Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
He did, and I followed suit ten minutes later.
Dima was in deep discussion with the woman behind the counter, who’d also pulled in another employee that was on the side of the counter that Dima was on.
She was leaning into him, flirting and laughing.
Both women turned to me as I came into the room, and I could see the clear disgust on their faces when they took me in and clearly found me lacking.
I glanced at Dima to see that he was wearing his usual attire of Polo shirt, nice jeans, and nice boots.
He’d worn the same thing since high school when his high school crush, Ellia, had told him he looked nice in Polo shirts.
But, compared to me, he was in much better clothing than I was wearing.
I smiled and went about browsing, finding a few really cute keychains near the front.
“Of course she’d go to the sale items,” I heard one of them mutter.
Dima snorted.
A sales rack in the back caught my eye, and I moved toward the back corner with my eye on a shirt that said “Hey, Daddy” on it.
Grinning like a loon, I picked it up off the rack and hooked it on my finger and started to go through the rack.
A charged silence, paired with the door opening and closing, the little “dee-doo” of the chime announcing a new customer sounding, had me glancing toward the front door with curiosity.
What could cause the two chatty women to go that quiet?
Haze.
He came through the door, and his eyes went to me immediately, almost as if he’d known exactly where I was before he’d come through the door. Which I knew to be impossible due to the position I was standing in, paired with the sheer amount of shit they had in their front window impeding his ability to look through.
Both women went to greet him, but he completely dismissed them and walked straight to me, completely dismissing Dima also.
When he got to me, he hooked his finger into the front of my sweatshirt and pulled me to him.
I went willingly, and he dropped a soft kiss onto my mouth before saying, “Hey.”
I smiled and replied with a simple, “Haze. Hey.”
He pulled the sweatshirt neck out, and then glanced down my shirt, grinning. “I was hoping to find you bare under here.”
“Why are you looking down my sister’s shirt?”
Dima.
Damn, I’d forgotten about him.
Also, shit.
I glanced to the side and saw Dima staring at the two of us curiously.
“Dima,” I said quickly. “This is Haze.”
“Haze, as in Detective Haze Hopkins with the Fort Worth Police Department who has been following my sister around for the last month because he thinks she had something to do with a murder?” Dima asked, clarifying it all.
“That’s me.” Haze paused. “Not that I agree with the reason for following her around.”
“But you’re still doing it,” he pointed out.
“For now,” Haze admitted, turning so that I was standing against him, my side to his front.
“For now,” he mused, his eyes bouncing from me to Haze and back. “What exactly is going on here?”
“What’s going on is none of your business,” I indicated. “Just let me explore without you putting your nose into it.”
“I feel like maybe you’re asking a lot of Shasha and me without giving us any of the assurance that a normal person would need to make them feel better about you possibly dating the man who’s had you under surveillance for the last thirty days,” Dima pointed out.
“What kind of assurances do you want?” Haze asked, likely agreeing with Dima’s high-handed alpha maleness.
“How about you tell me what’s going on in the investigation?” Dima suggested.
Haze grinned and gestured toward me. “Are you buying that, Mama?”
His eyes trailed down to the shirt I was holding, and he shook his head.
Dima saw the shirt, then looked from me to Haze again, this time with his lip curled like he wanted to throw up.
I didn’t say anything, and neither did Haze.
Dima sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not sure I like this.”
We both ignored him, and I said, “I have to go buy something, get one final test on how they treat me to give to the store owner, and then we can maybe go grab lunch.”
“Make it at Jack’s, and I can explain some,” Haze interjected.
I left them to figure out where we were going and headed to the cash register.
Since the girls had already started acting gross before I’d gotten here, I decided it would be way easier to video call the owner to save myself the explanation later.
She answered when I was about halfway to the counter, and I explained what I was doing.
She was silent as I tucked the phone into the front of my pants and then laid all the goodies I’d found on the counter.