Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
This was why Mom snapped, “Robert! Don’t you dare!”
Robbie grinned roguishly.
He was totally going to tell a filthy joke.
But Mom didn’t want him to, so he didn’t (though, I figured he’d tell it during target practice, for sure).
I snuggled closer to him.
Gabe watched me do this with a gentle, contented look in his eyes.
The men got into a discussion about guns and ammo.
So, obviously, Mom and I ignored this discussion and talked about how she was getting tired of her stoneware, there were a lot of chips in her current set, and it was messing with her eating-pleasure mojo. So we decided, while the men shot the next day, we were going to go to some commission resale and antique stores in town to look for a new set for her.
She and I drank tea.
Robbie let go of me to get him and Gabe a bourbon.
A little later, Gabe and I had sex that night “real quiet.”
I wasn’t going to think about it, but with the looks Mom and Robbie were exchanging before we all went to bed, and the lovey way they woke up, I suspected they did too.
Gabe and Robbie shot the next day.
Mom and I found a great set of stoneware at the third shop we visited.
On the way back to Phoenix that evening, Gabe told me he would be totally down to help Robbie build us a cabin on their land because, “They got a sweet setup, cupcake.”
He was not wrong.
Two days later, Mom called to tell me we needed to come back up because Robbie was clearing trees, and he needed Gabe’s help.
I sensed why he was clearing trees, and I adored what I sensed.
Then I talked to Gabe about when we could go up again.
We went up the next weekend.
Parents and Family Part Three happened very near the Colorado Monument.
This was because Gabe and I went up to Grand Junction for Thanksgiving, meeting Kacie and Wyatt, Luke and Ava, their girls, and Gabe’s Aunt Josie there.
For your information, Ava was a hoot.
She was gorgeous, sure, but I knew with the way she had no qualms going head-to-head with her uber masculine, openly dominant hot guy, that was why she’d won Luke’s heart.
I’d learned real men didn’t want a woman who they could walk all over, nor a woman who would roll over for them.
They wanted women who knew their own mind, would fight their own corner, and would call their men on their shit.
Shades of what Noah found in Jinx, for sure.
During our visit, I took pages and pages of mental notes about this.
Aunt Josie, on the other hand, was so prissily feminine, if she showed the next morning in a hoop skirt carrying a parasol, I wouldn’t blink.
Case in point, the perfectly creased slacks she was wearing with low heeled, smudge-free pumps along with a fussy blouse, her pretty hair in an understated updo and a string of pearls around her neck.
She looked like she was attending church on Easter, not like she was at a cazj restaurant eating a tostada.
The idea of her birthing a man like Luke was hilarious.
The idea that her husband had been a colossal dick was not.
So I focused on the hilarious part.
It was the day before eat-until-you-pass-out day, and we were at a Mexican restaurant where I was engaged in eating until I would almost pass out, when I heard Gabe grunt.
In our time together, I’d learned he was a man who grunted, for a variety of reasons (most of them delicious).
But this was a grunt the likes I’d never heard.
I looked to him.
Then I looked to where his eyes were aimed.
Primarily at a really pretty brunette who was standing just inside the entry at the hostess stand.
I knew by the way her gaze was pinging between me and Gabe (because, yes, we were sitting very close, and another yes, he had his arm slung along the back of my chair), and the way her hurt face morphed to incredulous, and incredulous morphed to bitchy, all of this in a matter of seconds, that she was Ariana.
“Oh shit,” Mike mumbled.
Yep.
Ariana.
Ariana started in our direction.
“Oh no, she is not,” Shelby spat.
Gabe stood.
Mike clamped down on Shelby.
I debated whether or not I wanted to break a nail in a catfight the day before Thanksgiving.
Gabe moved to intercept her.
When he did, she morphed her face again to give him a come-hither look and added resting her hand on his chest.
“Oh no, she did not,” I bit off, preparing to slide from my chair.
But then Ariana’s face changed to shock, and her eyes narrowed. I knew she was screwing up to be ugly, but Gabe didn’t give her the shot.
He turned his back on her, returned to us and sat back down in his chair beside me.
I instantly curved a hand on his thigh and put in the effort not to sink my nails in to add to my claim.