Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
But I couldn’t reconnect with Ally and Indy.
It had been years, for one.
I’d taken off without a word of explanation, for another.
The explanation I had I couldn’t tell them, not yet, since the person who most should know still didn’t (yet), for another.
Too much was at stake, for the last.
I turned into the parking lot of the bar, and even not having entered it, I could see this place was somewhere I didn’t want to be.
Nope.
Somewhere I shouldn’t be.
One could stretch this further and say I should never have moved us from living in the apartment over the stables at my aunt and uncle’s place in Fort Collins back to Denver.
Sure, on occasion, you could smell horse manure.
But it was quiet, a lot bigger than my current apartment, safe, and it had a funky vibe I liked.
That said, it wasn’t home.
It wasn’t Denver.
I was a young mother. I’d gotten my training to be a court reporter and scored a job. I was taking courses to become a paralegal, which was a step down from what my plans had been before I’d gotten pregnant and my baby’s father’s dad had been murdered, sending him so far off the rails, I didn’t recognize him anymore. But it didn’t matter I didn’t, he’d cut me out of his life.
I’d wanted to be a lawyer.
But life was tough with a curious two-year-old, even if my mom and dad and sister and all the aunties and uncles and cousins pitched in to help me out.
I needed to keep my nose clean.
And I needed to stay away from Darius Tucker.
Everyone told me he’d turned to the dark side.
However, I thought it was time. It was time he shook himself out of this garbage.
It was time he learned he had a child and had to step up.
It was time three years ago, but I’d been young and scared and hurt, so I’d made an emotional decision and my parents had stepped in to support and protect me.
Off I went to Fort Collins.
Now I was back.
So, yeah.
It was time.
While I was thinking these things, Toni was doing something else. I knew this when I turned to her and saw her tying the silk scarf under her chin. It covered her hair and the sides of her face. She complemented this by sliding on a massive pair of black-framed glasses.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She turned to me, more than likely unable to see me through her opaque lenses.
“Donning my disguise.”
“It’s night.”
“Yeah.”
“We’re going into a bar, not traveling through time back to the fifties to take a ride in a convertible.”
“I don’t want anyone seeing me here.”
“That much is clear,” I muttered.
“You shouldn’t want anyone to see you either, including someone in particular,” she pointed out.
I let my gaze drift through the busy parking lot before I returned it to her. “It’s obviously going to be crowded. I’m going to blend in.”
She lifted a hand to the arm of her sunglasses, dipped them low on her nose and looked over them at me.
“Girl, this place is trashy. You are not trash. No way you’re gonna blend in.” She slid her glasses back and crossed her arms on her chest before she demanded, “Tell me again why we’re here.”
“I just want to see him.”
“I told you the scuttlebutt about him.”
“I still want to see him.”
She shook her head, and I couldn’t be certain, because it was dark and so much of her face was covered, but I could swear I saw her expression get soft with worry.
“The him you knew is long gone, sis,” she informed me gently.
“I want to see for myself.”
My eyes clashed with her shades for a long time before she blew out a breath, murmured, “Let’s just do this,” and turned to her door to push out.
I got out too, and after I’d closed my door and locked the car, I realized my hands were trembling.
I put my keys in my purse, then shook my hands to get the trembles out.
Really, I should have reconnected with Ally or Indy. They’d know what to do and they’d give me the strength to do it.
“It’s now or never, Malia,” Toni called over the roof.
“Right. Do this. Okay,” I mumbled to myself and rounded the car.
We went in and I was relieved I was correct. The place was packed. If you wanted to see someone, you had to be looking.
I was, however, concerned that Toni was also correct.
This place was rough.
I scanned the crowd as Toni latched onto my elbow and pulled me through bodies to the bar.
I doubted it was gentlemanly manners that had the two men skedaddling from their stools as Toni barreled us their way so we could assume them, and more that Toni looked mildly insane in her getup, and they might be tough customers, but they wanted nothing to do with her.