Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
He took a long draw on his beer. “Is that what the convention’s about? Improving yourself?”
“From what I understand. With some beauty tips thrown in along with all the avaricious inspiration, I’m quite sure. Have you never heard of R2E before? The woman who’s the face of it is everywhere, all around the country, doing press and social media. It’s a huge event. They’re taking over the whole Caldwell Convention Center. A thousand people, maybe more.”
She was babbling, really, at this point. But she could sense him withdrawing, and that made her want to paddle forward. Which was lame, yes, she knew.
“Sounds… interesting.” He took another draw from his beer. “When is it?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“I’ve never been to anything like that before.”
Now she laughed. “Well, get your surprised face on, but you’re not exactly their target audience.”
“You don’t say.”
Lyric frowned. Then leaned into the table. “Hey, do you want to come with me?” As his brows lifted, she blurted, “I mean, it could be a second date. And we could tell everybody you’re my bodyguard. You could look at it as a social experiment.”
What the hell was coming out of her mouth—
“I think that would make it our third date,” he murmured. “Or fourth if you count what happened on the roof. ”
God, she hoped the flush she could feel on her face wasn’t obvious. But as if showing up here and meeting her had magically erased all that gunfire stuff?
“So the whole billboard thing was more than an introduction?” she said roughly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Well. That was fun.”
As Shuli carefully shifted his legs out of the back of the blacked-out Mercedes, he planted his monogrammed slippers on his shoveled walkway like he had a pressure bomb under each heel. He was beyond ready for some shut-eye in his own bed, but goddamn that was a long way to the door.
Looking up to the front of the vehicle, he said, “Thank you, Fritz. I can get myself out.”
From the wheel, the Brotherhood’s butler glanced with worry over his shoulder and bowed. “Oh, master. Are you sure?”
“You have other things to be concerned with.”
He nodded meaningfully at L.W., who was sitting beside him and staring off into space. Like the guy wasn’t even aware they’d pulled up to the house.
“Yes.” The elderly butler inclined his head again. “Do be well, master.”
It was hard to ignore the doggen’s vaguely panicked expression. Especially as it was backed up by absolutely no words. But the butler would never be so forward as to comment on someone’s decision to discharge himself from the training center’s medical center AMA.
No matter how stupid it was.
“Yeah, stay there, Fritz,” came the hoarse order from the other side of the bench seat. “I’ll take care of myself.”
Well, what do you know, it was aliiiiiive. L.W. had been quiet the whole ride in, a brooding, mostly-not-leaking-anymore bag of badass in a set of hospital scrubs who had clearly been humbled by his femoral artery problem from the night before. Pretty pathetic, really, but hey, Shuli was in bad shape, too—just better dressed. Willhis had brought him his red satin robe-and-PJ set. Along with the slippers.
“Oh, master, you are getting out now?” Fritz unlatched his seatbelt in a panic as that other rear door was opened. “I thought perhaps you were returning home to the Wheel—”
“I live here. Besides, if he’s getting out, I am, too.”
That old face got even more wrinkled as the butler regarded the heir to the throne with eyes that were downright alarmed. “Sire, of course. But may I at least help you to the door?”
“No, you can’t.”
Leaving the pair of them to fight it out, Shuli extricated himself from the sedan’s backseat, and pinned a smile on his face through the pain—because he hoped, as his whole body protested the vertical, that he didn’t give away too much and trigger a medical review. Meanwhile, on the far side of the Mercedes, L.W. had the black Nike duffle bag with their weapons up on one shoulder, and the pair of crutches that had been forced on him under his armpits.
Meanwhile, Fritz was hyperventilating in the front seat. Except there wasn’t much he could do with that kind of direct command.
And after L.W. had hobbled around the rear of the car, he lined up with Shuli at the base of the shoveled walkway. They even waved with the same hand, in coordination. That Mercedes stayed right where it was, though, a curl of steam lifting from its tailpipe, the calling card of the gas-powered engine drifting off.
Undoubtedly, the butler was in a terrible internal debate, trapped by his need to serve—especially when it came to L.W.—and the lack of invitation to help. And this was causing a full body paralysis.
As time ticked by, Shuli just stayed where he was, like one of those repair shop inflatables. L.W. was the same, standing there like an idiot in the cold, waving his hand with an expression as if someone were driving nails into the soles of his feet.