Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 146417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
But she’d missed Beck. It was odd because they hadn’t spent much time together. Between the jet lag and Roman’s nightmares the night before, she hadn’t played Beck’s sub yet. She hadn’t even managed to explore the house and yard. Still, she’d woken up to Beck kissing her forehead and telling her he had to go into work, but he had a bodyguard picking them up. He’d left all the instructions on how to set the alarm. She’d cuddled down with her son and gotten an extra hour and a half of sleep.
Beck was different and the same. He was more thoughtful, and yet that passion they’d had still sparked.
She wasn’t sure what she was doing.
“Solo, welcome to McKay-Taggart.” A tall, gorgeous woman with strawberry blonde hair walked in. Charlotte Taggart held out a hand. “Or do you prefer Kim?”
She kind of liked Solo when she was working. It reminded her to put up her guard. “Solo is fine.” She also liked the fact that only her family and Ariel called her Kim. Beck and Ezra and her uncle used that name. Even Levi called her Solo. “I haven’t come up against another chick named Solo, if you know what I mean.”
“I do,” Charlotte said with a smile. According to what she’d learned only Ian Taggart called her Charlie, and she liked it that way. Kim got the feeling Charlotte understood the need to compartmentalize. Charlotte turned to Jamal. “Any problems?”
Jamal shook his head. “Not at all. I made sure the house was secure before I left. I’ll check in later in case Beck needs to stay late.” He turned to her son. “Roman, it was good to meet you. I think you’ll have a blast in the club. I’ll see you later, little man.”
He gave her son a high five and her a nod and strode away.
“He was definitely military.” Kim had been sizing the man up. “I would bet he was Special Forces. Not ex-intelligence. He’s too open for that.”
“You are correct,” Charlotte replied. “He was a Green Beret. Ian will try to tell you they could have worked together, but only if Jamal had joined up at the age of four. Just go with it. My husband’s having some trouble with moving into his fifties. So I’m going to start your tour as soon as our other friend gets here. There he is.”
Ezra walked into the foyer. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and looked more casual than she’d seen him in years. He immediately dropped to one knee and held out his arms. “Roman, I’ve missed your face.”
Roman ran and threw himself at his uncle. “I missed you, too. I miss Uncle Francis.”
She’d uprooted her baby from everything he’d known.
“Don’t.” Charlotte stood beside her, her voice going low as Roman started to tell his uncle everything that had happened in the days they’d been separated.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t feel guilty about something you couldn’t have controlled,” Charlotte said. “I know that look. I’ve seen it on my own face. Kids are resilient. Love them, give them something to hold onto, and they come out of even the worst situations well. I should know. I survived my father because I had my sister. This is a tiny bump in the road for your son.”
God, she hoped so. “He likes his dad. Beck’s been good to him. Good to us.”
She hadn’t been as good. She’d used Roman as a shield because after that first intimate encounter with Beck, she’d withdrawn. It had been too overwhelming, and they hadn’t even gotten out of their clothes. She’d used jet lag and then Roman needing her to not put herself in that position again.
But tonight she had a decision to make. She’d promised Beck that she would be his sub for a few hours every night, and she couldn’t keep coming up with excuses. The trouble was she knew Beck wouldn’t hold her to the deal. He would protect her and their son and keep his distance if she asked him to.
She didn’t want to ask him to.
“I feel bad that he wasn’t able to finish his school year. He had another couple of weeks,” she replied, still watching her son. “School goes through June in Malta.”
“My girls would go crazy.” Charlotte nodded to a woman who walked through the door after putting her keycard in and then using a thumb scanner. The security seemed very high tech. “They head for a camp for a few weeks in a couple of days, but until then they are terrorizing the office. I mean putting in some work here. They don’t understand why they can’t stay home by themselves. The twins are thirteen and Tasha is fourteen. Honestly, I would let Tash stay. She’s never started a fire or decided to practice her knife throwing skills with my kitchen knives. But Tasha wants to come to work with me. I never got the chance to say thank you for finding her for us. Seriously, she’s a light in our lives.”