Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“Who then?”
“That old man with the nagging wife. Doug. But he’s got a friend with him this time.”
“Christ,” I sighed.
“What are we, the local entertainment?” Caymen asked, coming in from the kitchen. “Ain’t enough that the old ladies bring out chairs to watch us do chores?”
“Eh, they’re just having some fun,” Dixon said, waving it off.
He liked female attention, no matter from whom. The last time they’d been out watching him mow the lawn, he’d taken his shirt off for them, getting a chorus of hoots and whistles from the delighted women.
“They’re gonna be disappointed when they see we don’t have any girls over,” York said, hauling himself up from the couch to answer the door when Doug rapped his cane on the wood. “Anything laying out that shouldn’t be?” he asked, glancing around with his hand on the knob.
I did a quick walk-through the common areas, making sure no guns were sitting out, then gave him a nod.
“Looking forward to letting Huck handle this from now on,” I mumbled as York opened the door.
Doug had a buddy standing next to him.
He was probably a few years younger than Doug. Or maybe it just appeared that way because he wasn’t so stooped and wasn’t using a cane. He was tall and fit in a pair of gray chino shorts and a tucked-in black polo shirt, with neatly styled gray hair, and bright, almost see-through blue eyes.
“Fellas,” Doug greeted us, already trying to push his way inside. “This is my buddy, Charles. Charles, these are the guys who have all the pretty broads running around.”
“Afraid not today,” York told them. “Just us here today.”
The disappointment was instantaneous on both their faces.
“Hope you guys are hungry,” Eddie called from the kitchen. “I bought the ingredients for enchiladas.”
“Enchiladas,” Doug repeated, interest piqued. “The spicy kind?”
Objectively, no.
But to him? Probably.
“The legit kind. Eddie’s from Mexico,” York explained.
“Where is everyone?” Eddie asked, coming in from the kitchen, still trying one of his many aprons on.
Doug looked at Eddie, then at all of us.
“This someone’s… husband?” he asked, trying really hard to sound like that phrase came naturally to him.
“They should be so lucky,” Eddie said, shrugging. “What’s going on here?”
“We’re staying for lunch, that’s what,” Doug said, his cane tapping across the floor as he let himself in, and made his way to the kitchen.
Charles gave us an apologetic look but followed his friend.
“You all have been keeping secrets,” Eddie said, looking between us.
“In our defense, we didn’t think he’d come back,” I said.
“Or bring friends,” York said, shaking his head. “What are we supposed to do here?” he asked, looking to me.
Right.
Yeah.
For at least a few more hours, I was who they still deferred to.
“I guess… call Cherry and Candy. Give them something pretty to look at, but it lets us control shit more than if we had a party. Those girls wouldn’t screw up and expose shit they shouldn’t.”
“Got it,” Dixon said, already reaching for his phone.
“Hopefully, he just wants to show off to his buddy that he wasn’t bullshitting,” I said. “Then they will just move on already.”
Or, worst case, it was Huck’s problem in the near future.
By the late afternoon, Doug and Charles were fed, and got to sit beside the pool as Cherry and Candy sat on the shoulders of Dixon and Caymen, and whacked at each other with giant inflatable batons.
Bikinis slipped.
Nipples flashed.
The men were thrilled.
Then Doug’s—I shit you not—flip phone started ringing. He was getting his ass handed to him by his wife, leading both men to make their way across the street.
The others decided it was time to call in more girls.
Huck came in, looking road-weary and exhausted, telling me we would catch up the next day, and that we knew where to find him if we needed him.
Then, responsibility removed and not overly in the mood to party, I went ahead and borrowed the SUV once again… then headed out to Vital Greens.
I tried to convince myself that I was going to try to gather more information to share with Huck when we had our meeting the next day.
But I knew damn well I just wanted to see Rue again.
Why, I had no idea.
There was just something about her that felt like it had been drawing me in since I’d seen her. Like she was her own fucking gravitational field. And I just wanted to be pulled in deeper.
The problem was that I didn’t really consider the shop hours of Vital Greens.
By the time I got there, I only had maybe forty-five minutes, which somehow didn’t feel like long enough.
“Oh, hey!” Rue greeted me, looking up from her notepad on the desk where she’d been tapping the tip of her pen frantically. “How are the plants doing?”
“Still alive, surprisingly. The charts really helped, I think.”
“So, are you back for more then?”