Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
“How was that approved?” Aodhan asked.
“Something I’d like to know, too,” Wake, the unofficial official president of Gator Bait MC, said from the front door.
His wife, Dutch, followed in his wake.
She headed straight toward me with a smile on her face.
I hadn’t had this many hugs since I’d left. It felt really weird.
Kobe got up from his spot on the armchair across from me and headed to straddle the arm of my chair. I took a seat and pressed my body against Kobe’s.
The movement didn’t go unnoticed by anyone in the room.
I knew I’d have some explaining to do later, but chose to continue the story.
“Sheriff Summers was able to get through to an old contact of his that’s in the same area as Lisbeth and Farrell. With all the evidence I was able to feed them, though all unofficial, they were able to find a bit of evidence that they could use to allow a judge to give them monitoring approval to find more,” I explained. “From here, it’s just wait and see until they fuck up the game.”
Wake took Kobe’s vacated chair just as Aodhan’s son, Bowie, came barreling through the door with a soccer ball bouncing on his foot.
“Oh, shit. Sorry,” he said when he saw the entire room full of people. “I guess that bus out there should’ve been a dead giveaway that someone was here.”
I grinned.
During the year that I was gone, Bowie’s voice had changed. He was now speaking so deeply that I knew he was likely going through puberty.
It was the cutest thing ever.
“Bowie.” Morr smiled. “Would you mind taking JP upstairs and showing her your Oculus?”
Bowie nodded his head, once again taking everyone in, then settled his eyes on me.
His eyes widened as he made the connection, and he waved with a blush. “Aunt Folsom. Hi. Missed you.”
I beamed at the kid. “Hello, kiddo.”
JP ran up the stairs as if she hadn’t been gone for the last year. Bowie followed her.
I was ready to continue the adult conversation, but before I could, I had Morrigan pulling me out of my chair and dragging me toward the kitchen.
“That man is the scariest person I’ve ever seen,” Dutch looked at me with alarm. “How can you just sit there and casually lean against him as if he’s not scary or intimidating?”
I blinked. “What?”
I was thoroughly confused on who she was talking about. Sure, Aodhan and Wake were “scary,” but she wouldn’t be talking about her own husband like that. Right?
“Kobe,” Dutch whispered, her eyes going to the living room, where the three men continued to talk. She shivered. “He’s so scary and hard to read. I’m a psychologist. I talk to thousands of people a year, and usually, I can glean something off of a person. But Kobe is like a completely blank canvas.”
I looked back at Kobe, who had left my chair open for me for when I came back.
I looked over at the other men.
Though scary was a good way to describe them, they still looked open and approachable. Wake was smiling at something that was said. Aodhan’s eyes were glittering.
Then there was Kobe.
He did look rather unapproachable when you studied him.
His arms were crossed, his face was blank, and there was zero percent of his body language that gave anything away.
Okay, so I could see why she thought he was “scary.”
But really, he wasn’t.
When he was around JP and me, that scary factor just seemed to…go away.
“He’s not scary when he’s with me,” I admitted. “He does look rather unapproachable right now, but I think that’s because he just spent hours in a car alone with my daughter, who will talk your ear off if you let her.”
“She rode with him?” Dutch and Morrigan asked.
I looked at them in surprise. “Yeah. Why?”
Morr looked slightly hurt when she said, “You’ve only ever let me pick your daughter up twice. Once so, you could do some sort of drunk appearance for the police department right before you disappeared. And you still came and got her in that police car so she didn’t stay the whole night with me. Then that issue with that little kid being kidnapped from Kilgore. You left her with me all of seven hours. And I’m your best friend.”
I looked back at Kobe, who was now staring at me.
I gave him a small wave, and he offered me a wink in return before going back to the conversation.
“Holy hell, he just winked at you!” Dutch gasped, slapping her hand across her heart.
I looked back into the kitchen, taking in Morr’s still hurt face, before I said mainly to her, “I’m in love with him.”
Meaning I trusted him completely, with my heart and with my kid and her heart.
There was no doubt in my mind that if I needed to leave my daughter with him, I would trust him wholly and completely with her for however long I needed to be gone.