Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95080 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
“It’s me,” came a tired grunt from the shadows to the right of the bed.
When I turned, I found Cord walking toward me. It was a relief that it was him, and I let out a deep sigh as I sank back down on the pillows.
“You thought maybe I was your stalker?”
“I have a stalker now?” I asked him, annoyed. “Since when?”
He stepped out into the light from the hallway, and I saw him clearly. “Jesus, you look like shit.”
“Nice. Real nice. I’m going to forgive your rudeness since you’re all hopped up on pharmaceutical-grade narcotics.”
“Why are you here?” I asked pointedly, letting him hear in my voice that I was only tolerating him, that I didn’t like him.
“Because I have to talk to you,” he said, his expression hardening.
I was about to ask the next logical question when his cell phone rang, and he shushed me. I heard enough of the conversation to realize he was talking to some guy, and between his tone and his body language, I was certain he was blowing him off. I was not surprised in the least. Cord collected men and then discarded them; it had always been his way. And I understood how. The man exuded heat; everything about him was strong and hard. If I didn’t know him, I would want him too, but that was all surface appeal. Underneath, the guy was an asshat even if he looked like he’d been carved from stone. What I found more interesting, though, was that some men thought he was just okay looking. Unlike Breckin, whom everyone found appealing, Cord Nolan worked only on the senses of those who liked a wild, rebellious kind of guy. He came off as cold, dangerous, and untamable. He was not the kind of man you made a home with.
“Hello,” he snapped at me, and I realized he’d been done with his conversation for some time and my mind had been drifting.
“What?” I answered quietly, carefully crossing my arms over my chest.
“As I said, I have things to discuss with you.” Picking up a chair, he walked across the room and put it down beside my bed. He took a seat and got comfortable. “You look pretty good for a guy who almost got brained with a bat.”
“Thanks,” I said irritably. “Is that what you came by to tell me?”
He shook his head and took a deep breath. “You’re such a pain in the ass.”
“Do you actually have something useful to say, or are we just going to have our usual—”
“Fine,” he interrupted, exasperated. “Here it is. You got beaten up in a club last night, and Celia Hughes got beaten up at a football game the week before.”
I stared at him hard, waiting for him to go on. The silence stretched out longer and longer, and I finally had to cave. “Who is Celia Hughes, and what does she have to do with me?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“Oh, for the love of God, just tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”
He looked past me then, to the doorway of my room.
I glanced over my shoulder and found no one there. Returning my gaze to his, I waited only seconds. “What? What is it? You’re making me nuts with this.”
“I—”
“Speak!”
He cleared his throat. “Celia got beaten up just like you did. She saw a flash of someone just as the lights were turned off, and then she got hit with something hard. We don’t know what.”
“She got hit at a football game?”
“Yeah.”
“And?” It was like pulling teeth.
“It was a 49ers game.”
Why was that important? “What’s with you?”
“Nothing. I’m just telling you—you and Celia Hughes, same setup, hit in the back, same outcome…except she’s pregnant.”
“Oh shit,” I gasped, horrified, distracted from my annoyance by the possibility of someone hurting an unborn child. “Is she okay? Is the baby okay?”
“Yeah, the baby’s fine. Celia had the presence of mind to roll into a ball and protect her kid.”
“So it was a little different because I got hit while the lights were still on. I had no presence of mind to keep.”
“You never have any presence of mind,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Really?” I said flatly.
“Lest we forget how well I know you,” he countered, grinning at me.
He knew events; he didn’t know me.
Like the time he and Alex had driven up to my apartment only to find me in a T-shirt and pajama bottoms on the front stoop, freezing, because I had locked myself out, and Matt wasn’t home, and crazy Mrs. Fishman from upstairs wouldn’t buzz me back in. Or the time I nearly fell off the pier at Fisherman’s Wharf because I wouldn’t let Cord help me carry the boxes of cracked crab I had been asked to pick up for my friend Denise’s rehearsal dinner. Or the time Alex had sent me to pick Cord up from the airport, and I’d forgotten where my car was parked…and it took three hours to find it. Sadly, it seemed like he always caught me at my worst.