Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 82715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
She patted my leg consolingly as I scowled.
It was shit like that all the time. I could’ve carried the cooler to the truck. Did she ask me? Nope. She just carried smaller cups of ice from the kitchen to the driveway over and over, making it ten times harder than it needed to be because she refused to ask for help.
“Bags of ice are only two dollars,” I reminded her. She shrugged.
“Gramps?” Rhett asked suddenly, leaning forward as far as he could to look out the back window.
“Yeah, man, I told you Gramps will be there, too.”
“Like Gramps.”
“That’s because he gives you candy,” Emilia teased, tickling him.
“I like candy.”
“Really,” I replied dryly. “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“Guess that.”
“I’m looking forward to this,” Emilia said happily as she leaned against my shoulder. “And I’m glad we took the truck.”
“We should’ve sent Rhett to my mom’s and we could’ve taken the bike,” I said with a wink, making her grin. After a particularly… bendy date night, Emilia had a new appreciation for my Harley.
“Do you think that Rumi will bring a date?” she asked, sitting up in her seat.
“You need to stay out of that,” I warned.
Emilia had easily found her place in the extended Aces family, and she hung out with Olive and Nova pretty often which was great. What wasn’t great was the fact that she had it in her head that Nova was in love with my little brother and had decided that it was her responsibility to protect the poor girl from Rumi’s manwhoring.
“You saw her face,” she shot back fiercely. “When he brought that girl over.”
“She was nice,” I mused. “What was her name? Mandy? Margo? Something with an M.”
“Her name was Candace,” Emilia said, looking at me like I was an idiot.
“I can’t keep ’em straight,” I muttered, shrugging as I rolled down my window at the club’s gate.
“My man Rhett in there?” Gray asked, coming up to the window.
“Gray!” Rhett squealed.
“What the hell are you doin’ on the gate?” I asked with a laugh.
“Prospects are shittin’ their guts out,” he replied with a scoff. “I told ’em I’d watch it for an hour while people were gettin’ here, so no one had to deal with that.”
“Are they sick?” Emilia asked worriedly.
“More like they ate some expired ass seafood and chased it with Ouzo,” Gray said flatly. He looked at his watch. “They better get their nasty asses up here in the next fifteen, or I’m gonna bust some heads.”
“Have fun with that,” I said as he walked backward to open the gate.
“I’ll see you up there.”
“He’s so nice,” Emilia said, glancing at Gray out the back window. “Why doesn’t he have a girlfriend?”
“I haven’t asked,” I replied dryly. “Why, you lookin’?”
“Puhlease.” She elbowed me in the side.
“Not everyone settles down when they’re kids,” I pointed out as I found a place to park.
“I guess we just got lucky.” She unbuckled her seat belt and leaned up to kiss my cheek.
“I guess so.”
“Gram!” Rhett yelled, kicking his feet and pointing.
“Give me a sec, bud,” I said, catching a glimpse of Gram out the window. “I’ll get you out.”
The party was in full swing as I carried the cooler over to the picnic tables, and it reminded me of that first one I’d brought Emilia and Rhett to. I had a feeling if I left her now, she’d wave me off and tell me she’d see me at home.
“I like it better when the kids are here,” Emilia said to me quietly as a group of them went running by, squirt guns in their hands.
“You had a pretty good time when they weren’t,” I reminded her. I’d never forget Emilia drunkenly trying to teach the women to do a backbend. We were lucky we hadn’t had to take anyone to the hospital.
“Yeah, yeah.” She strode away to a group of women who were walking toward the building and I dropped the cooler off on one of the tables and took a seat beside it to watch my gram teach Rhett how to blow a bubble.
She’d blow some, and he’d giggle and chase them around. Then he’d try to blow one and would spray the soapy water everywhere, get frustrated, and she’d blow another batch of them to distract him. It worked every time. I laughed.
“Hey, kid,” my uncle Will said, slapping me on the back as he sat down on the table next to me. “How goes it?”
“All good.”
“Yeah? That’s good. Settlin’ in?”
“Like she never left.”
Uncle Will nodded. “No nightmares?”
I glanced at him in surprise. “How’d you know that?”
Uncle Will scoffed. “Swear to Christ, nightmares might be the thing all these women have most in common.”
“Seriously?”
“Someone broke into your house, man,” he said, watching Rhett and Gram. “Ended fine. No one was hurt. Still leaves a mark.”
“Sometimes I gotta get out of bed and check the entire house before she can fall back asleep.”