Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
I can’t stop my smile. “But there wasn’t any popcorn.”
“Shit. Okay, serious question.” Stone catches my wrist, stopping me from tending to his mouth. My gaze flies up to his. That narrowed hazel stare bores down into mine. “You like action movies. So tell me—where do you put Die Hard?”
“Uh-oh. The question itself says that you want me to put it in first place. But I can’t.”
He looks pained. “Don’t hurt me like this, girl.”
“Sorry. But I’ve got to go with John Wick. Sure, saving your wife from thieving terrorists at Christmas is great. But John Wick lost everything when his wife died—and then they killed the dog she gave him.” I shake my head, then tug on my wrist until he lets me go. I apply pressure to his split lip again. “So watching him make everyone pay is just so, so sweet.”
“Aw, shit. I forgot about the dog. You’re right. That’s hard to beat.”
“You have a dog?”
His eyes soften in a way that makes my heart clench. “Yeah. A boxer, Daisy.”
“Here in town with you?”
“Back home.”
“Where’s that?” Hopefully somewhere he can get to easily after I warn him about what’s coming for him.
“Oregon.”
Crap. I’m not exactly sure where we are now, but I think it must be Arizona or New Mexico. “You’re a long way from home, then.”
“Yeah, I am.”
“What do you do there when you aren’t fighting?” I check his lip for more bleeding…it’s stopped for now. But he needs to quit smiling.
“I’m a lumberjack.”
My eyebrows shoot upward. “That’s still a thing? I thought Paul Bunyan was the last one.”
That makes him grin, but he doesn’t start bleeding again. Yet. “It’s still a thing.”
“Oh. I thought you might be enlisted.” Hoped he might be. The military could provide him some protection, surely.
His eyes narrow, though not in the same playful way as before. “What made you think that?”
“As you pointed out, you were stripped to the waist and damn sexy. So I looked hard.” Because they wanted me to recognize my target. But it wasn’t his face or his thick muscles that made the biggest impression—instead it was the same intensity that he focuses on me now. “I saw your tattoo.”
“I’m surprised you knew what it meant. You’ve got family in the service?”
I didn’t know what it meant; Victor did. That this man had been in special forces. I wish that was enough to protect him. But several of the other guys currently in the stable came out of the military, too. Crash has a tattoo similar to this man’s, though I’d never asked what it meant.
“A friend of mine was,” I tell him now.
“Does that friend happen to be the bastard who hasn’t taken his eyes off you?”
“What?” My heart stills. “Who?”
“To your left, a little farther down the bar,” Stone says without glancing away from my face. “Six-two, white, a high-and-tight, got ‘drill sergeant’ written all over him. And dressed like that, he sure as fuck didn’t come on a bike. So I’m thinking another local. You know him?”
Victor. Not once have I seen Stone take his eyes off me, yet he’d noticed the guard watching us. Pulse thundering, I glance that way now, as if trying to be casual about it. But there’s no casual. Thanks to this microphone in my wig, Victor knows he’s been made.
The guard meets my eyes, then lifts a hand as if in greeting before turning his back to me. Because he doesn’t need to watch. He can still listen.
“Oh, him. No.” I return my gaze to Stone’s, find him watching me closely. “That’s my boss. He probably just saw me here and is making sure I’m okay.”
“And what about the asshole in that direction?” He tilts his head slightly back and to the left.
Utterly confused, I scan the crowd—and don’t see anyone through the mass of bodies. Though I know who it must be.
Hotel. Probably looking as out of place here as Victor does.
But I genuinely don’t see him. I don’t understand how Stone did. “I…don’t know.”
“All right. So just tell me straight out—is he your pimp? Because I don’t mind paying. But I like to know up front if that’s what this is.”
My mouth falls open. “You think I’m a prostitute?”
He shrugs those massive shoulders. “No insult intended. It’s honest work.”
If a woman chooses it, maybe. “I’m not.”
“Fair enough.” A brush of his thumb beneath my chin gently closes the outraged gape of my mouth. “Have you got a name, then?”
“Cherry,” I tell him, and when his deep laugh rolls out, my face goes hot and I push at his chest. “I’m not a hooker.”
Just a virgin in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Okay, okay.” His laughter settles but amusement still dances in his hazel eyes. “What are you, then?”
“Most recently, a nurse.”
“Yeah?” His brows arch and he gives me a once over, as if trying to match everything he sees—from the flaming red wig to the skintight dress to the platform heels—with what I just told him. “So that explains what pulled you in my direction.”