Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
I took a long, deep breath as Brock used his gloved finger to hold down the envelope as he ripped the edge with the tip of the tweezer.
I swear the world froze in that moment.
Or, at the very least, my heartbeat and breathing did.
Then Brock was opening the card inside.
To reveal… an invitation?
The laugh that bubbled up and burst out of Brock was a mix of shocked, amused, and relieved.
“What is it?” I asked, feeling so wound up that I couldn’t relax even after seeing the weight fall from Brock’s shoulders.
“An invitation from Bellamy for the two of us to stay at his Italian villa.”
“What?” I asked, voice breathless.
“I’m not shitting you,” Brock said, holding it out to me.
“What? Does he drive around with these things in his car?” I asked, turning it over to see a hand-drawn image of the villa we were discussing.
I won’t lie.
I would love to spend a week there.
I didn’t even remember the last time I took a vacation.
“You mull on that,” Brock said. “I have to take this,” he added, reaching for his phone that must have been vibrating in his pocket.
Taking it out, he moved onto the balcony.
And despite thinking he’d been a bit of a loon for all the worry about it, I couldn’t help but worry about all the ways Brock could be attacked out there, thanks to Lennon’s words.
I didn’t think anything of the call seeing as I wasn’t the only client that his work had, and they likely needed to give each other advice here and there, but when Brock’s head whipped over to look at me, I had a feeling things had just taken a worrying turn.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Brock
I was going to be in a world of shit when Sawyer found out about me hooking up with Miranda.
Somehow, though, I couldn’t bring myself to give a single fuck about that.
I get that I had a reputation for being a little reckless or careless or even selfish and not a team player. But at the end of the day, I cared what Sawyer thought.
But about this one thing, this one woman, yeah, I couldn’t bring myself to give a shit if he was going to be pissed.
Because, whether it made much rational sense to me or not, whatever was going on with Miranda was different than anything else I’d ever known.
I couldn’t explain it.
Maybe if I was a man who never spent more than a night with a woman, I could blame the constant close proximity, the patterns we’d fallen into, playing house, and falling into traditional roles because of that, confusing ourselves with reality and fantasy.
But the fact of the matter was, I had spent many weeks with many different women. I knew what it was like to fall into patterns, to appear to be a couple.
That said, never before had it led to interest in having those things be true.
I was not a man who’d ever wanted to be in a couple with anyone.
Until Miranda.
There was no denying that was what I wanted, either.
Sure, for a while, I’d been able to say it was just physical, that we needed to get each other out of our systems.
But as time went on, it became more and more apparent that it wasn’t just that.
I just… liked her.
I appreciated her outer image, even admired the effortless way she wore that mask. But I liked the woman underneath even more. The one who liked trash TV and honey mustard on her fries and cursed and had a slight accent when she got a little frustrated over things.
I liked her drive and her confidence.
I liked her mind and her heart.
I just… liked her.
The more time I spent with her, the more that was true.
I mean, I swore I would never force myself to endure another night at the Falkes Benefit. But doing so with Miranda had been an entirely different experience.
And not just because of the sex. Though, yeah, that had been top-tier sex.
A part of me was worried about solving her case, about no longer having an excuse to be in her guest room.
Would she send me packing?
And why did the idea of that make me feel like someone had kicked all the air out of me?
I was more relieved than I should have been that the envelope had been an invitation from Bellamy. Not only because it meant that Miranda was safe for the time being, but because it meant that we weren’t one step closer to figuring things out… and ending my access to the woman I was starting to have a lot of feelings for.
“Yeah?” I asked, answering Tig as I moved onto the balcony.
“I’ve been doing some digging,” he told me, and I could hear him shuffling paperwork.
“On what?”
“The doorman,” he said.
“We cleared the doorman,” I reminded him. “And his wife,” I added.