Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
“Are we finished here?” Jean asked.
“I’m still eating,” Laila said, pushing her last spoonful of custard in circles.
“The madman,” Cat guessed, counting off on her fingers. “The big cheese. The don Corleone. The big man in charge. The boss. The ass—”
“Enough,” Jean tried.
“—hole who ruined your life. The master.” And it was clear she intended to keep going, except Jean flinched. He was quick to try and hide it, getting up from the table to put space between them, but Cat stared at him, aghast. “You aren’t serious. I wasn’t being serious. What kind of 80s B-film horror shtick—”
“Keys?” Jeremy asked. “I’ll help him get his bags to the car.”
“You can’t keep covering for him,” Cat protested.
Jeremy gave her his best and brightest smile and said, “We are not having this conversation in the middle of the food court at the mall, Catalina.”
Laila used her free hand to dig her keys out of her purse. Jean and Jeremy split the bags between them. Later Jeremy would be dismayed at how few there were. Today his thoughts were a churning mess. He led Jean around crowded tables, neatly cutting through the lines leading out from each restaurant. They’d parked down near the salon, but the exit at the food court would still get them where they needed to be. Jeremy couldn’t remember which row they’d parked on, but he clicked her fob and followed the honking to Laila’s car.
Jean’s bags fit in the trunk easily enough. Jeremy slammed it closed and turned back toward Jean, but he forgot whatever he was going to say when Jean caught his chin in a bruising grip.
“You can ask about the Ravens,” Jean said, in a low and awful voice. “You can ask about Edgar Allan if you have nothing better to do with your time or curiosity. But do not ask me about Riko or the master. I will not talk about them, not with you or them or anyone. Do you understand?”
Hearing him say the master so easily now that Cat had figured it out sent a chill down Jeremy’s spine, but he kept his expression calm as he said, “For the record, he sounds like a megalomaniac. You do know that, right?”
“Don’t,” Jean warned him. “Just don’t.”
Jeremy calculated his odds of getting anything else out of Jean today to be dismally low, so he said, “Okay. No questions about Riko or your—head coach.” Jean reacted to that pointed barb with a fierce scowl, but he let go of Jeremy and stepped back out of reach. Jeremy let him retreat to a safe distance before adding, “For now.”
Jean muttered rudely under his breath as he went to get in the back seat, and Jeremy sat on the trunk as he waited for Cat and Laila to catch up to them.
CHAPTER TEN
Jean
It turned out life was excessively complicated when there wasn’t a staff to handle the minutiae of day-to-day existence.
Jean’s first week in California fell into a loose pattern. Monday afternoons Laila and Cat gave the apartment a deep clean, prefaced by a lecture to Jean about which chemicals he was not to mix under any circumstance. Thursdays were meal prep days, supposedly to better accommodate game nights and weekend trips during the school year. Jean learned how to sort and wash laundry from Laila and got to know the local grocery store forwards and backwards from going with Cat.
Every morning they walked to the fitness center on campus. Jean couldn’t be trusted to catch the weights should the need arise, so Laila and Cat spotted each other while he did stretches and walked on one of the treadmills.
Afternoons were filled with whatever the women were in the mood for that day, be it wandering downtown, shopping, or combing through estate sales. Laila dragged them to the library once, where Jean was fairly sure she scanned every single title on the shelf, and Cat took them sightseeing around the city and neighboring areas. On one sunny day Cat went out for a long ride on her motorcycle, leaving Laila and Jean behind for a blessedly quiet afternoon at the house.
Jean went where they took him because it was better than being left in the house alone, answered their least intrusive questions, and tried—failed—to not be completely overwhelmed by just how big Los Angeles was. It was as fascinating as it was horrible, and by the time they finally made it back to the safety of the house each evening his nerves felt worn raw. Helping Cat cook started to become a quiet source of comfort, a way of slowing down and letting the day’s stresses slip away.
Jeremy made it over for dinner every night that week, apparently uninvited from the family table over the state of his hair. He laughed it off when he explained it, but Jean saw the shadows in his eyes and the dark look Cat and Laila exchanged as soon as Jeremy turned his back. It wasn’t Jean’s place to ask, at least until it interfered with their performance on the court, so he quietly tucked the knowledge aside for later.