Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Ah.
There you go.
I kept my mind firmly off the “sick shit” and that he had time to do that with Elsie Fay and focused on something else that was pertinent.
“Can I go now?”
When he leaned into his elbows on his desk, fingers linked, resting his chin on them, and penetrated me with his perfect jade stare, I figured that was a no.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked.
“No,” I answered.
“Do you know who we are?” he went on with a slight jerk of his head to Chris.
“Well, that’d be nice to know, considering we’re spending so much time together,” I told him.
“I’m Kai Mason.”
Why was that name familiar?
“And that’s Julien Jackson,” he continued on another slight jerk to Chris…or Julien.
I felt a strange, but far from unpleasant, electrical pulse jolt through me at learning his name.
Well then.
I ignored the pulse and focused on the fact that I liked his name. It was unusual, at least his first name was. It didn’t really look like him, but it also did, in an odd way.
“And considering you’re the Avenging Angel, you probably should know who the players are on the street,” Kai Mason carried on.
Uh-oh.
Seemed he knew more than just my name.
I sat back, clasped my hands in my lap and tried really hard not to suck my lips between my teeth in order to bite them, that being in order not to groan at my own stupidity.
Mental note: A girl can be sassy, but no one should be cocky.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Mason sat back too, in order to be more comfortable when he shared, “This is Nightingale Investigations and Security.”
“Okay,” I said slowly.
His lips quirked like he found me amusing.
The gall!
Even if I couldn’t bust open a door, I was kickass, not amusing!
At this point, Jackson moved. He lifted his hands and pretended to type on the keyboard.
He did this saying, “Look it up when you get home.”
First, I was glad I was going home. I mean, it didn’t seem in question, considering the cops just let these two dudes go, didn’t ask me a single question, not even my name. And thinking about it, something I didn’t have time to do with a six-year-old attached to me, the police had treated them with respect from the minute they’d showed.
Like, all kinds of respect.
But still.
Second, it was every shade of annoying he was making fun of my pretend typing.
I shot him a glare.
My glare hit his badass forcefield and became imaginary butterflies that flitted away, or at least that was what I imagined considering his stoic (but gorgeous) face registered nothing from being the target of my glare.
Ugh.
“We have three offices,” Mason kept talking. “One in Denver, one in LA, and a new one.” He pointed to his desk. “Here.”
“Right,” I said tersely.
So that explained the boxes and wrapped furniture.
“Are we hanging so I can help you unwrap the furniture and position it?” I inquired. “Because that might have to wait for tomorrow. I need a malt, then a bubble bath.”
Though, I was probably out of luck with the malt. Lenny’s closed at ten. I needed to get moving if I was going to make it.
Mason again looked over his shoulder at Jackson.
Mason still seemed amused.
Jackson did not.
Mason came back to me. “See, this is the thing.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the thing.
He told me anyway. “We have experience with people like you. Namely, women like you.”
Oh boy.
I might be getting mad.
“You don’t know what kind of woman I am,” I retorted.
“I know we had a friend who thought she could take to the streets and right all the world’s wrongs. She got shot twice, chest and gut, for her troubles. She almost didn’t make it. It’s a flat-out miracle she did.”
Yikes!
“You should have reported your concerns to the police,” Mason kept at me.
Before I could say anything, Jackson cut in, “Barring that, when you cased his house, you shouldn’t have sat in your ridiculous bright-yellow car and had a ten-minute phone conversation while obviously casing his house.”
I knew my car was a problem.
I loved my car (I called her Tweety, for obvious reasons).
But she wasn’t so good in a stakeout.
Now Jackson kept at me. “Or jumped the fence from a dumpster.”
I still needed to wash my hands, and every other inch of me, not only due to the dumpster sitch, but also that Walken collapsed on me.
Serious euw.
Jackson wasn’t done with me. “Or directly confronted him with nothing but a stun gun and a Puppy Patrol polo.”
He was hot and all, but he was all kinds of infuriating.
“Okay, all’s well that ends well—” I started.
“So you know this is gonna end well?” Mason asked.
“Tonight it did,” I pointed out.
“Two weeks ago, when you roofied that football player who was the ringleader in the gang rape of a girl, dragged his ass to a warehouse, poured honey on him and let loose a bunch of ants, then told him to, ‘Behave himself, the Avenging Angel is watching’, that wasn’t smart.”