Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Julien “Cap” Jackson was standing there, right beside my bed.
Holy shit!
“Two questions,” he said conversationally, like I’d invited him there and let him in, not like he’d broken in completely silent while I was in the bath (with my bathroom door open!) and now he was in my bedroom. “One, what the fuck is this shitty music? And two, what the fuck is this?”
He then flicked a finger at my wall.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“I decided about you.”
“So you broke in?” My voice was rising.
“What’s this, Rachel?” he asked, now stabbing his finger to my wall.
Hmm.
He now knew my name.
Also, where I lived.
Seemed while I was doing research on Nightingale Investigations and Security, he was researching me.
“Did you see me in the bath on your way to helping yourself to my bedroom?” I demanded.
“I heard you so I didn’t look when I walked by,” he answered, and for some reason, I believed him.
What could I say? Outside fibbing to the police in order to get my fat out of the fryer, he didn’t seem a guy prone to prevarication.
“You can’t just break into my house,” I informed him of something he should very well know.
I said it standing several feet away from him.
In the blink of an eye, I was pressed to the wall, and he was pressed to me.
My breath took a hike.
“That friend,” he said in a soft, dangerous voice. “The one Mace told you about who got shot?”
I nodded, too freaked out to do anything else.
Sure, I should be pissed and worried some dude I just met broke into my house and now had me pressed to a wall.
But this close, I could smell him. He smelled like my candle, manly and woodsy and fresh and comforting and safe.
And if he was hot at a distance, this close, those gray-blue eyes searing into mine, his magnificent face right there, I was having an entirely different reaction.
“She saved my life,” he continued. “She saved my brother’s life. Outside of my brother, my mom, and Law’s husband, she’s the most important person in my life. And I’ve got a huge family of people I care about. When she got shot, when we didn’t know if she was going to make it, my brother got shot too. It was the worst few hours of my life, waiting for the doctors to tell us they were okay. And I’ve seen things, I’ve done things, I’ve been places that were literal hell on fucking earth. But that was the worst, the thought of losing her, losing him. So tell me,”—he got closer—“what the fuck is on your wall?”
I opened my mouth but didn’t get any words out.
My front door crashed open.
Another blink of an eye, I wasn’t pinned to the wall. I was shoved behind the tall, lean-hipped, broad-shouldered frame of Julien “Cap” Jackson, and he had a hand to his back waistband, fingers curled around the butt of a gun where it had been shoved.
Whoa!
Times two: the gun, and him from behind.
Yowza!
Great hair. Great beard. Great eyes. Great shoulders. Great hands.
Superior ass.
I tore my gaze off his ass and peered beyond him.
The front door was a direct shot to the back of the apartment, and I saw a crazed Luna standing there, her usually perfectly executed messy bun askew, her vibe manic.
Oh snap.
I forgot to call her.
Her head turned toward my living room then she came back to us.
“You went to Lenny’s without me?” she shrieked.
Seemed like I should have cleared the evidence off my coffee table before I had my bath.
“That’s my friend Luna,” I told Cap. “She’s safe. You don’t have to shoot her.”
He relaxed, took his hand from his gun but didn’t step out of the way.
This might be because Luna slammed the door then planted her hands on her hips.
“You didn’t call me, but you did go to Lenny’s, and picked up a hot guy to boot!” she accused.
“Listen, Luna—” I started.
That was as far as I got. She was marching down the hall, bitching me out.
“It’s all over the news. Elsie Fay was found. The bad guy arrested. I’m at home, watching this, waiting for your call, knowing where you were not but hours ago, and—”
She halted abruptly and sniffed the air.
Then she shouted, “Oh my God! Did you take a bubble bath with a hot guy you picked up after you saved a little girl from a monster?”
Like Cap and I could both fit in my bath.
Though that might be impossible, it’d be fun to try.
I felt Cap’s eyes on me, so I looked to him and said, “I don’t pick up hot guys all the time.”
With zero hesitation, Luna outed me.
“She totally does.”
I made an Eek! face at Cap. Then I shrugged to indicate the veracity of that statement.
After that, I stood transfixed as a smile flirted on his lips.