Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“We’re not in this for fun,” Raye replied.
“I thought we were,” Shanti said under her breath to Jessie.
But it was Raye who replied. “Right. We’re in it for that too. But mostly, we’re in it for justice.”
I was all for justice.
But the only thing I wanted broken in this mess was my mushroom.
“Okay, so Javi and I are…”—I paused to count—“fourteen hours into us exploring an us, but I already know he’s overprotective.”
“Shocker,” Shanti quipped, a twinkle in her brown eyes.
“And my apartment is a mess,” I kept going.
“Willow, Raye and I are gonna get on that,” Luna told me. “After work. The boys got what they needed out of it, so they said we’re good to do a cleanup.”
I was interested to learn what the boys got out of it, but first things first.
“Aw, that’s sweet. But you don’t have to.”
“When the meeting tonight descends into a party, we’re probably looking at a late night, so when are you gonna do it?” Luna asked me.
“No rush. She’s got at least a weeks’ worth of stuff at Javi’s,” Jessie shared.
Everyone looked at me again.
“Don’t look at me, I didn’t pack it,” I said. “And I’ll be talking to Javi later about it, because I know he wants me to stay with him so he can keep me safe, but I’m not moving in with him while he does.”
“Why not?” Shanti asked.
Why not?
“We’ve had one date that I’m still on the fence about declaring official because it was so weird,” I explained. “I can’t move in with him after one date. Especially not a weird, maybe unofficial one.” I looked to Jessie. “If we need to play things safe, do you think Eric would mind if I stayed in one of his extra bedrooms?”
“No, Eric wouldn’t care,” Jessie replied readily. “What I think is, Javi would lose his goddamned mind if you tried to move into one of Eric’s bedrooms, in essence, letting Eric take over keeping you safe.”
I sensed this was true.
However…
“It’s too soon,” I declared.
“You were rolling around in his bed with him this morning,” Willow pointed out.
Raye was looking at Jessie as she said, “She’s gonna need an in-service in dealing with these guys.”
“An in-service?” I queried.
“A tutorial,” Raye said. “On how to deal with an overprotective alpha.”
This was a super good idea because I was thinking my alpha was more alpha than their alphas, and their alphas were pretty danged alpha.
“That’d be super helpful, guys,” I gushed.
We all jumped when the door behind us crashed open.
And, of course, Tex was there.
“Are you having an Angels confab without me?” he demanded.
“We haven’t gotten that far. Mostly we’re talking about Harlow and Javi—” Jessie began.
Tex lifted a beefy mitt. “I don’t care about that.” He then noted, “I thought servers served.”
“We had to check in with Lolo because her apartment got trashed,” Luna pointed out.
Tex made a puh noise and rocked back on his heels. “Went last night and looked at that shit. It wasn’t even a two on the scale of one being normal, five being the wreck made of Evie’s place, ten being Stella’s apartment getting grenaded, and twelve being Ally’s apartment turning into a fireball.”
“Evie?” Willow asked.
“One of my girls up in Denver,” Tex answered.
“Is she a Rock Chick?” Shanti queried.
“No, she’s on the Dream Team,” Tex told her.
Wait.
This was new.
“Who are the Dream Team?” I muttered to no one and everyone.
“How many girls do you have?” Raye inquired of Tex.
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Six too many if you don’t haul your asses in there and get to work.”
He was right, there were customers that needed to be served, and tips that needed to be made.
We all trundled through the door to the kitchen with Luna grumbling in an undertone, “Tito wouldn’t boss like that.”
“I’m not Tito,” Tex said, not in an undertone.
By the time we made it through Lucia’s kitchen to The Surf Club proper, it became clear why Tex hustled us in.
First, Byron, a daily regular, was standing at the bar, looking frenzied.
Byron drank dirty chais, and Tex didn’t make tea even if that tea also had a shot of espresso in it.
Thus, Tex needed us in there to deal with Byron, when Tex could have dealt with him if he didn’t have his strange aversion to tea.
More to the point, Dream was there with her newborn, Harmony, strapped to her chest.
“Oh shit,” Shanti whispered upon spying Dream.
“Oh boy,” Willow whispered upon doing the same.
“Fuck,” Jessie didn’t whisper.
I slapped on a bright smile and called, “Hi, Dream!”
Dream looked at me and did a kind of side eye/eye roll that wasn’t very nice because it was wholly dismissive.
It was also oh-so-totally Dream.
She then fixed in on Luna because Luna was her sister, and for some reason, Dream made a habit of coming by SC to give Luna grief and be mean, even though Luna was my sister too (not of the blood, still), and she was the bomb at being a great sister.