Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
It was but it wasn’t, at least in my opinion.
“I mean, it doesn’t seem that bad,” I pointed out.
“I know.” He chuckled. “And then when I’m there, she asks me if I wanted to know how much it would cost for ninety-nine of them.”
“And let me guess, you of course said yes?” I guessed.
He grinned. “Obviously. Any idea how much it was?”
“Um, like twenty thousand,” I said.
“Close.” He laughed. “It was actually twenty-two thousand.”
I giggled and said, “That’s exactly the kind of information you need. Did you like the store?”
“I did. I was nearly convinced to buy more than a car battery.” He chuckled. “Just letting you know that I now have a date with her.”
“Who is her?” I wondered.
“Her name is Keely.” He paused. “Though she says that’s not her real name. I’m gonna get her to tell me her real name over lunch.”
I shook my head. “You do that.”
“How did meeting the family go last night?” he asked. “You said you’d tell me today.”
I had said that.
“It was great,” I admitted. “I liked them all a whole lot.”
“That’s good. Bye.” He hung up without waiting for a reply.
I rolled my eyes at my brother’s abrupt disconnect.
That was just him.
I don’t think I’d ever gotten a “goodbye” off in return with him.
“What do you want to do today?” I asked as Haze came back in the door from dropping Desi off, his hair a little windblown due to the sound of a brewing storm.
Desi wasn’t too hip on not being able to drive herself anywhere, but until whatever plan Shasha and Haze had concocted was finished, she was stuck with the chauffeur.
“I need a car,” I said. “And so do you.”
He sighed. “I was really hoping to get my cruiser back.”
“You think that they’ll just allow that after everything?” I asked. “They’re still ‘investigating’ after a week. And we can’t keep renting a vehicle. And also, I have a secret shopper opportunity at the Ford dealership in Plano. They said they’d give me five percent off a vehicle of my choosing if I could give them a good reason to fire one of their employees.”
He chuckled. “Texas is an at-will state. They don’t need a reason.”
“Normally, no. But this is a family matter. One of the employees is a granddaughter of the owner, and unless there’s solid proof that she’s purposefully turning away certain people because she doesn’t like them, then they can’t get rid of her.”
“Ford, huh?” he asked. “What are you going to look at?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why do you look like you know something I don’t know?”
“Because I forgot to tell you last night,” he blurted it all out.
I gasped and reached for my phone.
Sure enough, the senator’s death by wife—and boy howdy, was it one hell of a death—was ALL over the internet.
It was on every media outlet.
Literally every single one.
“How could you not have shared this last night?” I asked.
“Because I wanted to enjoy my evening, and it would’ve put you back to thinking about it.” He winced, realizing how bad that sounded. “I don’t know. We just haven’t had anything that was just easy, and I knew how nervous you already were because of meeting my siblings, and I just wanted to be normal. So I put it out of my own mind, too.”
I understood.
But…
“Don’t keep things like that from me anymore, please,” I begged. “I’ve had enough of it from Shasha and my father over my lifetime. It’s suffocating.”
He ran the tip of one finger along my jawline before pulling away. “I imagine that I’ll be getting my cruiser back, so I won’t need a vehicle. But I’ll gladly go with you to buy a car.”
“How about you come with me, but maybe go in there to buy your own vehicle. But that will really be mine. I’m not dumb. I know a man will negotiate a better price at a car dealership, anyway. But I don’t want to spend an hour there going through the hoops of getting a car and not leave with one.”
“What about when your car finally gets released?” he asked.
“That’s not actually mine. It belongs to the family trust. Usually, Dima is the one to use it when he comes home from wherever he happens to be stationed. But I was looking into a new car, anyway, and so instead of replacing my car that was totaled a few months ago, I just used that one,” I explained.
“How was your car totaled?” he asked as he watched me move around the room to get dressed.
When I was fully clothed—much to his chagrin—I went into the bathroom and started doing my hair.
He sat on the closed toilet lid as I explained the accident.
“It was the weirdest thing.” I shook my head. “I was driving down a back road—one I used to take all the time because I hate 635 so much—and I see this like glare off of something. I squint my eyes and stare at it off to the side of the road, and all of a sudden, there’s a cow in front of me. Had the cow kept moving, it would’ve been fine. But he stopped when he heard the car approaching. And since he was black, and it was dark as pitch outside, I couldn’t do anything but swerve. Right into another cow. This one is much bigger than the one that I’d been trying to avoid.”