Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Hutch smiled up at his wife. “With lots of marshmallows.”
“I can help,” MaeBe began.
Boomer waved her off. “We’ve got it. You get to pack up. I hate packing up. I always feel like a giant trying to get those tiny pieces in the baggies.”
Hutch was an organized board gamer. His cards were all in plastic sleeves, and there were different bags for the pieces. “Will do. And I will take a hot tea. I think there’s some green tea in there.”
“Same for me.” Taylor started to gather the cards. “How about we wait for the guys to be done and then we could play some Monikers? It’s my favorite.”
Monikers was a party game and one MaeBe usually was slightly drunk for, but she could compromise. She loved watching Kyle try to figure out how to act out the game’s odd prompts. She should make up a deck of McKay-Taggart prompts. Over the last couple of days she could come up with a few that would be fun to work out. Alex’s Malodourous Murder Mobile. Kyle’s Swollen Ball Sac. She could easily act that one out.
“So are you two okay?” Taylor kept her voice down but there was music playing and the conference table was big enough that she wasn’t worried Kyle would hear them.
He had his head down, studying the board. He’d been reluctant at first, but his competitive nature had taken over and now he was incredibly serious about games.
He’d bent so much for her. Shouldn’t his actions count for something?
“I don’t know.” She’d had a great talk with Taylor this morning, but they’d stuck to work-related topics. Taylor had talked about her previous work with the Agency and how she’d specialized in building online personas so real, one of them had been recruited by The Consortium. But how deep did she want to get with her new friend? “I’m still processing the fact that he catfished me for months.”
Taylor grimaced. “Yeah. That was actually pretty pathetic. He spent all his time trying to make sure he could be ready to go online. He planned his whole day around it. And if you canceled on him… That boy can get morose.”
She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be flattered by that. “He could have called.”
“I think in some ways he was sure he wasn’t going to be able to come home. I didn’t talk to him much about it, but I would bet he thought he was doing the right thing by you,” Taylor said quietly. “I was kind of a victim of Julia’s wrath, too, though I didn’t meet her until over a year later. I spent some time with Drake shortly after they discovered what Julia had been doing. We got stuck in a safe house together.” A smile came over her face, her short auburn hair brushing along her jaw. “It was not long before we decided to give a relationship a try. We made all these plans and roughly three minutes after we slept together the first time the Agency hauled me away because they thought my father was a double agent and Drake did nothing.”
That was hard to believe because Drake seemed to never take his eyes off his girlfriend. She’d known Drake for a while, and she would never have guessed he would be such a huge fan of holding hands. “Nothing?”
Taylor shrugged. “There was a lot of talk about how he’d planned to bust me out eventually, but I’m not sure how serious he was about that. I decided a long time ago that it doesn’t matter. I understand why he reacted the way he did. His sister had turned out to be the bad guy. It was a world-changing thing for him. He’d always known she could be a bit ruthless, but the idea that she was completely amoral was a shock. Was it that surprising that I might be, too?”
That hadn’t been their problem. “Kyle never thought I was a bad guy.”
“No. He thought you were the best part of him, and he had to protect you.” Taylor sat back, her well-manicured hand toying with the beer bottle in front of her. “I spent time with him, and you have no idea how he can talk about you. You are the sun in his sky, but it’s not the kind of thing where he doesn’t get you’re not perfect. Some guys can put a woman on a pedestal and inevitably she’ll fall off and hard. Kyle spent lots of time talking about how stubborn you can be. There was a lot of talk of getting yourself stabbed.”
MaeBe rolled her eyes. “I certainly did not.”
Taylor shrugged. “You would not know it from Kyle. I’m just saying he knows your imperfections and is crazy about you anyway. Even when he thought he could be bad for you, he made you the center of his world.”