Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 75240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
He got up, picking up the radio that was lying on the counter in front of him, and hooked it to his belt.
“I’ll walk you since Orr isn’t back with the shuttle yet,” he agreed, offering me his elbow.
I smiled in relief, hooked my arm around his, and squeezed lightly.
“How’s the wifey doing?” I asked as we made our way out the doors.
Jade shot me a withering glare as she passed, but she wouldn’t dare say anything negative around Brownie.
Troy, however, had no such compunction.
“You stupid bitch,” he snapped. “Why is it so fuckin’ hard for you to let me say a goddamned word to you?”
Brownie; well, Brownie wasn’t the nicest of people in the first place.
He was older, yes, but that didn’t mean he was no less bad ass.
In his mid-sixties, he was a veteran and had a zero-bullshit tolerance.
He was a twenty-five-year veteran of the Kilgore Police Department, and still busted ass in the streets where he was a beat cop.
I’d met him the first day I stepped into the hospital for my first clinical.
His granddaughter had been on the same floor I’d done my first clinical on, and he’d done his absolute best to give me a hard time.
I’d, of course, had no trouble dealing with his terror tactics.
He just wanted to make sure I had what it took to take care of his precious granddaughter.
I’d grown up with a brother that liked to kick my ass for fun. I knew how to handle macho men.
And I’d handled him just fine.
But he wasn’t called Zebes by the city of Kilgore for nothing. Zebes was a shortened nickname for Zero Bull Shit. And I let his arm go the moment I felt him tense.
Brownie hooked his large, scarred hand at my hip, and pushed me behind him, pinning me between the glass walls of the hospital’s ER entrance and his strong muscular back.
“What did you just say?” Brownie asked Troy.
His tone was deceptively calm and cool, but I knew that things were about to take a turn south.
Luckily, Troy realized what he’d done, and who he’d said it to.
Brownie wasn’t that hard to recognize.
He had a large scar at the corner of his mouth where a criminal had sliced his lip with a knife. Going deeply, all the way to the bone, and giving the man a permanent scar that would forever be a reminder to him, and everyone else, exactly who and what he was.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, but I ignored it in favor of being diligent.
I wasn’t a dumbass, nor one of those dumb TV heroines who decided it’d be a smart thing for her to take her attention away from the possible altercation in front of her.
Luckily, all my diligence proved to be unwarranted as Troy unpuffed his chest, turned his head away, and immediately started walking toward Jade.
All he did was hold his hand out to her and she took it, hastily looking between Brownie and her husband like she wasn’t sure what was about to happen.
The minute they disappeared into Troy’s stuffy Cadillac Escalade, I took a deep breath and looked up at Brownie.
“Thank you,” I sighed. “Shit.”
He looked at me curiously, not mad per se, but calculating.
“That guy’s bad news, woman.”
I nodded my head, and he started walking forward.
Since I assumed he wanted to continue walking me to my car, I let him, not saying a word until we were nearly at our destination.
“My ex isn’t good news, no,” I agreed with him. “But there’s nothing I can do about him but let him be, and stay far away from him.”
Brownie frowned, but didn’t say a word as he let me go.
I waved goodbye and was in my car, halfway to the fire station, before the reality of my life finally hit me.
Again.
I hated that man with a passion.
And really, hate wasn’t a strong enough word for what I felt about that man.
Troy was a douche. A huge, massive, I want you to step in front of a bus, douche.
By the time I pulled into the fire station, I nearly had the shivering under control.
My hand, however, had been absently counting the marks on my belly. The ones that Bowe had stayed well away from the night before.
He’d accidentally touched one when we were in the shower after our lovemaking, and he’d yanked his hand back so fast that you would’ve thought my skin was toxic.
All of this was on my mind as I stepped out of the car, amongst chaos.
Well, at least the sounds of chaos.
I headed toward the yelling. The closer I got, the louder it became.
At first I wasn’t sure what it was. Then the closer I moved, the more I realized that it was someone cheering. Some sort of competition from the sound of it.
The moment I rounded the corner of the firehouse, I could see what everyone was cheering and yelling about.