Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Dante’s face smushed up and he told his brother, “No one’s cooler than Uncle Luke.”
“Muchacho,” Alex threw a hand Mo’s way, “look at him.”
Dante looked at Mo.
His face conceded the point, but his mouth didn’t.
Mo nearly burst out laughing.
He was helped in controlling this when the youngest one slapped him on the thigh.
Mo looked down at the kid. “I wanna be a ’mando!”
“Give it time, bub,” he said.
“Oh my God, someone kill me,” Jet begged. “Last week, Carissa was over, Joker showed to take her home, and Cesar wanted to be a biker.”
“Well…I mean, he is Joker,” Lottie muttered while obsessively lining up cans of La Croix in her fridge.
“I’m gonna be just like Uncle Luke,” Dante declared stubbornly.
“I’m gonna be like Uncle Lee, except the commando kind, ’cause Auntie Indy is fine, and I want me a hot babe just like her,” Alex announced.
“I love Annie Sadie!” Cesar shrieked.
“Nobody is killing me,” Jet pointed out.
“What are you doing here?” Lottie asked her sister.
Dante shoved a bunch of bananas in Mo’s gut.
Mo took the cue and the bananas and put them in Lottie’s fruit bowl.
“One, to ascertain I still have a living, breathing sister,” Jet answered.
Mo had to hand it to her, Lottie didn’t even cut a glance his direction on that.
“And two, to tell you Mom and Tex want us over for dinner next Sunday,” Jet finished. “The whole family.”
Jet’s attention came to him.
“Cool. Mo and I’ll be there,” Lottie shared.
His eyes went to her and his hands itched with the urge to toss her over his shoulder, carry her upstairs and tan her tight ass.
“You’re…uh, there?” Jet asked quietly.
“You can talk in front of Mo. We’re tight,” Lottie told her.
That bought her five more swats.
“Oooooh…kay,” Jet whispered, giving her sister big eyes.
Lottie just smiled at her.
Jet’s eyes narrowed, and she started to look pissed.
Ah, hell.
“Dude, how do you become a commando?” Alex asked him before Jet could get into it with her sister about how she suddenly had a boyfriend that Jet had never heard about who Lottie was tight enough with, he was coming to dinner with the family.
“This dude is Uncle Mo,” Lottie corrected.
Now he was “Uncle Mo.”
And now he wanted someone to kill him.
“Righteous,” Alex said to his aunt, then back to Mo. “Uncle Mo, how do you become a commando?”
He opened his mouth to tell the kid he wasn’t a commando.
Though, with some of the missions Hawk took, he absolutely was.
But Lottie got there before him.
“He was in the Army.”
“Righteous!” Alex yelled. “Just like Uncle Lee!” His gaze dipped to Mo’s weapon. “Why do you carry a gun?”
“I’m on duty,” Mo told him.
“Cooooooool,” he breathed. He recovered from that awesomeness and asked, “Do you know how to put on camo makeup?”
“Yeah,” Mo said.
“Do you know how to use a rocket launcher?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you flown in a helicopter?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you jumped out of a plane?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you been to Afghanistan?”
Mo’s body grew tight and so did his repeat of, “Yeah.”
He felt Lottie and Jet’s attention.
Alex opened his mouth again but didn’t get anything out before Lottie said softly, “Alex, honey, find the ice cream and get your brothers and yourself a bar. ’Kay?”
“Sure, Auntie Lottie,” Alex said, then started digging through the remaining canvas bags.
Mo avoided her eyes as he bent and picked up the spent bags, folding them in half, like Lottie kept them, and stacking them on the counter.
He heard ripping ice cream bar plastic and felt Jet move his way. He turned his attention to her and saw she was carrying noodles, Tostitos and boxes of granola.
When she got close, she said low, “Thank you for your service, Mo.”
She meant it.
They all meant it, but she thought he was involved with her sister so it hit closer to home, thus she meant it.
“Not a problem,” he muttered as she passed him to get to the pantry.
He couldn’t avoid Lottie anymore, not with strength of warmth coming from her direction, so he shifted his gaze to hers.
Yeah, that was why he did it right there. That look on her face.
He’d known he was going to be a man who was going to be a soldier for a long time before he became one. That was about a lot of things that were too numerous to boil down to just that look on Lottie’s face. It included his mother and his sisters and the sense of duty and loyalty he had to them since they had no other man in their life. They were not wallflowers or doormats. Not one of them. It didn’t matter. It was the man he was from early on that dictated the man he was going to be.
But that look on Lottie’s face and her wrestling without hesitation with her nephews on her front lawn and her throwdown with a woman she identified as possible competition to claim him morphing into a throwdown to avenge him were why he got in.