Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
She completed the ensemble with a pair of slippers and an absurdly over-the-top faux fur men’s jacket that hung down almost to her knees and swallowed up her tall, thin frame.
“Got the day off?” I asked, smirking as she glanced over at me, shamelessly letting herself do a thorough once-over of me as she lifted a Twizzler to her lips and took a bite.
“Nice ink. The suit can go,” she told me, shrugging.
“What’s wrong with my suit?” I asked, more offended than I should have been. But the suit was expensive. And I prided myself on my appearance.
“Nothing. I’m just not a suit typa woman,” she told me, shrugging. “Now here is where I might typically say something like… but maybe the suit wouldn’t bother me if it was on my bedroom floor,” she said.
“But?” I prompted, sensing the word hanging in the air.
“But I promised my cousin I am going to stop fucking guys with Bad News scrawled across their foreheads,” she told me. “She has lost the battle with my eating habits,” she said, gesturing toward her cart that was full of nothing but chips, candy, ice cream, and frozen shit like fries, onion rings, and mozzarella sticks. “So I have to let her have a win with this one. Besides,” she added, giving me a devilish little smirk as she pushed her cart past me, “history tells me that the bad boy types who look like they know how to fuck end up making me play with my own Polly Pocket to get off.”
And with that ridiculous statement, she was off with a sway of her faux lynx coat.
“Take heart, my dear,” an older lady’s voice said, making me turn to find a lady in the grocery store uniform pushing a cart full of go-backs toward me. “Something tells me she’s not actually your type anyway.”
She wasn’t.
That was nothing against her. Clearly, she was gorgeous. And confident. And interesting.
But I tended to go for softer women.
Like the woman at the flower store.
Where the fuck did that come from?
I mean, yeah, sure, she was my type. Hell, she was practically the exact manifestation of my type of woman. But still. I probably passed half a dozen women already that day that were ‘my type.’ And hadn’t given them a second thought.
Shaking my head, I pushed those thoughts away, trying to convince myself that the interest was purely because the woman was standing in the place of the man I was trying to locate.
I managed to mostly keep my mind on the task at hand as I filled up the cart, paid, packed the car, and headed back out of town.
My sports car was gone and the sidewalks were cleared, so I wasn’t surprised to find him sitting on the couch in the living room when I made my way in, cradling a steaming cup of coffee in his hands as he sat there under no less than three blankets.
The look of murder he shot me right then let me know that it really wasn’t the time to poke at him any more.
Sure, sometimes I didn’t heed that warning. And it would sometimes mean we came to blows. Brotherly love and all that shit.
But I was going to show him some mercy.
“No luck?” he asked after I’d finished putting the groceries away. “Finding Dennis,” he clarified.
“No,” I said, not bothering to ask how he knew. Sometimes, when you were close enough with your family, they could just tell shit without having to ask.
“I didn’t see him at the florist,” Gav said, and I had this absurd rush of possessiveness at the idea of him looking at the pretty woman inside that flower shop.
“No. He wasn’t there. Just a woman.”
“You never mentioned there being other employees there,” Gav said, pulling the container of pre-sliced fruit out of the fridge.
“Because there never used to be anyone working there. Dennis was the florist. I mean, he was a shitty fucking florist, but still. That was the situation when I left here. I expected that to continue. You know, since sensitive shit comes through that flower shop.”
“Did it seem like she was in the loop on that?”
I thought back to her sweet smile and her perfectly put together outfit and the way she’d moved behind the desk when I felt my own face darken.
“No. I think she was completely in the dark.”
“Hmm,” Gav said, cracking open the plastic container, and stabbing a piece of cantaloupe with his fork.
“Yeah. I couldn’t get down Dennis’s street. They’d plowed it in. I’m sure they’ll get to it sometime today, so I will try again tomorrow.”
Gav nodded, focusing on the fruit for a second, spearing a slice of watermelon, then looking up at me.
“Why do I get the feeling that this isn’t going to be as cut-and-dry as you thought when we were on our way up here?” he asked.