Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 68538 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68538 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
What little I knew about Pepper—what she allowed me to know about her—was that she was very, very independent. She worked multiple jobs, and she didn’t get along with her sister.
A sister who Atlas just so happened to save from a serial killer a few years ago.
Sage, the woman he’d saved, was Pepper’s little sister. According to Sage—who now worked at DPD—she didn’t talk to any of her family. They were all assholes.
Yet, Pepper never gave me that feeling. She was in a perpetual bad mood, yes. But from what I could see, she was a hard worker—always showing up on time for Maven. Not to mention her second job at a fancy smancy hotel off the interstate meant I saw her quite a bit due to the location of it and the calls that came out of it being in my particular beat.
Just because a hotel was labeled as five stars didn’t mean that it didn’t come with plenty of issues. From calls about vagrants, to guests who were no longer wanted, I was there quite a bit.
I also saw Pepper there, every single time.
Anyway, the things we’d heard about Pepper from Sage never fit, and I wondered if Atlas was aware of that. He and Sage were pretty damn close considering.
“You can have it all,” she grumbled. “But you have to get it out of my car in the next ten seconds, because I’m about to go down to the police station and murder my father in cold blood.” Maven fumed.
There was a moment of silence and then I said, “You should probably not announce your plan when it comes to committing murder. Especially in front of two police officers obligated to share that kind of information.”
She scoffed. “I don’t care what you have to say, or what you do. All I care about is how my father is ruining my life because I want nothing to do with him. And he’s all butt hurt about it and trying to force his hand. Like freakin’ always.”
I frowned. “What else is he trying to do?”
I’m going to dress how I want this summer. If you think I’m fat, well so do I.
—Maven’s secret thoughts
MAVEN
I was fuming.
I’d come in to work this morning and started my day like any other day.
I’d gotten all my pastries baked and out in the cases, my hand on the door sign poised to flip it to open, when a man wearing a Dallas Health Department embroidered shirt showed.
He had a look on his face that let me know clearly that my day was about to be fucked.
Why?
Because my dad hated me, and he knew everyone in the city.
And that wasn’t an understatement.
My dad was the chief of police for the Dallas Police Department.
If he didn’t know them, he would get to know them.
And he intimidated them all.
The health official had stood at the door to my business and pasted a sign on the glass stating that my business was officially closed due to health violations.
Which was a fucking lie, because my place was as clean as a whistle.
It had to be because my dad sent the health inspector out every single week to get me closed down.
I’d managed to avoid actually closing down until this morning, when they’d forced my hand.
Now I had thousands of dollars’ worth of bakery items that would go to waste, and no way to recoup it since I wasn’t allowed to sell anything until I was reinstated to work.
I also knew that if I tried to sell anyway, I’d be arrested.
There was likely some douchebag cop who was loyal to my father somewhere keeping watch, just in case.
Pepper had arrived in time to see the health inspector leave, and she’d waited with me until well past nine in the morning—four hours after I was supposed to open and six since I’d gotten there this morning—to call the health inspector’s office to file an official complaint.
Though, I’d been able to get ahold of my lawyer much faster than that, and she’d promised to have a suit filed by Monday morning.
Needless to say, after hanging up the phone, the last people I wanted to deal with were a couple more cops.
Though, the Carters seemed to be better than most.
I especially liked the two who were here.
Atlas was the sweetest man I’d ever met.
Meanwhile, his polar-opposite twin, Auden, was the one that always caught my eye and held it.
Where Atlas was welcoming and always smiling—at least with me—Auden was standoffish and scowling.
Auden’s chocolate brown eyes weren’t exactly welcoming, but they were still my obsession.
Chocolate, from a very young age, had become one of my favorite things in the world.
And the deep, melty chocolate color of Auden’s had been the first thing I noticed about him.
Then had come the blond hair, cropped close to his head but still long enough to curl. It had been so much like my own that I’d been entranced.