Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 65335 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 327(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 218(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65335 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 327(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 218(@300wpm)
“Oh wow. Where did they get her?”
“Shelter.” Lennox’s eyes sweep over me. “If I don’t give you a glass of something, I’m never going to hear the end of it.” He turns and lumbers off to the kitchen, and holy shit, was that supposed to be sexy? Because it was.
No, that was definitely begrudging. He’s not happy about this. And me? I guess I kind of owe Ayana one. Big time. This was all her. I can see it. She’s doing me a solid. Because she knows I didn’t pass my test. Maybe Lennox isn’t a lucky charm, but it can’t hurt that we’re in the same room together again, can it?
Lennox walks back in and—gulp—he has two glasses of wine. They’re not full, though. Just a bit of wine. A few fingers of dark red wine. He sets them down on the coffee table in the living room next to a screen that I know is connected to the baby monitor.
“Thank goodness I didn’t wake Maya up.” I feel weird about walking in and taking a seat on the other end of the couch, but I do it anyway. By weird, I mean strangely thrilled and tingly all over. I reach for the wine. That’s what I need. A bit of wine to brace me.
Lennox smiles devilishly. “This is a special bottle. Found it in the wine chiller. It’s expensive, and Ransom told me not to touch it before he left.”
“Hmm, I see. It makes sense that we’re drinking it then.”
He shrugs. “All brothers are the same. Assholes who love each other.”
Missy Pickle Poo—my god, I love her name—races through the house. She darts over the love seat and launches herself at the curtains to the side of the blinds. They’re made of that sheer, satiny fabric, and she goes sliding down comically, leaving not-so-funny big, gaping tears in her wake.
“Shit.” I nod at the kitten.
“She’s a destruction machine, that’s for sure.”
“Shouldn’t we stop her?”
Lennox raises a brow. “Yeah. Right. Good luck with that.”
“I feel so sorry for Ayana’s décor.”
Said destruction machine, I mean kitten, goes racing across the living room again, a tiny ball of terror, her legs pumping. She leaps onto the back of the big plush cuddle chair this time and goes airborne. She aims for the living room light fixture, which is a modern and square dangly chandelier-looking thing, misses by a mile, thankfully, then lands, tucks, rolls, and goes flying out of the room, no doubt off to hone her other ninja cat skills.
I grasp the glass of wine and let the chilled red slide down my throat. It’s not dry or sweet, just somewhere perfectly in between. I don’t think red is supposed to be chilled, but I like that this one is since I’ve always stuck it in the fridge. I thought I was alone in that.
“Explain the piano thing to me.”
I nearly spit out the sip of wine, which would ruin the tan rug under my feet. I’m also wearing a yellow maxi dress, and wine wouldn’t be a good look for it, so I’m glad I swallow and just choke-gag for a few seconds instead.
“You don’t really want to hear it.”
Lennox’s sandy brow quirks up. “I do.”
I struggle with that for a while. No, I’m struggling with myself, truth be told. But then, I open my mouth, and sounds happen. Articulate sounds. “I…it was…there was this restaurant.” I really don’t like talking about this. The near brush with death was so awful that it sucks having to think about it. Normally, I would shrug and say something token, but Lennox isn’t the kind of person who deserves something uninspired. His calm and steady expression makes me want to be calm and steady enough to tell him the truth. “They…uh, they had a patio. A rooftop bar up there. Apparently, they wanted a piano so they could have live music. They hired a moving company to get this pink piano—one of those upright ones—up there, but it wouldn’t fit through the stairs going up, I guess, so they had to use some kind of a device with pulleys. I don’t really know what happened, but I guess it failed, and the piano came crashing down, and we just happened to be walking past the place when it happened. What are the odds? Death by piano. Yeah, that’s totally not a thing. Unless you’re me. Or someone who gets to close to me.”
“You should have sued.”
“For what? Ayana only found out after the fact because it was on some online news site.”
“For trauma. For near death and dismemberment.”
“Well, it was actually my ex who nearly got piano pancaked, not me.”
“Still. Could have sued them for trauma.”
I sigh my usual gusty sigh. “I think what happened to them was bad enough.”
Lennox rolls his eyes. “Not nearly.”