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)
“Abort,” Raye ordered in my ear. “This is bullshit and I don’t like it. We’ll regroup at the unit and figure out next moves.”
I pushed my chair back, saying, “Bryan has a phone. He could have texted to share you were coming. This doesn’t feel right. Tell him next time he’s going to spring a stranger on me, to—”
“Holy shit.” (Luna)
“What the fuck?” (Jess)
“Where’d he come from?” (Shanti)
“Woman,” I heard growled from the side of the table.
I looked that way, then up, and up, and up, right into Javier Montoya’s crystal-clear amber eyes in his drop-dead gorgeous face.
Nope.
Correction.
His angry crystal-clear amber eyes in his furious, drop-dead gorgeous face.
“Man, he’s good,” Raye breathed. “He appeared out of thin air.”
I didn’t have time to reflect on or admire Javier Montoya’s shadow-like ability to slip in under the radar of five women keeping close watch on me, especially doing this when the man was six foot six inches of hulking, defined muscle (something that earned him the nickname of Mountain).
I was too busy being peeved he’d showed up at all.
I was this for obvious reasons, and for other reasons that weren’t as obvious.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“What are you doing here?” Javi returned.
“I asked first,” I retorted.
“But I’m getting an answer first,” he shot back.
“Uh…can I ask what’s going on?” Jay/Trev entered the conversation.
Javi turned his attention to Jay/Trev. It was still unhappy.
Jay/Trev understandably quailed under his golden glare backed by a mountain of muscled man.
“It looks like you’re on a date with my girlfriend,” Javi declared.
At these words coming out of Javi’s mouth, my stomach plummeted in a happy way I did not like (but I did, and I didn’t like that either), my skin tingled in an excited way I also did not like (but I did, etcetera), and my mouth wanted to form a smile (which I did not allow).
Suffice it to say, that traditional, organic meeting with my soulmate?
When I met Javi during our last big mission, I thought it was him.
In the months since, I discovered it was not.
So why was he here, out of the blue, claiming me?
“Holy shit,” Raye whispered.
“What the fuck?” Jess snapped.
“Oh my God,” Luna said.
“My pregnant girlfriend,” Javi finished on a lie.
All those earlier sensations vanished, and my mouth dropped open.
“Um…what?” Jay/Trev asked.
“Javi!” I cried.
Javi turned back to me. “You steppin’ out on me?”
Oh my goodness!
He was ruining everything!
Weeks and weeks of setting this up, wasted.
I pushed back my chair and stood, ordering, “Go away.”
“No, I think I’ll go away,” Jay/Trev said, standing as well, doing it shifting to the other side of the table so he didn’t have to get close to Javi.
Dang it!
Now what do I do?
“No, wait,” I said to Jay/Trev, hoping to buy time to figure out how not to let this whole operation come to nothing because Javi, for some reason, was sticking his big (it wasn’t big, it was perfect), fat (it wasn’t that either) nose in it.
Jay/Trev shot me a look of disdain.
He was doing terrible things to unsuspecting women, and he looked at me like that?
Me!
“I’ll let Bryan know he dodged a bullet with you,” Jay/Trev said, and then he took off, pulling out his phone.
I whirled on Javi.
“Are you insane?” I snapped.
“I’m not, but thinking you are.”
“It took weeks to set tonight up,” I informed him.
“Wasted effort,” he grunted.
“No kidding?” My voice was rising.
“I don’t understand this shit,” he stated conversationally. “You women got an issue, you just tell the men, and we’ll sort it for you.”
Was he…
Was he for real?
While I expended grave effort not to scream my frustration at the top of my lungs, Javi kept speaking, and he did this while assuming Jay/Trev’s seat.
“Now, tell me what’s up, and me and the boys’ll get on it.”
At this juncture, it was important to share that Javi was one of the Hottie Squad.
That was, he was a member of the Nightingale Investigations and Security team.
And they were all the baddest of bad-A’s.
The Angels had a loose association with the boys of NI&S that hinged mostly on Raye living with Cap, and Jessie being loved up with Eric, both of them NI&S men.
Oh, and when the Angels got to the parts of our investigations that might include blood and guns and direct run-ins with bad guys (not to mention the police), the NI&S team stepped in.
But before that, Javi had been a Shadow Soldier.
Nope.
The Shadow Soldier. He’d been the first and he recruited all the rest.
In other words, a vigilante, like the Angels, except they were all men, they had matching tattoos, and two of them sadly got dead not too long ago, so the NI&S team snapped the rest of them up and absorbed them into their operations.
As previously mentioned, Javi was also a man I had a huge crush on, and not just because he was incredible to look at, he had a deep, rough voice that did things to my heart (and other places as well), the most unusual, beautiful eyes I’d ever seen and an amazing body.