Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
I heard plenty of noise.
“Yeah? I guess you’re just used to the city. I find the peace and quiet refreshing.”
“I find it fuckin’ creepy,” he retorts, taking another long draw of his coffee. “If it weren’t for the fact that I gotta be on high alert, I’d be spiking this bland shit. The coffee sucks.”
I chuckle, opening the cabinet and grabbing a mug for myself. No amount of shitty coffee is going to ruin the high I’m on. “Can’t be that bad.” I grab the pot and fill the cup, bringing the hot liquid to my lips.
Damn, this does taste like shit.
“Told you,” Gerard chuckles, eyeing me with an amused expression. “You look like you slept well, though.” Something in his tone catches my attention.
“Yeah, it was all right. Like I said, I don’t mind the peace and quiet.”
“Or the company of a woman,” he grunts, his tone dipping low but not low enough for it to be inaudible.
Worry strikes me right in the chest. “What?”
“You heard me, man. I know the two of you were in the same room,” he says, his eyes burning a hole into my skull. “I walked up to check out of paranoia. Her door was open, and she wasn’t in there.”
Well, shit. So much for not getting caught.
“You’re fucked, man,” he chuckles at my expression.
“You’re not gonna snitch about this to Henry. I hired you, not him. Philip is on his payroll. You’re on mine.”
He laughs, shaking his head. “I’m not gonna be spilling about you sexing up Henry’s daughter. He’d probably murder me, too.”
True. Very true.
“You know he’s psycho about her,” Gerard says, sipping his coffee. “I don’t know what the fuck he’d do if he found out you fucked her last night.”
A gasp startles the both of us, and we turn to see Liz standing in the doorway, her eyes nearly as wide as dinner plates.
“Liz…” I say as she spins around and takes off toward the stairs. “Shit,” I mumble as I chase after her, setting my cup of coffee down on the counter. I hear Gerard chuckling in the kitchen, but I’ll deal with him later.
Right now, I need to calm Liz down. I finally catch her just outside of her room, grabbing her arm gently before she can slam the door. “I didn’t tell him.”
She jerks it away, glaring at me. “So then he heard us?” A mortified expression fills her face. “That’s even worse! He’s going to tell my dad, and you know he’s going to kill you for this. He’s going to flip out the moment that he finds out. He’s going to hate me.” Her eyes glisten with tears.
“Hey, he’s not going to find out, Liz. Lucky for us, Gerard is one of my guys. I’ve just always loaned him to Henry for security. He’s on my payroll. He’s not gonna snitch. He knows what’s good for him. You heard him. Henry would kill him, too, if he knew what happened between us.”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. It’ll get out somehow. It always does. I know how this works.” Liz starts panicking as she wrings her hands in front of her.
“I’ll make sure that it doesn’t. I promise,” I say calmly, trying to reassure her the best I can. I know Gerard won’t snitch. However, the truth is, it’s all a sobering reminder of how risky what we did last night was. “But Liz, if we keep doing this, we’ll have to confront the idea of telling your dad at some point.”
“No,” she snaps at me, her voice growing ice cold. “We are never doing that again. Leave me alone.”
With that, she grabs the door and slams it in my face. Anger pulses through my veins as I try to settle myself. The last thing I need to do is to lose it on her, but fuck, that burned. I spin on my heels and head back down the stairs, pissed at myself that I didn’t hear her coming.
“Well, that went smoothly,” Gerard chuckles.
“I have to fix this,” I say primarily to myself than anyone else. I don’t give a fuck what Gerard thinks about anything. I only care what Liz thinks; right now, she is not happy. She believes we can’t do what we’re doing, and that’s what I thought at first, too.
She doesn’t realize that what happened last night solidified one thing: she’s mine.
“No offense, boss, but I’d just let her sit,” Gerald remarks as I lean against the kitchen counter. He gives me a look, picking up my cup of coffee and holding it out to me. “If there’s anything I know about women, which is not much, it’s that once they go off, you have to let them do their thing. They’ll either come back around or they won’t.”
“And that is why you don’t have a girlfriend,” I mutter, shaking my head and bringing the cup to my lips. I take a long sip of the bitter coffee, the wheels in my head turning. I can fix damn near anything. Liz is just a complicated situation because we’re not only hiding, but her father could show up anytime.