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)
“Because it doesn’t cut me up too much, the likes of Tammy dumping me, but I start something with the likes of you and you get the urge to move on, then do it, where do you think that’ll leave me?”
“Have you thought about the fact that I might not get that urge?” she asked.
“They move on, Lottie. They all move on.”
“I’m not them.”
“You can do better than me and both of us know it.”
They did.
They both did.
And he knew she did when she dropped her head, took her hand from him and stepped away.
Now that…
That cut him up.
Until she tilted her head back and speared him with her gaze.
“What’s better than you, Mo?” she snapped.
“More money. Better lookin’. Trips to Tiffany’s.”
“You think I give one real shit about all that?”
Mo fully clicked into a conversation he thought he’d already been fully clicked into and he did that by realizing somewhere along the line he’d made her angry.
Very angry.
“Lo—” he began.
“First,” she bit off, “you’re hot. Not a little hot, a lot. You might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but neither am I or anyone else. But trust me, Mo, I wanted to climb you like a tree the first time I laid eyes on you and Tammy would have gotten down on her knees to beg you to have her back. And that has a lot to do with you just being you, but the kind of woman she is, it also has to do with you looking the way you do and also the fact it’s pretty clear by her behavior you know how to use your cock.”
He’d had no complaints on that, as far as he knew, but he was not going to share that with Lottie.
Even if he was, he wouldn’t get the shot because she kept going.
“So you’re hot, and that’s my call to make, you can’t make it, so I don’t wanna hear another word about it,” she clipped. “Second, my dad promised us everything from trips to the Riviera to castles in the sky. He didn’t deliver on one single promise he made, but more, he wasn’t even enough of a man to fight the urge to hit a table in order to see to his woman and his girls. You’re man enough to fight the urge to fuck me in order to make me safe. What else would I get if you let me have the rest? I don’t know, you do, and I want a shot at that.”
“Lottie—”
“And I don’t want Tiffany’s, Mo. If I did, I’d earn the money to buy something there. I doubt you’re on food stamps working for Hawk, but I also make a good living and if a woman’s about the living a man can earn, she’s not much of a woman. I need a man with ambition and drive and a belief in what he’s doing. I don’t need a man to drive me to Tiffany’s. I got my own damned car.”
“Baby—” he whispered, with all she said, unable to stop that word from leaking out of his mouth.
But that was all he got out.
“I don’t know what those bitches did to you, since my guess is Tammy wasn’t the only one. And I don’t know what happened to you in Afghanistan. I don’t even really know you. All I know, and I know it good, Mo, is that I wanna find out.”
“This isn’t smart,” he said gently.
“Now? Or ever?” she demanded to know.
“Now.”
And possibly ever.
But he wasn’t going to get into that with her right then.
“Call Hawk and tell him to find this guy, Mo.”
“They’re workin’ on it.”
“Tell them to work faster.”
He said nothing because all his attention was set on stopping himself from smiling.
Christ, she really was something.
“Do you have a problem with me stripping?” she asked.
Mo now had no trouble not smiling.
“I don’t like men watching you take your clothes off,” he told her honestly.
“This is an issue because that’s what I do to pay the bills and I like doing it.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Can you get over it?”
He didn’t know how he’d feel if he wasn’t there every night, watching the crowd watching her take her clothes off.
Maybe.
But doubtfully.
He gave her more honesty.
“It’s an issue, Lottie.”
“I’m not getting any younger,” she announced.
Outside his time in the Army and on Hawk’s crew, most his life he’d spent with women.
So on that, he kept his mouth shut.
“And I want kids,” she went on.
He kept his mouth shut on that one too, even if he knew it already with how she was with her nephews, and he liked it a lot.
“Do you want kids?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“How many?”
“Two or three.”
“I’m not getting any younger, Mo.”
Well, hell.
Now he was fighting smiling again.
“You aren’t either,” she pointed out.
“Right,” he murmured.
“We’ll work it out,” she declared.
He drew an audible breath into his nostrils.