Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
“Hey!” he snapped.
“Snoozers are losers,” she said before making a show of biting into it, not taking her eyes from her brother.
“No wonder Tyler didn’t want to come to Denver with you for Thanksgiving,” Richie verbally slapped back.
“Oh, Lord,” Miss Regina called to the ceiling.
Jacqueline swallowed her bite of donut and sniped, “My man is tight with his family.”
“He’d reach for a turkey leg, and you’d gnaw off the poor brother’s arm,” Richie returned.
She smiled sweetly, and with experience from the last two days, I knew Richie was in for it.
“At least he doesn’t break up with me before every holiday because I’m too chickenshit to commit, even after six years together.” She lifted her hand and wriggled the big diamond on it in his face. Unexpectedly, her expression turned horrified, and she whirled on Darius and me. “I’m sorry. No offense. You all had extenuating circumstances.”
“No offense taken,” I told her.
“Kimberly understands a man needs to be ready,” Richie huffed.
Jacqueline whirled back to him. “Kimberly right now is checking out Chester because he’s a man who can commit.”
“Yeah, he’s proved that, with two divorces, and the brother’s my age, thirty-two fuckin’ years old.”
“Richard! Language!” Miss Regina shouted.
The front door opened.
“Yoo hoo!” Miss Dorothea called.
“In here, Ma!” Darius yelled.
Gah!
The shouting.
I blew out a breath.
She showed in the doorway, balancing a baking pan in one hand, holding her handbag at her shoulder with her other, and her mother, Grandmoms Beverly, who was up from Phoenix, was at her side.
“Well, look at you. You got donuts. And here, I woke up early and whipped up a batch of my cinnamon rolls.”
Whipped up a batch.
It took three hours to make her cinnamon rolls.
She held them forward and Liam and Jacqueline ran into each other in nabbing them.
But Scrapper, being the scrapper he was, held on.
“I love my life,” I said.
Darius grabbed my hand, and I started to smile at him, but he lifted it in a weird way as he shoved his other hand in his jeans pocket.
He then slid a cushion-cut diamond, surrounded by more diamonds, with even more diamonds embedded in the band, on my ring finger.
And the main diamond was way bigger than Jacqueline’s (she was sweet, and I liked her, but, as Toni would put it…huh).
Miss Dorothea gasped.
So did Miss Regina, Grandmoms Beverly and Jacqueline.
“Well, all right,” Mister Sam crowed.
“And I love my soon-to-be wife,” Darius whispered, staring into my eyes.
Oh well.
Fuck it.
I wasn’t holding these back.
I threw myself in his arm and burst into tears.
* * * *
Two hours later, after a bunch of other calls, and a bunch of other family showed, I called Tod.
“Heya, girlie,” he answered. “What’s shakin’?”
“All systems go,” I replied.
I giggled when I had to take the phone from my ear because he hollered so loud.
* * * *
I walked in the back door, put my coat on the hook, looped my purse and the strap of my attaché on top, then went through the laundry room to the kitchen.
I’d already smelled the fact that someone had lit my evergreen candles.
It smelled like Christmas.
And my kitchen was dripping in it (that was something from the old place we definitely used, my Christmas decorations).
My man was at a cutting board, cutting vegetables. My son was at a tray of yeast rolls, brushing melted butter on the top. Scrapper was where Scrapper was not allowed to be, batting the lid of a water bottle around the island about two feet away from the rolls.
“Son, your cat,” I said.
“He’s so tiny, I can’t see him when he’s on the floor, and I don’t wanna step on him,” Liam replied.
I looked to Darius.
“I don’t want to step on him either.”
These two.
Someone. Kill me.
No one was going to kill me, so I did the next best thing.
I went to the wine and poured.
“Woman, mouth,” Darius ordered.
I went to my man and gave him my mouth.
He didn’t take his time, but he still did it right.
My wine and I moved to a stool and asked them, “Wanna know what happened at work today?”
“Sure,” Liam replied at the same time his dad urged, “Shoot.”
“Jeffrey’s office was cleaned out before anyone got in this morning. Nothing in there. Just his desk and other furniture, which the firm owns.”
“Whoa,” Liam said, turning to the oven to set the temperature for the rolls.
“And Carrie was canned. I guess we have a no-fucking-named-partners policy.” I took a sip of my wine. “I must have missed that when I read our employee handbook.”
Liam looked to Darius, grinning. “Mom said fuck.”
Darius grinned back.
“Boys!” I called. “This is big news.”
“I know. You never say fuck. Or you don’t say it very often,” Liam replied.
Scrapper batted the cap my way.
I caught it, flicked it with my finger, and he scuttled after it, booty up in the air, tail swaying, front legs reached out, paws slapping the stainless steel, head jerking side to side, totally missing the danged thing.