Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
“Neither. Just had the luck to be checking it out when I saw your stupid-ass car drive by with you in it.”
Oh my God!
I drove a white Mini-Cooper with black racing stripes.
It was awesome, the deal I swung on it used was even more awesome, though the mileage on it stunk.
Fortunately, my brother-in-law knew everything about cars, so if it ever gave me problems (and, so far, it hadn’t), I knew where to go.
“My car isn’t stupid.”
“There’s only one car more stupid than yours,” he announced.
He didn’t elucidate, so my brows acted against my better judgment, and they lifted in question.
“Sorry, I was wrong,” he stated. “Your car is the stupidest car there is.”
Okay then, minor pining for him that morning cured.
He was a jerk.
“Why are we talking about this?” I asked.
“You get in an accident at high speeds, you’re toast.” He added to that by clicking his teeth and drawing a line across his neck.
“It’s good I’m a safe driver then,” I retorted.
“You need something bigger, with better driver visibility. Taller, sturdier.”
“I’ll be buying an electric car as soon as that expenditure comes up on rotation.”
“And when’s that?”
“Two years, if fortune favors me, three if I’m still saving.”
“That’s a long time to take your life in your hands driving that shit car.”
Such a jerk.
“Can we stop talking about my car?”
He shrugged a single broad shoulder. “Sure.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Same thing you’re doing here, I reckon.”
I took him in top to toe and buried the fact I liked what I saw.
Instead, I noted, “You’re leaning against the door, so I assume some budding entrepreneur won’t soon be arriving to open it.”
“Smoked glass, hard to see in, still,”—he adjusted from his position, turned, shoved the sunglasses up into his hair and cupped the sides of his face as he looked in—“they furnished it, or maybe rented it furnished,” he said to the window. He turned back to me. “But no one has been in there for a long time.”
I approached, shoved my own glasses into my hair and did the cupped-face thing.
Furnished, even art on the walls, but deserted.
I looked back to him. “How do you know no one’s been here for a while?”
He stepped aside, pointed to a mail slot his body had been hiding, and even though the glass was smoked, you could see the small mountain of fliers and junk mail on the floor underneath it.
“They forgot a detail,” he remarked.
They sure did.
“I checked the state’s registry for companies, they aren’t on it,” I informed him.
“Mm-hmm,” he hummed.
“Not on the national one either,” I added.
“Reckon not,” he replied.
I looked to the doors, to him, to the doors and him again. “How did you know to come here? I don’t remember telling you what Christos’s firm’s name was.”
“Got a friend who can get me info, asked him about that Littleton house. He tracked down the owner and got a name on the rental agreement. It isn’t Christos, but looking at Facebook, it is the guy at the laptop in the kitchen last night. And”—he jerked a thumb at the doors—“according to his Facebook page, he works here.”
And there it was, my avenue to find out more about these guys. I hadn’t even thought of searching based on the company.
“So it’s official, it’s a ring of scammers,” I muttered to his T-shirt that stated he was a Def Leppard fan.
“Babe,” he called.
I lifted my gaze to his.
“I asked you a question.”
Was I so deep in the awful thought a swindler ring was preying on the females of Denver, I hadn’t heard him when he was standing only two feet away?
“Sorry. What?”
“What’d I say?”
“I don’t know, I missed it.”
“You did not miss I told you last night to leave this shit alone. And here you are”—he flung a hand my way—“not leaving this shit alone.”
Ugh!
“I’m not sure when my world shifted on its axis and you became the boss of me,” I drawled.
“I didn’t tell you to stand down to be an asshole, I told you to stand down to protect you.”
“I get that,” I returned. “I also was pretty certain no one would be here, so I didn’t think it was dangerous. And if someone was, I could walk on by, and no one would notice. But once I checked the registry, I came here to be sure. And now we have real evidence to go to Bree with.”
“Yeah, and I been thinking about that.”
Him thinking about this situation might mean he’d been thinking about me, and this thought caused another clit tingle.
I reminded myself he was a jerk and inquired, “What have you been thinking?”
“She isn’t listening to you, maybe she’ll listen to me.”
Holy cow.
Why hadn’t I thought of that?
It wasn’t that he was a guy, and it wasn’t that he was the guy he was, in other words, at a glance you knew he was streetwise and had been around the block (though, the truth of it was, when it came to Bree, all of this, including the fact he was male, would be meaningful).