Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 132657 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132657 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Of course she also hadn’t figured out he was there to spy on her, so she couldn’t be too good at this.
“You’re from West Texas but not more than a couple of hours out of Fort Worth. One of the ranching towns between here and Amarillo,” her dad began. “You recently moved to town. Likely within the last year. You do manual labo…or you work out a lot.” He was carefully watching Niall for any tics as he spoke. Her father was a master at reading micro expressions. He’d taught her humans give themselves away in far more fashions than lying. “You’re a personal trainer. Ah, you own a gym. Good luck with that, buddy. You’re former military police. Is there a reason you didn’t become a cop?”
Niall shot her a surprised look. “Is your dad psychic?”
“He’s just really good at reading people,” she replied with a yawn because her dad could do this for hours, and it was getting late.
“He knows the MP part from the tat on his arm,” Papa replied. “It’s not that hard. And it’s a good bet that he already knew about you seeing him at The Hideout. He listens in when your sister and Chloe gossip. He’s the gossipiest old man I know.”
“Hey,” Ian argued. “I have that T-shirt, too.”
Charlotte waved her husband off. “He prints them himself. Pay him no mind. I want to see what else Chase can figure out.”
“Well, I figured out you pissed off my daughter. What did you do to her?” His gaze shifted to Jensen. “You are harder to read. You’re friends. You were in the military together, but you had your tat removed.”
Jensen’s hand went to his bicep. “You can’t see that.”
“I can see it’s a slightly different color. It’s been a while since you took it off. Were you ashamed of your service?” Dad asked, his eyes narrow.
Jensen’s head shook. “Of course not.”
“You have another tat, so it’s not that you suddenly didn’t like tattoos. You wanted to hide your military service,” her father surmised.
Shit. He was going to figure it all out.
Jensen frowned her father’s way. “I’m not sure that’s your business, sir.”
“You tell him, Jensen,” her mom encouraged and then shrugged her dad’s way. “You can be an intellectual bully about this. And it’s obvious Harlow is involved with both of them, so you might want to back off and give everyone some room before you start a fight.”
But her dad was merely getting started. “You the one who gave Niall there that shiner?”
“I don’t have a shiner,” Niall argued.
“You’ll have some bruising,” her papa agreed with Dad. “Maybe not a full-on black eye, but you got clocked at some point in the last couple of hours.”
Jack had taken a seat next to Charlotte and looked perfectly happy hanging out and watching her ruination.
“And Supernatural here has some bruising on his knuckles. You taking out bad guys or your friend here?” Dad asked, gaze sharpening. “You were fighting over my daughter?”
This was torture. “I started dating Niall a couple of days ago. Jensen is someone I dated a long time ago. It’s that simple. I didn’t know they knew each other.”
“Uncle Chase, things got heated and confusing out there tonight.” Jack jumped in to save her. Finally. The amount of times she’d covered for his ass… “It was a big brawl, and you know it can be hard to tell who the bad guys are in the midst of it. I think they were both trying to protect Harlow and found themselves at cross purposes.”
Oh, it had been super clear, and she was glad she’d already gotten Miranda off to the safe house. Jensen and Niall knew better than to argue, but Miranda might have pointed out that Dave got the jump on them, and there wasn’t a lot of fight to be had.
Jack really had saved the day.
Her dad looked like he wanted to argue, but he had a new target. He turned on Jack, pointing his way. “And you knew. You knew she was involved and you didn’t bother to call anyone?”
Jack shrugged. “I was real busy trying to make sure she didn’t get a look at me and give up my entire cover. They tend to know something’s wrong when the new girl walks in and starts asking about my family. I wasn’t supposed to have one of those since Hamilton likes his drug mules unattached or at least separated from family. I went in as the down-on-his-luck recent grad who happened to know a bit about bartending and has no one in the world to count on.”
“She would never do that.” Dad sounded offended on her part. “She would not walk up to you in an obvious undercover situation. Harlow knows what you do.”
She was confused, but then Chase Dawson often confused her. “Which am I, Dad? Am I an incompetent girl or a professional who should be respected?”