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)
“Hey,” Eli Kohn greeted me and Lang, not Pazzi, letting him walk by without even a begrudging hello. They were still not over the stapler incident. “You brought pizza.”
“People are always hungry.” Lang grinned as we were joined by Kohn’s fiancé, Celso Harrington, a ballet dancer who was a big deal at the CBC. I knew all that because of Talia, who worshipped him and had nearly passed out when I told her we worked with the man’s partner. She’d be thrilled he was there tonight, which I told him.
“Oh, I can’t wait to meet her,” he said, then bit his bottom lip.
“What’s wrong?” Lang asked him.
“I’m starving,” Celso disclosed. “And everything is—”
“We brought two veggie pies,” I told him. “It’s there, go get it.”
“Thank you,” he said happily and bolted away.
“Thanks,” Kohn said. “Thought we’d need to run out and bring something back. Miro’s usually great about that, but Ian did all the ordering this time, forgetting that some of us can’t have bacon and others no meat at all.”
“Well, you should get some too,” Lang told him, “because I don’t know what it is, but those veggie pies smell amazing when you open the lid. People forget they’re eating artichoke hearts when the spices hit them.”
He left us, taking the chianti with him, and we were standing in a sea of people, all loud, all happy to see one another, and I realized I was somehow feeling quite vulnerable.
“Your face,” Lang said softly, leaning in close. “This is a little hard for you because of us, isn’t it?”
“Us?”
“Yeah. We’re a new thing, and you had to literally and figuratively strip down in front of me, and then, before you put your usual armor back on, we had to come over here.”
“Yeah, but it was also new this afternoon when we went to see your mother.”
“That’s different. You know the family, and more than that, you know her. She stays by your side…” His brows furrowed. “You know what, Talia’s right. My mother does like you best.”
I chuckled, and he slipped a hand around the side of my neck and pulled me close, his lips on mine for long moments before tucking me against him.
“Oh good,” Redeker said as he joined us, drinking an Old Fashioned. “I’m glad that got off the ground.”
“What?” I asked him.
He indicated Lang with his glass. “You two. I know what it’s like to moon over your partner. I’m glad you sacked up and told him how you feel, so now you can be more.”
“Sacked up?” I asked him.
Quick grunt from him. “Those are the words that were used when I finally got the balls to tell Bodhi how I felt. It took a minute.”
“It took five years,” Callahan said, stepping up beside him with a beer for me and an Old Fashioned for Lang. He had a beer for himself as well, which he took a long pull of. “But who’s counting?”
Redeker shot him a look that made him choke on his drink.
“I wasn’t complaining,” Callahan chuckled, as Miro, who was walking by, passed him several napkins and kept going. You had to keep moving when you were the host. “I am more than happily married, so go me.”
When Redeker turned back to me, I said, “I didn’t sack up. Lang did.”
He looked at my partner. “All right, then.”
“Well, I was the one with my head up my ass, so it had to be me.”
“Always good to realize that it’s up there, though,” Callahan told him. “Some people never do.”
“Do all these people stay to play poker?” I asked them.
“Oh no,” Redeker scoffed. “Ian gets way too serious about it. People start bailing the second the card table comes out.”
“Lang’s sister wants to play with him.”
Callahan looked almost startled. “Has she met Ian?”
“Not yet.”
“Oh, Lang, does she cry easily?”
“Because she’s a girl?” he asked, not bristling with Redeker as he normally would have with others.
“No, sir. Ian scared off some very nice FBI agents and some vice detectives not too long ago. If you hadn’t noticed, he’s kind of a dick.”
Lang’s smile was wide. “He is that.”
I told Lang I was fine, which I was. Mostly. Not like I was some wallflower in need of his constant attention to prop me up in public. I normally did well on my own. But I was still a bit tired, Lang and I had been through an emotional grinder, and my social battery had a time limit, which was definitely somewhere right around when we left his mother’s house hours earlier.
I was sitting on the top step of Miro and Ian’s small back porch, looking out at the beautiful area that resembled a small park with both lush green grass and tall trees, when there was a sound behind me, like the whack of a baseball being thrown into a mitt, and when I turned, I was startled to be face-to-face with a wolf.