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)
“I’ll get it,” Liam said, moving that way.
I tamped down my fear of my son opening the front door. He was tall and athletic. He was sixteen, not six. It wasn’t like our doorbell rang fifty times a day, but this also was far from the first time he’d answered it. And we lived in a nice neighborhood.
Even so, he would always be a little boy to me. It was my lot as a mother, the worry, the drive to protect, even though now, my son thought that last part was his job.
And this was the problem. Liam was a little boy to me, but he was something else in reality, and he needed me to trust him to find his way with that.
Ugh.
I needed to buy him a car.
I put the forks on a spoon rest and was about to put the top back on the slow cooker so the meat could cook in its juices and barbeque sauce for a while when I heard Liam’s tentative, “Mom.”
I looked up.
And I saw the man standing with him. Bushy gray beard, long gray hair pulled back in a braid, rolled bandana around his forehead, black leather vest over a long-sleeved Harley tee and jeans.
Duke.
I hadn’t seen Duke in…
“Honey.” His gravelly voice rolled my way, that one word making fear grab hold of the entire length of my spine. “It’s Darius.”
The tone of his voice, the look on his face, the earth fell from under my feet.
Because Darius was my son’s father.
And he was the love of my life.
But my boy had never met him.
Chapter One
The Boxer
Rock Chick Rewind
Some time ago…
“I cannot believe we scored tickets to Prince,” Ally shrieked.
“That lick, the one that starts off ‘When Doves Cry,’ man,” Indy was fanning herself.
I was trying not to freak out.
We were hanging in the front of Ellen, Indy’s grandma’s bookstore, Fortnum’s. There were some beat-up leather couches (that were super comfortable) and armchairs so people could chill out after they bought their books and read.
And off to the side, there were some tables and chairs, where right then, two old guys were playing chess. A checkers board was set up at another. And in pure Ellen style, because Indy’s grandma went her own way, Battleship was set up on the last.
“Lee! Will you take us?” Indy shouted to where Lee Nightingale, Indy’s huge crush, was sitting with Eddie Chavez and Darius Tucker in some armchairs not close, but not far.
Lee, acting like he didn’t know Indy was there (when, let’s face it, he was at Fortnum’s because Indy was—I wasn’t sure what was keeping those two apart (yes, I was, it was Lee being a stupid boy), but it had to end or they’d both spontaneously combust), turned his head her way.
Darius didn’t have to turn his head our way. He’d been staring at me for a while.
The reason I was failing at not freaking out.
“No fucking way,” Lee replied to Indy. “I still haven’t gotten over your bullshit when I was your ride to Def Leppard.”
Lee had a foul mouth. Sadly, it was attractive, but only because he was top to toe hot.
Not as hot as Darius, and I wasn’t into white guys, but still.
Also, I’d heard about that Def Leppard thing with Indy and Ally and how Lee, Eddie and Darius got dragged in (like they often did because Indy couldn’t get enough of Lee, Lee couldn’t get enough of Indy, Eddie also couldn’t get enough of Indy, a tangled web, so unsurprisingly, shizzle happened). The whole high school had heard about it.
The story was hilarious.
I still hoped nothing like that happened at the Prince concert. I really liked Indy and Ally. They were fun and sweet and nice, but I wasn’t a shenanigans type of girl.
Indy and Ally were synonymous with shenanigans.
“A master at his craft.” Ellen flitted through wearing some weird, filmy muumuu and a terry-cloth braided headband around her forehead, her wispy white hair a cloudy wonder of flips and curls haloing her entire skull, though, the part of it at the crown was tamped down by the headband. “That meaning the Purple One,” she explained.
She smiled and winked at me.
I smiled back.
You really never knew what you’d get with Ellen. Fortnum’s was a cool place to hang (though, they needed a coffee counter or a soda fountain or something), and Ellen was the reason it was. She was a bit weird, but in a good way, and she welcomed everybody. I’d even seen her ask a homeless person in, sending Duke off to go buy the guy a sandwich.
Today it was that muumuu. Last week it was a fringed vest and jeans and high-heeled sandals with sparkles that would go better with an outfit you’d wear to the Oscars.
Though, her terry-cloth headband was ever present. As far as I could tell, she had one in every color, just as long as that color was pastel.