Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 73043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I immediately cursed.
Janie had called, said she was in town and had also requested to stay at my place.
Since I was a glutton for punishment, I’d agreed.
Which led to now—two women I needed in very different ways here in the same place at the same time.
Two very different women—one who meant something to me and one who was a means to an end—both staring at me with an expectant look in their eyes.
“Uhh,” I hesitated. “Janie, this is Elspeth. Elspeth, this is Janie.”
“Nice to meet you,” Janie grinned. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer earlier. I was taking a shower.”
Elspeth’s eyes went to Janie, and her jaw went tight.
I would’ve laughed had I not been needing Elspeth’s pull to get me in with her father.
“It’s okay,” she lied.
Janie’s smile turned warm, and her eyes turned to me.
“I’ll just leave you to chat…” she hesitated, then backed out of the doorway and slammed it shut.
I turned back to Elspeth, holding the pie slightly away from my body due to the smell that was making me slightly sick to my stomach.
“Thank you so much for bringing it over,” I smiled my congenial smile, the one that came out when I was trying to make someone at ease.
Nobody ever got the real me. Not even my sister.
The real me needed to be protected, because he actually gave a fuck.
Rafe Luis was always protecting himself because when he didn’t? It always backfired.
Raven, my sister, had been my rock when we were growing up.
Then, one day that relationship took a hit because I couldn’t take her with me. She’s held a grudge against me for a long time, and still to this day, we were working to get back to how we used to be.
Sure, she’d ‘forgiven’ me. But I say forgiven loosely because I still wasn’t altogether positive that my sister actually had, or if she’d just pretended that she had.
Anyway, the smile that I gave Elspeth wouldn’t have worked with Janie. She would’ve known that I was schmoozing, which was why I was glad that she’d gone back inside.
“Who is that girl?”
The way she said girl made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
“A friend.” I smiled. “She’s the daughter of one of the men I work with.”
As far as anyone down here could tell, I was a crew member of Hail Auto Recovery, a towing company in Hostel, Texas.
As for the what the rest of the world knew of me? They didn’t know what I did, which was the way I liked to keep it.
Janie included.
“Daughter,” Elspeth hummed. “That’s good to know.”
Then she smiled a secret smile at me, and I felt my stomach clench. But not in appreciation, in worry. I hoped that Janie didn’t see her because I did not want her to do or say anything to hurt my investigation. I’d done a lot of work insinuating myself into the perfect position to survey Layton Trammel, and I was not going to be happy if anything happened to jeopardize it. I wanted to go home, and I couldn’t go home until I finished one final thing.
And once that one final thing was taken care of? I was going to go hide in my cabin for six months and not do a single damn thing.
At least, until Trace needed me.
This entire thing had been fucking exhausting.
When I’d arrived in Hostel, I hadn’t realized what I would be walking into. I hadn’t realized that one thing would come up after the other and that soon I’d be dealing with way more than I ever intended to.
I also hadn’t intended to actually work on top of that.
So now, I was working a regular job with Hail Auto—when I had time, that was. I was working for Free, dealing with those issues, and I was working my own case. There were days that I was lucky if I got three or four hours of sleep, and I was fucking tired.
I needed a fucking break.
Yesterday.
“Anyway,” Elspeth smiled. “I’ll let you enjoy that pie and go. Welcome to the neighborhood.”
I smiled—my nice smile again—and waved.
The moment she turned around, I didn’t hesitate to turn myself and head to my door.
I didn’t bother watching her go, either.
She wasn’t Janie, after all. She didn’t have Janie’s ass. She didn’t have Janie’s juicy thighs. She didn’t have anything Janie.
I was so Fucked.
Fucked with a capital F.
I walked into my house, and the first thing I saw the moment the door opened was Janie’s ass in the air, bent over my couch, as she tried to reach the remote control that had fallen on the floor.
It was well out of her reach, yet she stretched farther and farther until she was precariously close to falling completely over.
I swallowed and looked around the room, noticing all her things.