Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
But Mo wasn’t watching her hands.
He was staring at her face.
And he arrested.
Nope.
This was his worst fear.
For always.
Terror was stark in her expression, big hazel eyes filled with tears.
“My sister covered me with her body,” she said.
That wasn’t what he expected to hear.
“What?” he asked.
“Jet, when we were shot at, or in the room where people were shooting at each other, my sister was there too. And when the bullets were flying, she covered me with her body,” she explained.
Mo needed a minute.
She was in a room with people shooting at each other and her sister had to cover her with her body?
“Jet and Mom…Jet and Mom…” A fat tear fell from her eye. “Jet and Mom would lose their minds if they knew this was happening. And Mom barely survived her first stroke.”
“When were you shot at?”
It was him that asked the question, but he didn’t recognize his own voice. It sounded low and gritty and like it crawled up his throat straight from the acid in his gut.
“My dad was a gambler. He’s recovering. And my sister had made some dude unhappy by jumping him at an Einstein’s. We went to confront Dad gambling and…”
She kept talking but it was then Mo remembered her sister was a Rock Chick.
He needed to hear no more.
“They don’t need to know,” he said over her story.
Her eyes got big. “Of course they don’t need to know! They can never know! Jet’ll tell Eddie. Eddie will tell Lee. Then that whole crew will lay waste to Denver.”
In that moment, Mo was feeling the need to lay waste to something.
The woman was standing in front of him terrified and crying.
“I don’t even want to think about what Tex’ll do,” she went on.
Well, hell.
He forgot Tex MacMillan was part of that posse.
Not only part of that posse but married to a woman named Nancy.
Lottie’s mother.
Fuck.
“They won’t know,” he assured her. “Hawk’s all over it. It’ll be done before MacMillan can get his duffle bag of grenades out.”
“I hope so,” she muttered, turning her head away.
Mo noted she didn’t deny her stepfather had a duffle bag of grenades.
Mistake number one.
He watched her dance.
Mistake number two.
He left her sightline when she was exposed and needed to know he had her.
Mistake number three.
He let it slip his mind she was tangled up with the Rock Chicks.
Mistake number four.
He also forgot her stepfather was a lunatic.
He usually didn’t even make it to mistake number one.
It was time to get his shit together.
“I need to get ready for my next set,” she mumbled, beginning to walk to the mirror she’d used both the other times he was in this room with her.
“Lottie,” he called.
She turned back.
“Nothing’s gonna hurt you,” he promised.
She looked him head to toe.
Mo knew what she saw.
Nothing she wanted to see.
He knew he was one ugly motherfucker and she could get any guy she wanted. Didn’t even have to crook a finger. Just give a man a look and he’d follow her like a hungry stray.
But she also saw what she needed to see.
It’d take something to get through him to get to her.
And they both knew the man behind that letter didn’t have dick (maybe literally).
Then she surprised him again.
She showed him vulnerability.
Oh yeah.
This was going to be a challenge.
“Don’t leave me again, Mo,” she said softly. “Please.”
And oh yeah.
That letter had freaked her.
Fuck yeah.
Mo wanted to lay waste to something.
“I won’t…” he trailed off because it was on the tip of his tongue to call her baby. He finished with, “I promise.”
She stared into his eyes a beat.
After she did that, she nodded and moved to her mirror.
* * * *
“So what do you do the other four hours?”
Mo was fully clothed on his back on her couch that was a decent-sized couch, but it wasn’t long enough for him.
No surprise. Most couches weren’t.
His eyes were on the dark ceiling.
It was nearing on two.
Lottie went on at nine thirty, eleven and one.
She danced for ten to twelve minutes each set. Customers weren’t allowed to touch her to tip, but even if they could, they wouldn’t be able to reach her with the way she worked the stage. The other girls ran out and gathered the bills that drifted onto the stage for her.
The rest of the time, she sipped watermelon Perrier out of little cans from a pink paper straw with white chevrons on it, got ready for her next set and gabbed with whatever dancer was in the room with her.
And if there weren’t any, she gabbed with Mo.
She was a talker.
This was Mo’s lot in life. Being surrounded by women who were talkers.
“What?” he asked.
“You said you sleep for four hours a night. What do you do for the other four?”
He wanted her to go to sleep.
He wanted her to go to sleep so maybe he could go to sleep (though he didn’t hold a ton of hope for that) and therefore stop thinking about her in that tiny, green satin nightie with all the cream lace she’d come out of her bathroom wearing.