Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 141255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
“If you don’t need to be up here that long, me, Bee, and little Joe’ll come spend a weekend and finish up the food,” Nino joked. “Been a while since we had a getaway.”
“Yeah, well with the state of the union, might not wanna get too excited. It could be a while longer,” I mumbled and saw Angel’s eyes get bigger. “I’ll walk you to the car, man.”
Angel waved at Nino, saying, “Thanks very much, Nino.”
He gave her a smile and said, “You’re welcome.” He followed me outside where he clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Good to see you shacked up, man. She’s a beautiful girl. How’d you meet?”
I gave him the quick and dirty low down on Angel, Kruna, and where things were at with the threat. He listened, looked pissed, and said he was committed to helping me eliminate any and all threats.
He was heading home to take care of organizing security for us so that I’d have someone here to watch over us tonight and to watch over Angel while I was at the Gan Chen meeting tomorrow. It sounded like Gan Chen wasn’t here to be an enemy, but I wasn’t taking chances.
When I got back in I suggested she make us something to eat, said I was stepping back out for a smoke. I needed to make a few more calls and didn’t want her to hear.
I was having trouble holding it together. He was being super-secretive, making calls out of earshot, looking angry and stressed, smoking like a fiend. I got the groceries all away and after sitting for a long time doing nothing because he was outside in his SUV on the phone because it was raining outside, I decided to put a movie on. There was an old floor model television that had to be circa 1980 along with a VCR with a bookshelf filled with dozens and dozens of old VHS movies. The rain kept pouring and nearly the whole length of a movie passed before he came back inside.
I’d heated up a big family-sized lasagna. There was enough food here to feed us for weeks. I’d taken the pan out to cool, and I was setting the table.
He went to the bathroom, came out, got a bottle of Gatorade from the fridge, and then he looked at his phone again just as it made a text sound.
He headed toward the door again.
“Dinner is ready,” I told him as he went out.
“One sec.” He kept going with the phone.
I finished getting the table set and waited. And waited.
When he came in, I looked at him. He looked to the table and gave me a smile. “Dinner ready?”
It’d been cooling for nearly half an hour, and I’d already told him it was ready but I didn’t fuss; obviously he had stuff going on. Stuff he wasn’t telling me…
Strange how, this quickly, I could feel like I had a right to know.
“Yep. You ready to eat?”
“Starved, babe.” He opened the fridge and got out a bottle of wine and poured two glasses.
I served up the lasagna and we sat.
His phone kept going off while we ate and he replied to texts while we re-watched the John Candy Summer Rental movie as it had rewound and started playing again.
After dinner, he washed the dishes and I dried them and then he started a fire in the wood stove for us while I picked out a movie for us to watch. I figured after his choosing The Hobbit that first night that he’d like something along those lines so I picked Ewoks, thinking that someone who liked Hobbit movies might also like Star Wars type movies.
I watched it and he was texting and emailing for the most part but had his arm around me, my head on his shoulder, so it was still comforting. I felt taken care of, if confused, but I settled against him and just decided that I was going to let my Master take care of me.
I woke up in Dare’s arms. He was carrying me up the stairs.
“Hi,” I mumbled sleepily.
“Hey sleepy girl,” he said and then he put me down on the big old-fashioned canopy bed with the patchwork quilt. I had admired it earlier when I’d had a look around. There were three bedrooms and another bathroom up here. The one bedroom was half pink and half blue. On the pink side were bunk beds with pink comforters and the blue side had a crib. The other room had a futon and a few air mattresses so I wasn’t surprised Dare put us in the master bedroom as he hated sleeping on futon mattresses. I had an affection for them since that’s where we first connected.
He held me and I drifted back to sleep.
When I woke up, I was alone in bed. I used the bathroom and then went down the stairs and it seemed I was totally alone. There was a note on the kitchen counter.