Total pages in book: 206
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
“Surprise me,” I told her.
She chewed her lip shyly. “Well, what do you like?”
“I see plenty that I like. What do you like?” I asked, widening my eyes at her and then trailed my gaze from her eyes to her mouth, down to her hips, and then back up. I did this slowly, being very obvious that I was checking her out.
“Hmm.” She smiled at me and eyed me up and down, too. “Hungry or thirsty?”
Mm.
“Hungry,” I said.
“We don’t have much for food, really. Popcorn, nachos, ice cream?” she suggested.
“What flavor?” I asked her.
“There’s a list up there.” She motioned behind herself.
“What’s your favorite flavor?” I asked.
“Call me weird but I really just love plain old vanilla.” She shrugged.
I almost laughed at her. My face split into a grin. I bet she did. I bet vanilla was all she’d been exposed to so far.
“You are weird,” I said.
She wrinkled her nose at me and fuck, but it was adorable.
“Vanilla, when there are so many flavors to choose from?” I drummed my fingertips on the counter, staring into the ice cream freezer, “Bah, vanilla sounds like a good start.” I sat on a stool.
“One scoop or two?” she asked, flushing even pinker. I wondered if she picked up on the double entendre.
“Two.” I was eyeing her luscious round tits.
“Cup or cone?” she asked.
“Cone.” I raised a brow.
“Sugar cone?”
“Oh yeah,” I said low and gave her another grin.
She gulped, fumbled, and got the ice cream for me. Then she put a cherry right in the middle of the top scoop. A fucking cherry. I could’ve come in my pants right then and there.
“That’s three bucks,” she said, holding it out to me with both hands demurely, but something flirty in those eyes. Gorgeous eyes. Jade green, long and thick black lashes.
Oh, it’d be a lot more than three bucks. I could buck all fucking night if I had her in my bed.
I put a twenty in her hand, then grabbed her wrist for a second before she could turn to the cash register. I told her to keep the change and then wiggled the tip of my tongue against the cherry and winked at her before letting go of her wrist. Then, I walked out.
I used the tip of my tongue to scoop the cherry into my mouth and dropped the cone in the trash bin outside the shop and glanced in the window. She was staring at me, mouth open. After a few flicks of the tongue behind my teeth I pulled out the stem and showed her that it was now knotted and then put it between my teeth, winked, and got into my car and drove directly to my father’s office, tonguing that stem while I drove.
I didn’t knock; I strolled right in, interrupting a phone call and ignoring the four other people sitting there with him at a conference table, one of them my brother.
Pop looked up at me and put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.
“Tia O’Connor? Make it happen,” I told him, dropping the knotted cherry stem into the trash can beside the table.
“On it,” he answered with a huge smile and then lifted his chin at Dario, my brother. Dare got up and cracked his knuckles.
“Let’s go,” Dare said to Bruce, Gus, and Earl, who were all sitting there with him.
Later that night, Dare called me and told me he’d visited Greg O’Connor and told him the score. He walked in and told him Tom Ferrano was calling in his debt. If he didn’t have cash on the spot he was to hand over his daughter Tia, that Tia would be presented to Thomas Ferrano Jr. as potential marriage material and that if marriage didn’t happen she’d remain Ferrano property in order to clear his debt. Dario had brought muscle with him, expecting resistance even though Pop told him not to bother.
O’Connor hadn’t even seemed all that surprised, according to Dare. Said he knew that my father wasn’t done with him yet and had a feeling this day would come. He said my father had warned a few weeks prior that Tia might be the payback for what’d happened back in the day, whenever and whatever that was.
O’Connor told my brother it was almost a relief that the day had come, and that Tom had chosen to handle things this way because he’d been carrying around the worry for years. What the fuck? Piece of shit. Whatever the beef was between him and my pop, he wasn’t gonna even try to barter or fight for his daughter? What a sorry excuse for a father, for a man.
Of course, she was already mine in my head, so there was nothing he could do even if he had the money to pay the debt, but that the man wasn’t even trying? He’d get zero respect from me.