Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
“He’s a good guy,” Carolyn said softly.
“Yeah,” Dutch agreed to the obvious.
“Like you,” she murmured, pulled in another big breath, her eyes shifting between them again, before she settled on Georgie and something else hit her face, something he’d never seen.
But it was the something Georgiana knew was there, buried until then, but not gone.
Carolyn’s life was in the toilet.
But she knew her sister was happy.
So she was happy for her sister.
Carolyn again spoke.
“I’ll call Dad. I’ll let you know if he’s not being cool. Then I’ll call you.”
“Call me anytime, Caro, don’t forget the part about me loving you. We’ll do lunch or dinner, and for that, I’ll buy.”
One side of Carolyn’s lips went up and she said, “You’re such a bitch because you’ve always been so cool.”
Hearing that, Dutch was about to lose it when Georgie replied, “You’re such a bitch because you’ve always been such a free spirit. It’s annoying.”
“You’re annoying.”
“Your face is annoying.”
“Your face is obsessed with a cat.”
“Your face needs an ice cream sundae.”
“Got that right, sister.”
After Carolyn said that, they both started cackling.
Jesus Christ.
Were they serious?
“Come here,” Georgie bid, breaking from Dutch to go to her sister.
They were serious.
They hugged.
And didn’t let go.
He heard Georgie whisper, “Dad’s gonna take you in.”
“I know, but bluh, he watches so much football and Michelle fusses.”
“She wants us to like her.”
“She’s been around two decades, we like her already, geez.”
“Just be cool.”
“You be cool.”
“I’m always cool.”
“Annoying.”
Fortunately, this sister shit didn’t go on a lot longer, and after Carolyn apologized again for the day before, and interrupting them that morning, Georgiana got her out the door.
And as Dutch watched this, he thanked fuck he had two brothers.
When Georgiana shut the door on her sister and turned to him, he asked, “You all right?”
She took one skipping-running step to him, another, then she body-slammed him and curved her arms around.
He did the same with his arms around her.
“She’s gonna be okay,” she said, smiling brightly up at him.
“Yeah,” he murmured, taking that in, feeling it filling his chest, knowing that was all he needed to get through this day.
Hell, probably the next week.
“It’s gonna suck for her huge, though, because Dad is the consummate NFL junkie and Michelle totally fusses.”
“You’re gorgeous, you know,” he decreed.
She blinked, her chin jerking back, before she asked, “What?”
“You’re gorgeous. Beautiful. Great face. Great hair. Great body. Perfect skin. You know that, don’t you?”
She melted into him and said, “I feel I must inform you, Dutch Black, that although you have a body carved by God himself, so beautiful it makes me salivate, my down-with-the-patriarchy days, which, mind you, are not over, include me being not down with the patriarchy-led gazillion-dollar diet and workout industry. Which I will allow, some of them actually strive toward offering humans an avenue to a healthy lifestyle. But especially with the diet industry, it feeds on insecurity and the media’s utterly impossible-to-achieve version of beauty, making fat white cats big bucks. So since I was about twelve, I considered my curves a badge of honor.”
“Good.”
“Though, it’s sweet of you to say.”
“Pointing out, God carved your body too.”
Another blink and chin jerk and then a smile and a soft, “Yeah.”
“Do you need coffee?”
“I’m only about to die without it.”
Shit.
Georgie and her quick mouth.
Fuck, he dug this woman.
To share that, he brushed a kiss on her lips, let her go, and finally went and poured them both some joe.
* * * *
Dutch drove them home from the fancy-dinner part of their marathon date mildly pissed.
And since he was, he got into that.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Mm,” she hummed.
“Mm?” he asked.
“I did tell you,” she reminded him.
“No man likes a tease.”
She let out a giggle he’d never heard before, it was feminine and hot, and he became less mildly pissed and more just straight-up pissed.
“It’s not about the tease,” she educated. “It’s delayed gratification which I’ll remind you again was your idea.”
“That right there,” he stated. “Retaliation.”
She said nothing.
He remembered their conversation of the night before.
“Cerebral and long-lasting,” he grunted.
She giggled again and he got why he felt that in his dick.
Because it was the auditory sound of her got-your-cock look.
She slid a hand on his thigh, stopping way too close to his cock, and told him, “We’re almost home. So your torture is almost over. And so is mine.”
Torture was a good word for it.
Her.
In that red dress.
Short, mid-thigh, fitted skirt. Sleeves that came down to just under her elbow.
All that relatively modest.
It was the cleavage.
A scalloped, semi-wide v-line that went all the way down to her midriff.
You could see a lot full-on, but if you caught a view from the side.
Fuck.
Which meant her gorgeous tits had been in his face all night.
He didn’t even taste his steak.
And if it wasn’t for her dark hair tumbling down her back and all over her shoulders, lush with curls. The red lip she gave him that reminded him how those felt wrapped around his dick. Her heavily made-up eyes that made her look sultry—because it was the classy, glamorous kind, not the trashy, overdone kind—he wouldn’t have looked at anything else.