Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72325 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Maybe it was wrong. Maybe it was foolish, but I felt like I could trust him. Not because I knew him, but because they did.
He held the door open for me and I led him down the hall and up the stairs. When he was standing in the entryway of my tiny apartment, I took a step back. “Vodka on the rocks? Do I remember that right?” I knew he liked Tequila more, but I didn’t have any, plus, he’d been known to overindulge on it.
“Sounds good.” While I fixed it, he sat down on my couch, his long legs sprawled out in front of him.
“So, what the hell happened back there, Maggie? It must have been pretty scary.”
“Give me a chance to pour the drinks, would ya?” I said without thinking.
He laughed. “Fair enough. But no tip for you.”
I had to grin at that. It had been a weird night and I wasn’t feeling my usual self.
I went back to the living room, holding a tray with two glasses and a bottle of vodka on it. My space wasn’t large enough to have a coffee table, so I kicked the round ottoman over to the couch and set the tray down on that.
“Thanks,” he said, picking up the glass. Without uttering a word, he downed more than half of his drink. He patted the sofa next to him, and obediently, I sat down. Jeesh, what was up with me tonight? But Slater was right. It had been one hell of a week.
“To get back to your question…” I paused enough to take a sip of vodka. “I was in the kitchen when we heard the explosion. The windows rattled and I thought it was an earthquake at first. But then someone said there was a car on fire. The cops were there within minutes.”
“That’s unusual.”
I gave a quick laugh. “Which part?”
“All of it,” he admitted. “But especially the part about the cops. They usually don’t show up that quickly.”
“If they even show up at all,” I agreed.
Slater crossed his leg, resting his ankle on his opposite knee. “When I saw how close the car was to your bar, I worried about you.”
His words—plus the vodka—warmed me. “I worried about you, too. You and Julian and Rocco.”
His gaze sharpened. “Really? Why?”
“Because you guys always seem to be around when trouble happens.”
He leaned forward to pour himself more vodka. “I can’t deny that.”
“I wish it weren’t like that,” I said with a sigh.
Slater rested his long arm on the back of the couch, just inches from my shoulder. “Yeah, you probably should stay away from us.”
“I mean, I wish it weren’t like that for you guys.”
He looked away for a long moment before speaking. “This is just what life’s like for us.”
I reached up and touched his arm, getting his attention. “But don’t you wish it could be different?”
I thought he was going to deny it, to stick with his fatalistic viewpoint. But to my surprise, he said, “Yeah, I do.”
“Me, too.”
His gaze was curious. “What would you change about your life?”
I gave a small laugh, gesturing around my tiny apartment. The paint on the walls was peeling. You could walk from the bed to the stove in under ten seconds. And it didn’t even have a real closet. “Everything.”
“Come on, give me some details.”
Several answers flicked through my thoughts before I settled on one. “I wanted to go to law school.”
“Really?” He cocked an eye at me. “I don’t see you as the cutthroat type, though Rock told me you know how to handle a shotgun.”
“Lawyers can help people, too, you know.”
He gave a rueful shake of his head. “That hasn’t been my experience.”
Yeah, probably not. I still didn’t know much about him—or any of them—but it was clear they hadn’t had an easy life.
“My mom and I used to watch legal dramas on TV. I know they weren’t very realistic, but, well, that’s what I wanted to be.”
Slater studied me. “You’ve got the brains for it.”
For some reason, a denial rose to my lips. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. So what happened?”
“No money. I took a few semesters of college and then I had to drop out.”
“Some people don’t even get that much,” Slater said, but he didn’t mean it meanly. He and his buddies hadn’t even had that much of an opportunity.
“I know. But my mom—she was so proud when she told me about the money she’d saved up. No matter how bad things got, she took a little out of each paycheck and stashed it away.”
“Sounds like a good mom. Is she still—?”
“No. Cancer.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
I nodded, but my mind was on a tangent. “I’m just glad she never knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That the money wasn’t enough. That I’d be tending bar. That my life would be like this.”