Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“You’ve never taken a bad picture in your life.”
“Oh, if only that were true,” he said dramatically.
It was possible I was seeing threats where there were none. I tended to err on the side of caution, which I’d done as a cop and carried along into my work as a fixer.
Regardless, I had him pull my phone from the breast pocket of my suit—since I was holding Gemma—and then from the back of the case, peel off a small black adhesive circle and put it on the lapel of his jacket.
“Not that this isn’t fun, James Bond,” he said with a snicker, “but what is this?”
“GPS tracker. It’s reusable, so you can give it back to me once I’m in the room with you.”
His eyes narrowed. “Peel-and-stick GPS? This is what you’re telling me?”
“Yeah.” I grinned at him, rubbing Gemma’s back when she snorted herself half-awake, and she resettled quickly.
“Your boss is nothing like I thought he was. I thought Torus was just another agency. Albeit a good one, of course, but this is a bit more high tech than I was led to believe. What does your boss do in his downtime? Save the world?”
I scoffed. “If you knew everything about my boss, you’d never sleep again.”
“That is in no way comforting.”
“Cooper’s a fixer,” Ainsley chimed in. “That has to come with some amount of skullduggery and cloak and dagger, I would think.”
“See?” I told him.
He shook his head at both of us.
“I need one of those sticky GPS things for Gemma,” she commented. “I had no idea she was even out of her chair until I looked up and realized first, that she was gone, and second, that she was doing her Jack Sparrow run through the crowd to reach you.”
I was chuckling as we all got on the elevator. Before I got off with my new favorite family, Ash gave me a kiss and was smiling as the doors closed between us.
“Who won the boyfriend lottery?” Ainsley asked as we walked down the hall toward their room. “I’m going to say you, sir.”
If only it were true.
Once Gemma was down, which took a few minutes because she wanted me to stay while she changed into her pajamas and then needed me to tuck her in, as soon as I kissed her on the forehead, she rolled over and fell back to sleep.
“You really are the baby whisperer,” Ainsley told me.
I said my good-nights then, hugged both Ainsley and Jeff, and was out the door quickly.
When I got upstairs, halfway down the hall I saw that the door was open. Since I couldn’t think of a reason why that would be, I sprinted there fast, and when I slipped inside, I could hear raised voices from the bedroom—technically, one person yelling. Ash. Closing the door, I rushed toward the sound and arrived in the room to find a man putting on his clothes that were in a pile on the floor.
“Are you sure you want me to keep putting things on?” the guy asked Ash in a leering, seductive tone.
“I want you to get the fuck out!” Ash rasped, and I noted he was shaking as he paced at the end of the bed, looking pale and anxious.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.
He jolted like I’d scared him and then rushed over, putting his hands on both sides of my neck, staring into my face. “I swear to you, I didn’t know this man was going to be in our bed when I—”
“You were in our bed?” I roared, pulling free of Ash’s hands and charging the guy.
The guy swiped his shirt, suit jacket, socks, and shoes off the floor and bolted out of the room with just underwear and pants on. I followed fast, catching up near the front door, bodychecking him hard so that he was slammed face-first into the wall to the left.
“What the fuck, man?” he yelled, sounding a bit terrified. “It was a joke.”
“Yeah, it was hilarious,” I barked, holding him still with my forearm pressed between his shoulder blades. “I’m laughing my ass off, can’t ya tell?”
“The guy said I’d get the chance to fuck Ashford Lennox. How could I turn that down?”
“I get it, I do,” I said, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket.
“The hell are you doing?” His voice was rising in panic.
“If you move off that wall, I will call the police on you”—I had his driver’s license out now—“Robert Doolin.”
“It was a joke,” he repeated as I took a picture of his ID. “You can’t do—”
“I can. You illegally entered this room with a stolen key that I want right now.”
He pulled it from his other back pocket and held it out to me.
“No, put it on the side table right there.”
He did as told, then turned to me, face scrunched up, looking like he was about to crawl out of his skin.