,” Raye said into the phone.
“Hey, Loon,” Gemma greeted.
“Hey, guys,” I replied.
“Let’s hear it,” Raye said.
“Strap in,” I warned. Then shared, “Byron is a forensic accountant with mysterious clients. He watches money to make sure no bad guys do bad things with their assets. He’s clearly skilled with a computer and will come onboard if I can get him a date with Dream. Oh, and not only is there a board on some web that’s deeper than the dark web that’s been discussing all the Nightingale men’s business, but we Angels have our own thread. Also, the guys knew all about Byron, and that board, and never told us.”
I stopped talking and complete silence filled the locker room.
Until Tex lumbered in, all flannel shirt, jeans, long-ass beard and wild-ass hair.
He took one look at us and did not tell us to get back to work.
He said, “I lost three months ago when you hadn’t figured it out by the time I placed my bet in the pool. Fifty bucks, down the drain.”
And with that, he lumbered out.
We all stared at the door he disappeared through, then stared at each other.
“Cap knew this?” Raye whispered scarily.
“Eric did?” Jessie whispered, also scarily.
“Javi?” Harlow sounded injured.
“And they bet on it?” Raye added, her voice even scarier.
“Boy, Gabe has some ’splainin’ to do,” Willow threatened.
So did Knox.
“He wants to date Dream?” Shanti asked through the phone.
“Is there another Dream we know that he might be talking about?’ Joey suggested.
“Nope. It’s my sister he’s talking about,” I said.
“This is wild,” Gemma noted.
“I’m never going to look at some everyday dude on his laptop at a coffee shop the same again,” Shanti remarked.
Time to move on.
“Dream is coming to dinner at Mom and Dad’s tonight. I’ll see if there’s an opportunity to run the date by her,” I said.
“But…is that wise? I mean, we don’t know who he works for,” Raye asked me.
“No, we don’t,” I agreed. “But the Nightingale guys do, and do you think Cap, or Eric, Javi or Gabe would allow him to hang here if they weren’t fans?”
“Good point,” Joey said through the phone.
“Also, he flew all the way out to Pennsylvania for Macy’s funeral,” I reminded Raye. “I mean, that’s way above and beyond the call of a devoted regular at a funky coffee shop slash bar slash restaurant.”
“This is very true,” Raye muttered. “And that was really sweet.”
It was.
And anyone could use sweet in their lives.
Maybe especially Dream.
“Do we need to worry about this board?” Joey inquired.
“Byron says that the Nightingale geek monitors it,” I shared.
“Right,” Jessie said.
“Okay, you ask Dream,” Raye ordered me, then to the team, “Those of us sleeping with Nightingale boys will give them the shit they deserve. And we’ll move on from there. Everyone in on our Chambers Family brief on Sunday?”
Man, they were just not letting that go.
There were a bunch of “I’m in” so I had to say it too.
But I had four days to figure out how to convince them to back down.
Now, I had to figure out how to get my sister to go out on a date with Byron.
NINE
HUNG UP
“I dig you dig my hair, but the rest of me is feeling jealous,” I said to Knox, who seemed mesmerized by his fingers in my hair.
His attention shifted to me and his lips tipped up in that sexy, soft, intimate smile he gave me in times like these, post-sex, when we were just chilling in bed.
“It wraps around my fingers like it doesn’t want to let me go,” he explained.
No part of me ever wanted to let him go.
Yes, I just thought that, and we hadn’t been together for long, but it didn’t freak me out in the slightest.