Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
The text I got back made me laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Lang grumbled, snatching my phone.
“That’s an invasion of privacy,” I protested, trying to grab it back.
He dodged, and when I got a chicken wing to the chest to keep me off him, I remembered he’d played hockey in college.
“He’s up for being a booty call day or night, huh?” He lifted his head, done reading the screen, and glared at me.
“What can I tell you, I’m irresistible. And now he’s got my number.”
“It’s not classy to screw the low-hanging fruit,” he said, shoving my phone at me.
“You made fruit sound very derogatory,” I pointed out, bantering with him like normal because it was expected. But what I really wanted to do was finish our earlier conversation. I needed to know what he’d been thinking about, what it was time for.
“You really did,” Talia agreed, picking up on our conversation. “You can call Cody a twink because he is, and I’m sure he would agree with you, but I find the word fruit unacceptable.”
“Listen, I—”
“Why are you all grouchy suddenly? Did you want to stay with Nicolette and then take—oh,” she gasped, and everyone in the vicinity heard the dreamy sound in her voice followed by a slight whimper. “Look who it is.”
And there was Ethan Sharpe, looking as crisp and polished right after midnight as he did first thing in the morning. I had no idea what his genetic makeup was, and we weren’t nearly good enough friends for me to ask, but whatever each of his parents brought to the table made him particularly stunning. Not only was he tall and built like a swimmer, but he had dark-bronze skin, russet-brown eyes, and dressed better than all the rest of us except Kohn. I didn’t at all question how he was dating most of Chicago. I only wished Talia could see the player under the pretty wrapper.
“Who is it?” Lang asked.
“It’s Ethan,” she cooed, immediately veering away from us to reach him.
Lang stopped walking to glare at me. “Ethan?” he repeated.
“Oh, that is so not my fault,” I said defensively. “And I warned her.”
“Warned her about what?” Stowe asked. “That without a nametag, he can’t remember the names of all the women he’s been in bed with?”
I turned to her. “You?”
She scoffed. “Absolutely not. And I’ve heard that Sharpe doesn’t shit where he eats. But he dated my cousin Patrice, who was head over heels and ready to have babies with the man.”
“Lang here dates.” I emphasized the word. “Is it the same with Sharpe?”
“No. Not at all. But I’m not sure of the exact category what he does would fall under.”
“Booty call?” I offered.
“No, because it’s not solely sex. Patrice got dinner, a movie, and they saw each other the following night as well, just never again after that.”
“So two-night stand?”
She gave me a grunt of agreement.
“I will murder you both,” Lang told me and Stowe. “That’s my sister you’re talking about.”
“No,” Stowe responded, “McCabe and I were talking about my naive cousin who is now married to an accountant she adores and who worships her in return, so that worked out fine.”
“I refuse to let that man date my sister.”
We all watched as Talia and Sharpe got out their cell phones to exchange numbers.
“I think that ship has sailed,” Stowe told Lang, then squinted. “Also, you could never kill me, Ross. You come at me with homicidal intent, you’re a dead man.”
“What?”
“You said, ‘I will murder you both,’” I reminded him. “And while I feel you would most likely be overwhelmed by sentiment where I’m concerned, I think in Stowe’s case, she’s not sweatin’ your threat.”
“Not at all,” she confirmed.
“We both still find your attempt at intimidation wildly inappropriate.”
“Wildly,” one of the SOG guys repeated. “And I agree with McCabe—Stowe would gut you like a fish.”
“Aw, Matt,” she said, smiling at her colleague. “That’s so sweet.”
“Can we go?” another guy asked.
“No,” Lang snapped at him. “My sister needs to come with—”
“Oh, she’s waving goodbye,” Stowe noted.
“He’s too old for her,” he muttered, bolting away from us toward Sharpe and Talia.
“She’s gotta be what, late twenties?” Stowe asked me.
“Actually, she’ll be thirty-one later this year.”
“Well, then that’s fine. Sharpe is either forty or forty-one, so basically, she’ll always be older than him mentally and emotionally anyway.”
I nodded.
Lang didn’t even reach them because Talia made a sweeping motion with her hand that basically told him to be gone. He stopped walking as Sharpe took her arm and called back something to Lang. Seconds later, I lost sight of them in the crowd milling outside.
When Lang turned around, I waved in case he forgot where we were, and Stowe did too. The way he charged over, I could tell he was fuming.
“Did it ever occur to you,” I began, “that the reason Sharpe has been lookin’ for love for so long is because he’s a romantic at heart and doesn’t wanna settle?”