Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 73311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
My mom saw my face and immediately tried to hide her smile.
She also managed not to say, ‘I told you so.’
Barely.
“That’s going to go over well at work tonight,” my mom supplied.
I glared at her.
“I know,” I sighed. “Jesus, the boys are going to give me a fit over this.”
“Yep,” Mom agreed.
I looked at the clock.
“Does it have any bruising?” I asked, touching it lightly.
My mom scooted closer so she could inspect it more thoroughly. “Not yet. But it’s gonna. What happened?”
“Rod happened,” I grumbled. “He, of course, ‘didn’t meant to trip me with the leg extension on the wheelchair,’ but I’m not stupid.”
My mother groaned.
“How many times do you want me to tell you…”
I held up my hand, refusing to let her finish.
“That was the last time,” I promised. “I’m not letting Davis guilt me into taking him anymore. My head is killing me.”
My mother nodded in understanding.
“Did you get stitches at the ER? Did Cooley take care of you?” she asked.
‘Cooley’ was my father. ‘Cooley’ was also an ER doctor and a great guy. He and my mom, however, couldn’t get along. And would never get along if they kept being so stubborn and pigheaded.
“No.” I shook my head. “I let the medic at the jail do it. He’s our neighbor across the hall. The one that moved in with one box, remember?”
My mother grinned.
“I do,” she confirmed.
My mother and I knew the moment he arrived. Not because we were nosy, but because the man’s bike was loud as hell. He announced himself everywhere he went.
Even if he was only going to the damn store that was on the corner of the intersection that was down about a mile from the apartments. I heard him start his bike up. Heard him accelerate all the way to the convenience store. Then I heard him accelerate all the way home.
The man definitely didn’t have a ‘slow’ speed in his body.
“He’s the one who fixed me up.”
“And you didn’t go to the ER because?” Mom asked.
“Because I didn’t want Dad to say, ‘I told you so’ like you really wanted to,” I told her bluntly.
Mom snorted.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked.
I nodded. “I do.”
“Then get there.”
I sighed.
Then I ‘got’ there.
***
“Bob!” I bellowed as I walked in the door to my shop. “Why is there a broken-down Nova in the middle of the driveway?”
Bob wheeled out from underneath the car he was working on, a piece of shit Impala that needed a lot more work than I was willing to do for it, and blinked.
“What happened to your face?” he asked.
Bob was a forty-nine-year-old hard-nosed man, married to the love of his life, Darcy. He had two kids in college and was on the brink of retiring, and I dreaded the day he told me he was done.
“Rod happened,” I sighed. “Though you probably already know that, don’t you?”
Bob’s mouth twitched.
“Small town,” he agreed, not disagreeing with my assumption. “I heard you were hurt, just not why you were hurt.”
I rolled my eyes. “The Nova?” I pushed.
Bob disappeared back underneath the car. “Had a guy bring it in today. Said it was for a buddy. Told me he would be by today to get it inside and that the guy wished to help us work on it when we had the time.”
My brows furrowed. “Since when do we do that?”
“Since the guy was a Marine and I had a hard time telling him no.”
I snorted.
“Whatever.”
We were all Marines at one point.
I’d served the mandatory four years before I got out, specializing in mechanics while I was in. Then I’d gotten out, taken over my grandfather’s shop, and somehow ended up collecting a lot of retired Marines in my employ.
Mom was a Marine. Dad was a Marine. Grandpa was a Marine. My sister, Clarabelle, was a Marine.
Everyone I knew was a Marine.
So it was no wonder that Bob would extend that invitation to a fellow Marine.
Hell, I would have, too.
“Did he say what time the friend would be coming by?” I asked casually as I walked over to the office and tugged my work coveralls off the hook right inside the door.
“After three when his shift at the jail ends.”
Something hot swept through my body as I thought of possibilities of who the man could be.
One pair of beautiful teal blue eyes stood out, and I hoped that it wasn’t him, even though I’d seen the Marine Corps tattoo on his right forearm.
Then I quickly squelched that hope.
He’d yelled at Davis.
He was mean. Had a shit bedside manner…and I was fairly sure there was no possibility that that man wouldn’t be taken—by a woman, not by kidnapping.
I was fairly sure the man could handle himself. He was big enough. Mean enough.
He was sin. You know the type.
Tall. Dark. Handsome. Delectable. Bitable. Sexable.