Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 133975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 670(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 670(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
“You don’t get it, and I don’t blame you. What I do blame you for is that I asked you to look after her. To welcome her into our family. I asked that your women welcome her. I don’t see the women, and you sure as hell didn’t welcome her. I’ve never asked for a single favor. Not once. You wanted a woman, I went all out to help you. That request alone should have bought her a little bit of a friendly welcome.”
Keys looked around the shop. He knew Lyric had loved it. She would make this business thrive, and her salon would be beautiful. “I’ll want the details of the fire and a reasonable explanation why we didn’t get a heads-up. In the meantime, the three of you can go fuck yourselves. I’ve got a long road ahead of me, convincing my only that she’s the one and that regardless of whether or not my family is on board, we’re together and we’ll make it work.”
He pushed past Maestro and stalked down the street toward the headlands. Lyric sat in the grass, her jacket pulled tightly around her, the hood up, covering her bright waterfall of thick red silk. For Keys, that straight-as-a-board, fiery red said all there was to say about Lyric. He didn’t understand how anyone couldn’t see her passion for life. That hair gave it away.
He sank onto the ground beside her, thighs close but not touching. He needed to break through the wall she’d put up. She was good at walls. She could build them high and thick so no enemy could penetrate. No matter how many fights they had, he didn’t want her to ever view him as the enemy.
“I didn’t know about the fire, Lyric,” he confessed quietly.
“I heard you, it just didn’t penetrate at the time.” She kept her head down, looking at her hands, the two fists she’d made. She wasn’t shaking. Steady as a rock.
“They blindsided both of us.” He wanted that to sink in.
“Arrogant pricks,” she hissed under her breath. She didn’t look at him, but she didn’t seem to include him in her assessment.
“Yeah, babe, they are, but I thought we agreed only one of us is going to have the temper, the gun and the foul mouth. I get that you’re pissed. I am too. But you can’t be spewing language. You’re smart; you’ve got a vocabulary. Think of other insults. Get creative. Hell, we can write them all down in big letters and laminate that shit and hang it on the wall. In fact, I know the perfect place to hang it when we put together the salon.”
Her dimple flickered as her lips curved. It was brief, but she couldn’t help that terrible sense of humor that enabled her to be with him. Now that she was listening, he had to make it clear to her that they had already established the rules they had agreed on to live together. He needed the reassurance that she was committed.
“You don’t get to run from me when you’re pissed off, whether it’s justified or not, Wildfire. We promised each other communication first. You have a right to space, but not running off.”
“I thought I communicated very well.” This time he got the side-eye. “In fact, I was quite eloquent.”
“Well, okay, gotta admit that’s true. Other than putting me in the same arrogant-prick category as those three jokers, I thought you shredded it. I’m going to want to talk about Declan and his Russian friend. I’ll want to know why you didn’t mention before that he’d actually caught up to you. You led me to believe you were always one step ahead.”
She stared out to sea. In the distance a dark bank of fog rolled and spun, an indicator of how quickly the weather changed there on the coast.
“I might have done that. But I don’t like talking about Declan. Or his hideous Russian friend.” She continued to look everywhere but at him.
Keys threaded his fingers through hers and brought her palm to his thigh. “Are you just thinking up a lot of unnecessary shit to argue with me about?”
For one moment, she turned her head toward him, and he got that dimple and the curve of her lips, but it was momentary. She turned back to watching the sea. “Yes.”
Inside, very deep, there was that bright spear of light that burst through the layers of dark and spread like a wildfire through him. His Wildfire. She was aptly named. He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I assume you have some reason you’re going to convince yourself is logical.”
“Well, of course.” She took a moment and then admitted the truth. “l won’t try to convince myself it’s logical, only necessary.”
“Share. I can’t wait to hear.”
“There’s no need for sarcasm. You already seem to be winning every single argument we have. That doesn’t bode well for my future.”