Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 72740 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72740 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Then my eyes widened when I looked in the back seat at Rowen. Who, luckily, was sleeping.
I tried really hard not to curse in front of my daughter, but my sister brought out the worst in me.
Instead of answering her, I opened my parent’s garage with my opener, and pulled into my mom’s spot inside, shutting it off and closing the garage door before getting out.
Leaving Rowen to sleep, I walked inside and found my sister talking to my dad in the kitchen.
My dad clocked me as soon as I walked into the door.
Tru, however, didn’t.
My dad was used to our antics. Thirty and twenty eight, we still acted the exact same as we did twenty years ago when we were ten and eight.
I held my finger up to my lips, and my father’s lips twitched, knowing exactly what I was going to do.
He turned his face away to conceal his smile, and I made it all the way up to my sister before grabbing her waist and yelling as loud as I could.
Tru screamed, whirled, and threw a punch. But I’d anticipated her move, stepping back just in time for her fist to fly past my face with more than a foot to spare.
“You bitch!” Tru screamed, taking off after me.
I put the island in between us to keep her from hurting me.
“Prepare to die,” my sister exclaimed.
I smirked at her. “Keep dreaming, Tru-Tru.”
She flipped me off, and my dad finally broke in. “Girls.”
That’s all it took. We both stopped circling the counter, knowing when my dad finally spoke, he meant business.
Frank Doherty wasn’t one to take shit from anybody, even his daughters.
Dad was a fire marshal for the Shreveport Fire Department, and had been for the last thirty five years.
He and our mother met while my father was investigating a fire. My mother had been the patrol officer that’d responded to the scene first, and from there it was history.
They had a love that I would forever base all of my future relationships on. My father taught us how a woman was supposed to be treated, and to expect nothing less than a forever kind of love from our husbands. My parents had a connection; a type of connection that stood the test of time, two kids, two extremely demanding jobs where they had to put their lives on the line to do, and illnesses.
Which was why I couldn’t find anybody.
The standard was too high.
I’d broken that standard once when I met Rowen’s father, and I never would again.
Lesson-fucking-learned.
And I had the scars to prove it.
“So…when’s Cabe bringing mom to the bar?” I asked, ready to get my mind off of things so depressing.
“T-minus one hour and counting. Now, let’s get to cooking,” Tru instructed.
“Clean up after yourselves,” my father ordered as he let the room.
Tru and I both looked at each other for a good five seconds before we both burst out laughing.
Yeah, right.
***
I tried valiantly not to look.
I really did.
But Jesus Christ. I’d never seen him in regular clothes before, and holy shit could the man fill out a pair of jeans!
He even had an ass.
He had on a black Pittsburg Steelers hat pulled low over his head, and a red t-shirt that looked incredibly soft. I just wanted to walk up to him and rub my cheeks along his chest; apparently, though, that’d be creepy.
What surprised me the most was that he was wearing tennis shoes.
I guess I just thought he’d be a boot man, but he worked those black and gray Under Armor shoes. I wanted some just like them.
He was leaning back against the bar with his feet crossed in front of him.
His beer was hanging from two fingers, and he was talking to somebody I’d never seen before. Most likely another Dixie Warden if the vest thingy was any indication.
This one was someone new; he’d apparently come home on leave from the Navy, and brought a few friends with him home. I’d heard through various people that he was only here for a week or so, and his name was Sterling.
He was pretty badass looking, though.
My sister hadn’t met him, either, in her time she’d been with her boyfriend, Grayson.
A boyfriend who’d been giving her such hot looks throughout the night that I was squirming in my seat.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, fanning myself when I caught Grayson’s stare at my sister. “What’s going on with him?”
My sister smiled. “I told him I loved him on the way over here.”
I looked at my sister in surprise. “Really? Isn’t it kind of early for that?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s true.”
I believed her. She’d changed a lot in the time she’d known him, and I could tell that it was the real thing.
It was only a matter of time before he asked her to marry him.
Looking around for Rowen, I found her at a table sitting with my mom in the restaurant portion of Halligans and Handcuffs.
“Who’s the hottie at the bar?” I heard one of the female cops that worked with my mother ask.
“Which one?” My mom asked, running her nose along Rowen’s head.
It made my heart happy to see my mom having enough strength to hold Rowen.
A lot of times in the past year that she’d been battling cancer, she’d been unable to hold Rowen. Too weak to even lift her head on some days.
It’d about killed me to leave her to move to Kilgore a few months ago, but I’d had no other choice if I wanted to be able to live.
My mother had been my primary caregiver for Rowen on the days that I worked.
When she’d gotten sick, I’d had to rely on my sister a lot, and it’d gotten to the point where I was worrying myself sick and missing too much work because no one could watch her.
After the fourth day of missed work, I decided to start looking for a job that was daytime hours only, and found the job in Kilgore.
Most of the time, now, I was out in time to get Rowen from school, and that constant nagging feeling of worrying about who was going to pick my kid up from daycare, go pick her up from school because she was sick, or find someone to watch her during the school holidays, was gone.