Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Sorry nipples, I’m too busy going into shock to care about your feelings.
“How in the hell do you know about that?”
5
WADE
Well that went to shit faster than I’d thought it would.
She seemed more unsettled by my asking about the apartment than she was by nearly choking to death in front of me. It didn’t help that I’d shown up in her backyard without notice, then kept my arms around her for longer than strictly necessary after she could breathe again. Ogling her ass when she bent over, and being unable to take my eyes off her breasts long enough to offer much in the way of coherent conversation, hadn’t done me any favors either.
What social skills I had felt rustier than my first Charger, which was currently up on blocks behind the garage shed, waiting for the free time I never had to restore it.
I had a better chance of salvaging that wreck than I did this one.
August stood there, her chin sticking out stubbornly and her bare feet planted firmly apart. Her posture had gone from self-conscious to self-righteous, which did great things for the lush breasts delectably framed by her crossed arms.
Eyes up, asshole.
“I’m signed up to the same site,” I said staring directly into her eyes instead of looking down again. They were pretty eyes, tipped up at the corners and a shade of blue so dark they were almost indigo. The deep kind of blue you could fall right into if you weren’t careful. “I get notifications when a place goes up for sale or rent in the area. You pinged me yesterday.”
“I didn’t ping you,” she declared, as if I’d accused her of grabbing my ass. Something I would have been fine with, by the way.
“The apartment did. It’s in the right location.”
Her brow furrowed. “For what? Why are you getting pings anyway? I thought you already rented out your place.”
“Who told you that?” Had she been asking about me?
“Gene mentioned it yesterday, remember? He asked if the guy renting your apartment could help out with a car.”
“Right, right.” I hadn’t realized she was listening that closely. I rubbed the back of my neck. “Well, that’s a long, boring story. And I believe we were talking about you.”
“No, we were talking about why my apartment pinged you.”
I’d taken off from the garage like my ass was on fire when I should have thought this through a bit longer. Texted her. Maybe asked Kingston for some advice, since he’d always been the smooth talker of our duo. He could have told me that a corner-store balloon and an unscheduled car drop-off wouldn’t be the icebreakers for this conversation I thought they’d be. He would have told me to “Use my words.” The smartass was always saying shit like that.
I took a deep breath to center myself. “Okay, so here’s the deal. I—”
My phone dinged in my back pocket. Once. Twice. Three times.
“More apartments hitting on you?” she asked dryly.
“It can wait.”
“It might be important.”
“This is important.”
She scowled at my pants. In case you were wondering, that was not the reaction a guy wanted to see from a woman he was interested in. Especially not when she was checking out the goods.
“It could be your very pregnant niece with an emergency.”
She had a point.
I pulled my still-dinging phone out of my pocket, and August said, “I’m going to go change while you deal with that. You can park my car in the driveway behind Jiminy. Then we—” She flicked her fingers back and forth between us. “—are going to finish this discussion.”
If she could make something I wanted to happen sound like a threat, so could I. “I’m not leaving until we do.”
I tried not to ogle her ass again when she walked out of the kitchen, but I couldn’t help noticing that it was still bitable as hell.
Then I looked at my phone. These texts definitely could have waited.
Bernie: I’m buried in classes and then an early Wreckers rehearsal. Can you pick up Phoebe’s vitamins on your lunch break, Wade?
Phoebe: And Oreos.
Bernie: You don’t need Oreos.
Phoebe: The baby does. And yay band rehearsal. That means Uncle Wade and I can watch Bad Batch without commentary. My baby daddy has exams to grade.
Bernie: Stop calling Todd your baby daddy. It’s demeaning.
Phoebe: Fine. The professor who impregnated me during coitus has exams to grade. Better?
Bernie: So. Much. Worse. Just for that, I’ll be catching up on Traitors when I get home. FYI Stopping at Barnaby’s for pesto chicken sandwiches for dinner. Yum. And Crab is sleeping over tonight. He’ll take the floor, but he doesn’t want to make the drive back to La Grange until you check his car, Wade. It’s making weird noises.
This was my life. I didn’t mind running errands for my family, but the rest of it? Sharing sleep space with random members of my sister’s band, and fixing everyone’s cars whenever there was a glitch for whatever they could afford to pay? Never mind that I was buried in double my usual workload and had a house to look for.