Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 55769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
Lavonne was small, but wiry, and Eddie figured when she was riled, she was like a rabid chihuahua that could take down a pit bull.
He pinned Jet with his eyes.
“Cariño?” he called.
She came to him, put her hand on his chest and looked up in his eyes.
On her way, he would have liked to appreciate the snug sweater she wore, the tight jeans and the high-heeled boots that did great things to a naturally perfect ass. Not to mention, she had seen Trixie at her salon that day, so her hair was freshly highlighted and styled, with that sexy-as-all-fuck sweep of bangs across her eyes that was now even sexier.
The look she wore on her face, he didn’t take the time to appreciate any of it.
“Talk to me,” he demanded.
“Okay. See, Mom and Lottie were just over to visit Lavonne, you know, girl chat and—”
“Jet,” he grunted in order to get her to focus.
“So annnnnyyyywaaaaay…” she trailed off but did it turning to give big eyes to her father.
Eddie’s attention cut to Ray.
“Ray?” he bit off.
Ray put up both hands. “Don’t look at me.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Tex boomed, then using a partially-gnawed-on chicken wing, he pointed at Lavonne. “She…” He swung the wing to Bear, “Wants him out. He…” He whirled the wing in the air. “Won’t leave. I don’t know what the big deal is and why Jet had to call in the fuzz.”
Eddie also didn’t have the time to react to Tex using the term “the fuzz.”
He’d come home from work, expecting to eat dinner with his woman, watch TV with her, fuck her, then sleep beside her.
Instead, he got a purple bathroom and a callout to Chernobyl house.
He looked down at Jet and raised his brows.
“I think she’s worried about this,” Lavonne put in at that juncture.
Eddie’s gaze went to her, and his body went solid, because she was squinting through the smoke drifting up from the cigarette between her lips and brandishing a long-barrel .44 Magnum revolver.
“Yeah,” Jet whispered. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
Eddie’s voice was such a quick lash, Lavonne jumped when he ordered, “Put that down.”
She squinted harder at Eddie, deciding something, then she made the wrong decision.
“You get his lazy ass outta my house, I’ll put this down.”
He heard the door open behind him but didn’t turn to it, knowing it was Lee, since he called him on his way over. Instead, he stalked across the room and wrenched the weapon from the woman’s hand.
“Hey!” she shouted, the cigarette hovering on her lower lip, but either by a miracle or through practice, it held.
“What’s goin’ on?” he heard Lee ask behind him.
“This isn’t a toy,” Eddie snarled at Lavonne.
She plucked the smoke out of her mouth and retorted, “I know it’s not a toy. I also know I want his good-for-nothin’ ass out of my house, and he ain’t goin’.”
“It’s my house too!” Bear yelled.
Lavonne leaned to the side to see around Eddie and asked her husband, “Oh yeah? When’s the last time you put money in the bank to pay the mortgage? Hunh? When’s the last time you even sat your lazy ass down to write out the check to pay the mortgage? Hunh?”
Bear flung an arm toward Ray. “I gotta look after my boy here.”
Ray—who’d had a clean bill of health delivered to him at his last doctor’s visit, but who had been putting a fair amount of effort into getting on with his life for weeks, doing this like he was a man on a mission, something Eddie suspected happened when someone stabbed you repeatedly, shot you and threw you from a moving vehicle so your daughter could deal with the literal bloody mess you’d made of your life—took a step back, put his hands up again and said, “I’m not in this.”
“No, you’re not,” Lavonne agreed. “’Cause you’re bein’ good. Goin’ to meetin’s. Got yourself a job. Givin’ me money I didn’t even ask for to cover that food I put in your belly and that bed you sleep in. Gettin’ your shit together. You know who’s not gettin’ their shit together?” She poked her finger at Bear but turned accusing eyes to Eddie. “It packs a bigger punch when I do that with my .44.”
“God, I missed home,” Lottie remarked fondly, and when Eddie glanced at her, he saw she said it while stroking the brush on a nail and not looking up from her task. “So glad to be back.”
“And we sure are glad to have you back, hon,” Lavonne said fondly.
Fuck him.
Eddie turned his attention to Jet.
She bit her lip and shrugged her shoulders.
“Eddie already disarmed her, took the fun out of it, if you ask me,” Tex put in, aiming this at Lee. “So you’re overkill.”
Lee locked eyes with Eddie, and Eddie knew his friend felt his pain.