Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
I sat straight in my chair, a trill of excitement going through me.
“I’m sorry, I keep forgetting to mention it,” Raye said to Shirleen. Then to me she repeated, “I’m sorry.”
“And you.” Shirleen turned on me. “Nancy isn’t even in her house, and you’re at the casita, offering to Marie Kondo the shit out of her new place. Where were you when me and Moses were moving in?” She didn’t let me answer. “Here. But you didn’t offer that to me.”
“Well—”
I didn’t get any further either.
Shirleen started looking all around the ceiling, asking, “When’s the time you most need someone to come in and toss out your junk and get you situated? Oh, I don’t know.” Her laser stare abruptly landed on me. “When you move in!”
“Strictly speaking, you should throw out the junk before you make the move,” I educated her.
Her eyes narrowed.
Yikes.
Roam made a noise deep in his throat that sounded like half-laughter, half-something very different.
“I’m neck deep in Louboutins,” she outlined her very first-world problem. “Something has to give. And it’s not like I’m asking for a freebie. I’d pay you.”
Oh my God!
That was when Javi made a noise, also deep in his throat, but it was all happy.
“You will?” I chirped.
She pointed a perfectly manicured finger in my face. “Next Saturday. First, you come over and look at the mountain you gotta climb. Then we go to the Container Store.”
Outside of spending all day having sex with Javi, that was my favorite thing to do.
And I was seeing how she could be the operations manager for a bunch of bad-A’s and totally why Roam and Cap let her have her way (most of the time).
She could really lay down the law.
“You’re on!” I cried.
Javi, who had his arm resting along the back of my chair, started stroking the nape of my neck with a finger.
I shivered and got happier.
Suddenly, Dream was there, standing close to Shirleen.
Shirleen turned to her and instantly reared back, probably because that nightmare smile was on Dream’s face again.
“Anything I can get you?” Dream asked through clenched teeth.
Shirleen looked to the table, saw we’d broken the seal, and then she went back to Dream. “An appletini.”
“Any particular vodka you’d like in that?” Dream pushed out.
“Dazzle me,” Shirleen said.
“Sir?” Dream was addressing Moses.
“Just a beer,” Moses told her.
“Any preferences?” she pushed out.
“You got 405?” he asked.
“We do,” she gritted.
“That’d be great.”
Moses commandeered some chairs for him and his wife to sit down, and they joined us.
While he did this, I thought Dream was about to have a seizure, but then she controlled whatever was going on internally, nodded and walked away.
“I’m uncertain about the weekend crew,” Shirleen leaned in and whispered to the table.
Proving he had bionic hearing, Tex bellowed from the coffee cubby, “Me too!”
I turned to look at Tito.
He was concentrating very closely on his iPad, which he was poking at with a finger, so I suspected he was playing some game.
By the time I turned back, I jumped, because out of nowhere, Martha was there.
She was carrying one of Tex’s coffees.
“Good to see you’re alive,” she grouched at me. “You been gone so long, what with all the recent shenanigans, it’s a real unknown with you girls if you’re lying dead in a ditch or off on an impromptu joyride to Vegas.”
Sadly, and scarily, this was kinda true.
“I’m fine, Martha. I was just hanging with Javi,” I told her.
Her eyes bounced between me and Javi, regrettably landing on Javi.
“See you pulled your finger out,” she remarked.
Javi didn’t take any of that bait, but he did smile a smile I felt in my girl parts, and I knew he did because he very much liked to push his finger in, but he also enjoyed pulling it out.
“Boys,” Martha huffed then addressed the whole table, or specifically a certain subsect of the women at it. “So, officially, Jacob and Alexis are moving into the two-bedroom. Does this mean we’ll be getting another girl who’s mixed up in whatever crazy you girls have gotten yourself into?”
“No, all the crazy is already resident at the Oasis,” Jessie didn’t quite assure her.
Martha blew out an annoyed breath.
And that was when it happened.
After the storm of yesterday, our brief sojourn under the sun of good friends (even ones who were getting in your face), good food and lunchtime cocktails went behind the clouds and the rain started pouring.
“There you are.”
I knew that voice, and it made my skin turn cold.
I turned to see my brother there.
Considering Easton was cocky, spoiled, a mama’s boy and had the personality of a bro podcaster, it was really too bad he was so good-looking.
He got Dad’s blond hair and blue eyes, he wasn’t super tall, but he wasn’t short by any means. He worked hard at his body, so he was lean and fit. And when he wasn’t in surgery or in his office, he liked to be outside, so he had a nice tan and looked what he was: healthy and active.