Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
It was like he didn’t speak when Bubbles said, “I gotta start a pool about how long they’re gonna last.”
Even if the rumors were true (which they were not), Riggs almost wanted to see someone try to fuck with Nadia Antonov, even the type of “someone” they claimed messed with the people who stayed in that cabin.
The woman could deep-freeze Putin himself.
Hell, she could deep-freeze Stalin, and since that was her bloodline, Riggs had no questions about how her great-granddad bested an infamous despot.
But now knowing the shit she was wading through, he hoped like fuck she was left alone.
“Bubs, the bottle,” Riggs reminded him.
He watched his friend’s body jolt, then he nodded too fast and too much before he pushed through Riggs and led him to his storeroom.
Anyone else, Riggs would wonder if he was on something.
Bubbles had always had more energy than he could expend, case in point, how he was walking to the storeroom right now, freaking fast and every other step wasn’t a step, but a half a skip.
Riggs followed a lot slower.
They hit the storeroom and Bubbles flipped the light switch, saying, “Couple of year ago, went with Candy…” He stopped and stared into space, “Or was it Barbie?” He shook his head and ignored the shelves haphazardly stacked with cases of beer, bottles of booze and rolls of inexpensive toilet paper and headed to a locked cabinet that held the back stock for his top shelf. “Doesn’t matter, was in Sonoma, and, man, I musta entered a fugue state when I tasted it. But this shit was so good, I couldn’t help myself.”
He’d pulled out his keys and was opening the cabinet.
He was also still talking.
“Should have my head examined. A good shot of whisky, they’re all over it. The occasional snifter of Hennessey, sure. But that stuff doesn’t go bad. Someone orders a glass of this for twenty-five bucks in my joint, they won’t be buyin’ another one, and that bottle’ll stay open since no one who comes here has the cabbage to drop on a twenty-five-dollar glass of wine unless they’re celebrating a wedding, or a divorce. So I’d have to pour the rest of it down the drain.”
“Or you could drink it before it went bad,” Riggs suggested.
Bubbles looked at him, his face a picture of utter confusion, before it brightened, and he replied, “Fuck, shoulda thought of that.”
Christ, how this guy kept The Hole running, Riggs had no clue. He was funny, and affable, but he was a funny, affable and loveable doofus.
Bubbles reached into the locker and grabbed an expensive-looking bottle of wine, one of about twelve identical ones piled in there.
Riggs narrowed his eyes on the bottles as Bubbles jerked the one he’d nabbed his way.
Riggs didn’t take the bottle.
He asked, “When were you in Sonoma?”
“A couple years ago,” Bubbles murmured.
And damn, that was one of his many tells, considering the man rarely murmured.
“Anyway,” Bubbles went on. “Wine doesn’t go bad that quick, unless it’s opened. It’s good. Real good.” He shook the bottle at Riggs. “Here. Take it. Great apology.”
Slowly, Riggs took it, saying, “You’re not handing me a bottle of hot wine, are you?”
“’Course not.” He was again murmuring.
Shit.
“Bubs—”
“Seriously, Doc. Your neighbor will be impressed.”
“Not if I’m giving her a bottle of stolen wine. We got a deal. You do you, but I want no part of it when it’s like that.” He pushed the bottle Bubbles’s way. “No shade. You know that. But I can go to a liquor store.”
Bubbles held up both hands. “Doc. No. This is really good wine. And it isn’t like that.”
He wasn’t murmuring anymore, but he also wasn’t looking Riggs in the eye, which was often another tell.
Though, Bubbles sometimes simply didn’t look you in the eye.
But when Bubbles caught his gaze and gave him a goofy smile, Riggs relaxed and stopped extending the bottle.
Bubbles reached in, grabbed another one and held it to Riggs. “You take both of those, then we’re square.”
“We’re already square.”
Bubbles shook his head. “You did me a solid. Now I’m doing the same.”
He wasn’t talking about overstaying his welcome and eating and drinking Riggs out of house and home.
He was talking about something else.
“I told you when I did it, I wasn’t keeping a marker.” Riggs set the bottle on the shelf and pulled out his wallet.
“Not gonna take your money, Doc,” Bubbles declared.
“Twenty-five dollars a glass?” Riggs asked.
“Bud, seriously.” Bubbles was getting agitated.
Riggs had no problem looking his friend in the eye, which was what he did.
“Lucille kick you out because you didn’t pay your half of the rent, or because you did that and borrowed money off her to make payroll again?”
Bubbles’s lower lip stuck out a beat before he stated, “Hassle don’t come with paying my marker.”
“I don’t hold a marker on you,” Riggs muttered, opening his wallet and counting four hundred-dollar bills, and two fifties.