Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 160684 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 643(@250wpm)___ 536(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160684 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 643(@250wpm)___ 536(@300wpm)
“I’m not nuts! Honestly!”
“No one said you were, baby girl,” Steele said. He tilted his head to the side. “You were talking to your nan?”
She puffed out a breath. “I know it sounds nuts, but my nan, well, she raised me from when I was young. My mom didn’t know who my dad was. At school, she was bullied pretty badly and I think that affected Nan as well as her. My nan could be pretty strict. She wanted my mom to act a certain way, so Mom left as soon as she could and I think she went a bit wild. Anyway, she got pregnant with me and then moved home for a while. Nan said that one day she woke up and Mom was gone, leaving Nan with me to raise.”
“Fuck. How old were you?” Grady asked, coming closer.
“I was three. I don’t really remember my mom. Just photos I saw of her.”
“She never came back?” Steele asked.
“No. When I was ten, a policeman came to the house to tell Nan that she’d died in a house fire in Utah. She, uh, she died along with her husband and child.”
“That bitch.”
She jumped at Steele’s words. “It . . . she died, Steele.”
“So? That doesn’t make her a bitch? She can still be a bitch. She went off and made another family and left you with your nan, who didn’t seem that great of a person to be left with.”
“Nan really wasn’t that bad. I mean, she was strict and had a lot of advice. Some of it . . . wasn’t that great. I think she was trying to stop me from becoming like my mom. And she . . . I don’t know, I think she believed that she was helping me.”
“How was she helping you?” Grady asked. “What kind of advice did she give you?”
She tugged at her earring.
“No,” Steele said firmly, pulling her hand away and giving it a light slap. She stared down at him.
“I’m going to need to come up with another way of stopping you from doing that.”
“If her hands were tied, she couldn’t do that,” Grady said.
“Good point. Next time you tug on your earring like that, you don’t get to use your hands for an hour.”
She huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, right.”
They gave her serious looks back.
Holy. Heck.
“What sort of advice, Effie?” Steele asked. “What did you hear her say just before?”
“Um, it’s just stuff about how I shouldn’t eat too much or I might get too round and then I won’t be attractive. Or, you know, how I should be agreeable and happy so that people like me. Stuff like that,” she whispered as she saw the way Steele’s face filled with thunder.
She turned to Grady and saw him standing still as a statue.
“That . . . you hear that sort of poison in your head?” Grady whispered.
“Um. It’s not that bad.”
“That’s why you smile so much even when you clearly aren’t happy?” Steele asked. “Because that bitch is poisoning your mind.”
“This isn’t acceptable. She can’t live with that sort of shit in her head,” Grady said fiercely.
Whoa. Effie didn’t think she’d ever seen him look this upset.
“Agreed.”
“It’s really okay,” she said, hastily. “I’ve heard it for a long time.”
“And you haven’t done anything to stop it? Joe didn’t help you stop it?” Steele asked.
“He . . . I . . . I never told him.”
Steele straightened his shoulders.
“But you told us,” Grady said.
“Of course she told us,” Steele said. “Because she trusts us to help her with this.”
Um, also because they were super pushy and likely wouldn’t let it go. But she decided not to mention that.
“Every time that Nan speaks to you, I want you to tell us,” Steele told her.
“I, um, every time?” Or did he just mean whenever they were around?
“Every. Time.”
Holy heck.
“Grady, add it to the list,” Steele demanded.
“On it already.”
“She says something in your head, you call one of us. Understand me?” Steele gave her a firm look.
“But what if you’re working?” she asked.
“You call. We don’t answer, leave a message and we’ll call you back.”
“What if you’re asleep?”
“Well, considering the hours we work, it’s unlikely that we’ll be asleep while you’re awake, but if Nan’s voice is there in a dream and you wake up, you call. Hear me?”
“I hear you,” she replied. Even though she thought they were crazy.
“Good,” Steele said firmly. “Because Nan is messing with your view of yourself. You’re fucking beautiful. So stunning that I can’t believe you’ve said yes to being with us.”
She gaped down at him. “What?”
Grady came around to sit next to Steele. “She doesn’t believe you.”
“I can see that. Effie, in this relationship, we’re the lucky ones. Grady and I.”
She shook her head. Grady had said something about not being good enough for her before, but she hadn’t really taken it in. Because it was preposterous. “Okay, have you two been smoking something? Don’t you look in the mirror? You’re gorgeous. Sexy. Successful. Smart. And you smell really good, like leather and the sea.”