Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Mae Beatrice Vaughn stood in the middle of his kitchen, two green smoothies in her hands as though she’d known exactly what his answer would be.
Probably because when someone asked him if he was hungry, the answer was almost always yes. He wasn’t picky. He liked pretty much everything. Cookies? Good. Meat? Good. Healthy veggies pulverized into an approximation of soft serve ice cream? Good.
He’d lived off MREs for weeks. He didn’t complain.
Mae placed the smoothie on the counter in front of him and took a sip from hers. It was weird to see her with black hair. She’d dyed it shortly after they’d gotten back from their last op together, but he was still getting used to it.
“How are the new recruits coming along?” Mae asked.
She was staying with him for the week due to her recent run-in with a bad guy. Girl. Woman. He wasn’t sure how Julia Ennis would want to be referred to, but he knew she was bad and she probably wouldn’t hate getting another shot at the cutie he viewed as a sister, hence the recent change in hair color.
But then most of the men and women he worked with felt like family. The company he worked for—McKay-Taggart—treated him far better than his blood family ever had.
“I would say we’ve got a couple of weeks before they hatch. Most birds’ eggs that size take about three weeks. I think they’re robins, but I wasn’t the one who found the nest, so I can’t be certain. It’s weird that they’re here at all. Most birds lay eggs in the spring.” One of the kids in the building had found them in a park and brought them back out of curiosity. Boomer would never have disturbed a nest, but once the damage was done, he felt the need to try to save the birds. Especially miracle birds. He didn’t know a ton of trivia, but he did know that 86 percent of birds laid eggs in the springtime. School had never been easy for him. It had taken way too long for him to get any help with his dyslexia, but the teacher who’d finally figured it out had used books about animals to get him interested in reading. One of the first books he could remember enjoying had been about birds and their habits. September was the least likely time to find wild birds laying eggs here in Texas.
It felt a little like fate to find those eggs.
“You are like the military masculine version of Snow White,” MaeBe announced, her lips tugging up in a grin that he was happy to see. She’d been down for months, but her natural exuberance was coming back.
“I’m not sure what you mean.” It was good to see her getting back to some kind of normal. Her new normal included military training and having to move around frequently, but she seemed to be settling in.
MaeBe gestured around his two-bedroom condo. “Because when you walk in a room it’s like all the animals follow.”
The statement was punctuated with a bark as Sprinkles jumped as high as she could, obviously desperate for attention. But then the Chihuahua always wanted attention. Mae picked her up, cuddling her close.
“I’m a sucker for a hard-luck case.”
Mae’s smile turned slightly sad. “Lucky for me.”
His second dog bounded in, drooling like a loon and trying to get MaeBe’s attention.
“You are not a hard-luck case. Down, Puddles.” Puddles was a hard-luck case. The pit bull mix was the sweetest dog in the world, but he looked really scary. Right up until the moment he actually got scared, which was a lot, and then he peed. Hence the name Puddles. Boomer tried hard not to startle the poor guy.
Mae grinned and reached her free hand down to pet him. “Don’t. He’s a sweetie.”
“Yeah, it’s all fun and games until he pees or tries to hump you.” Both of those things could happen, which was precisely why he couldn’t find anyone willing to take the dog on.
“Hump you. Hump you.”
He felt a light weight land on his shoulder and kind of got what MaeBe meant with the Snow White reference, though none of his menagerie actually helped with the cooking and cleaning. Molly was an elderly monk parakeet he’d taken in when her owner had passed on. He’d thought he would have to turn the bird over to animal services, but Sheba, the cat, had proven far too lazy to try to eat Molly. Now the lizard he’d recently rehabbed was another story. That gecko had barely gotten out with his limbs intact, but Boomer had been able to release the little dude back into the bushes around the building, and he seemed to be living his best life.
If that was the same gecko. He liked to think it was, but then he was a positive person.