Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 147967 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 740(@200wpm)___ 592(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147967 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 740(@200wpm)___ 592(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
Maybe she should get a club membership.
No. Nope. You don’t want to do that.
Right.
It wasn’t like she could actually afford it.
“Hello? Have we got zombie Maya again?” he asked, waving a hand in front of her face.
“It’s not nice to wave a hand in someone’s face,” she grumbled.
“It’s also not nice to talk about dying,” he told her. “Especially when you know that is not going to happen.”
Oops.
She’d insulted him again.
“And you don’t need to be concerned, Spike likes to make me happy,” Millie told her. “He wouldn’t stop me from adopting my godbabies.”
“That’s good.” She forced herself to smile even though she was now worrying about dying and leaving her babies.
Urgh.
She had issues.
“Sorry, ladies, we’ve got to go,” Matthieu said. “We have some things to attend to at home.”
“We do?” she asked, glancing up at him.
“Yes. We do.”
Ooh that was a stern voice. What he was talking . . . oh wait.
She knew exactly what he was talking about and she swallowed heavily.
Uh-oh.
25
Maya was certainly taking her time showering.
Not that he blamed her.
He knew exactly what she was up to. She was procrastinating, putting off her consequences. Too bad for her that they had plenty of time and nothing to do.
There had been no progress in figuring out who was threatening her father. He’d spoken to Detective Reeves earlier who hadn’t been able to give him much. The person threatening the Chief had perhaps cottoned on to the fact that they were searching for him and gone to ground.
He'd wanted to ask Reeves about the other investigation. The one into corruption in the police force, but he had to be careful where and who he talked to about that.
Matthieu knew Ink had people looking into it as well, but he didn’t have contacts in the police force to do a lot at the moment.
His contacts were more on the criminal side. Apparently, Markovich was convinced that Maya’s father had to be working for one of the cartels. Or at least an intermediary between the cartels and the gangs in Billings.
But with these threats, her father was under constant guard. It would be difficult for him to do anything or be caught doing anything.
Matthieu hadn’t discovered much from Maya. Other than the fact that he was a terrible father. He kind of wondered if the Chief had faked these threats. If he’d felt the heat of the investigation and was using the threats as a diversion.
If so . . . that was clever. Although it was costing him a bit, paying for Matthieu to guard his daughter.
Especially as Matthieu was enjoying charging her father for every little thing.
Yep, that was going to be one nice, big fat bill.
And he couldn’t be happier about it.
The door to Maya’s bedroom opened. They’d already let the animals out.
In the time it had taken her to shower and change, he’d made a lasagna and put it in the oven, vacuumed, and put in a food order for next week.
“Um hi,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly.
“Good evening,” he replied.
“Holy moly. I didn’t realize so much time had passed.” She sat on the sofa, then jumped up. “I should vacuum.”
“Already done.”
“Make dinner?” she suggested.
“Done.”
“Umm, dust?”
“It doesn’t look that dusty, but I did wipe a few surfaces down.”
“You’re Superman.”
He shook his head. “Nope. You were just procrastinating for a long time.”
“I wasn’t procrastinating.” Her face lit up with temper.
Lord, she was beautiful when she was angry. He wanted to pull her into his lap and kiss that frown right off her face and . . . nope.
No. You cannot do anything like that.
Fuck. It was going to become harder and harder to keep his hands off her. Which wasn’t a good thing.
Maybe he could figure out a way to help with the investigation into these threats so he could . . . leave her.
Like you actually want to do that.
“Sure, you weren’t,” he replied. “Unfortunately, Spitfire. You still have to pay the piper.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot as she glowered down at him.
She wasn’t acting shy or worried around him right now.
Nope. She was utterly magnificent.
“I resent the implication that I was procrastinating in order to put off my . . . my . . . my . . .”
“Punishments?” he supplied.
“They aren’t punishments!” she cried. Then her shoulders slumped. “I prefer consequences.”
“All right, we won’t call them punishments.” He stood and crooked a finger.
Unfortunately, her gaze was on her feet.
She was back to feeling shy around him. It was cute but he wished that she would look at him right now. He wanted to see her beautiful eyes.
“Come here, Maya.”
She glanced up at him and her gaze narrowed as she took in his finger which was still moving in a ‘come here’ gesture. There was that fire.