Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
I want to know when she wakes up and what all her dreams were. I want to make sure she doesn’t text and drive, and that her car has had an oil change recently.
Is she eating enough red meat and taking her iron when she’s on her period?
That last one had me fucking shaking, when I went online and asked google how much iron a woman needs during that time of the month.
I’m losing it, but if this is what being lost feels like, I never want to be found.
Me: I also asked you to let me know what you had for dinner last night and how you felt when you woke up this morning. Don’t ignore me, Tootsie Pop. I’ll have to come track you down.
The red button on my desk phone flashes in three rapid blips, telling me Lauren, my executive assistant, needs something.
I smash the intercom button. “What?”
My usual stoic calm has been rattled, and it’s not good for business, so I heave a ragged breath and remember what I’m doing here.
“You on your period?” Lauren snaps back as I grind my molars, resting an elbow on the edge of the desk. I grip my forehead, pressing my fingertips into my eye sockets until I see stars. “You’ve been particularly charming the last few days.”
Jackson chuckles, standing and motioning toward the door. I nod, watching him go, but I’m not in the mood for laughter. Lauren is fluent in sarcasm, and it’s something I’ve come to tolerate, but right now, my patience with everything in my life that is not Andrea is paper-thin.
“I’m assuming you want something.”
“Yeah, so two things. First, Mr. Buffalino sent a package over with a courier. It’s the final paperwork for the go ahead on that old house that’s holding up his project downtown. He wants the crew there tomorrow to demo it before there’s some other delay. He said he wouldn’t put it past the old lady and her niece to chain themselves to the porch or something.” I nod as though she can see me, but after eight years together, it’s almost like she can see through the walls. “Then,” Her voice changes, the pitch rising with an unusual hint of humor, “you have a visitor. She says she has an appointment, but there’s nothing on your calendar. She said to tell you she’s here to deliver a grape flavored Tootsie Pop, whatever the fuck that means. She doesn’t look crazy, but—”
“Send her in,” I answer, shoving my chair back so hard it smacks against the floor to ceiling window behind me, which offers an amazing view of the Detroit River and the Canadian Club sign on the other side.
I’m on my feet in a breath, lunging around the corner of my desk, knocking over the chrome trash can in my rush and nearly sending me face-forward into the floor.
“Fuck,” I seethe, catching myself with a locked arm on one of the leather chairs that sit in front of my desk.
“You okay there, Hoss?” Lauren adds a little snort but knows me well enough to decode the silence that greets her, so she clicks off the intercom, leaving me checking the front of my shirt, running one hand down my tie, the other through my hair.
She’s here?
I glance back at my phone, wondering if I missed something, but there are no replies to my messages.
Four heartbeats later, after I’ve righted myself and brushed some invisible lint off my jacket sleeves, Lauren appears in the open doorway, ushering in the object of my obsession dressed in a lavender silk slip dress with an open black trench coat and knee-high black patent leather boots with six-inch heels.
She’s a femme fatale of the highest order, and I can’t fucking breathe.
I mean, I knew she was gorgeous, but it’s so much more. I didn’t know what breathtaking truly meant until right now.
If I hadn’t had to fly out on Thanksgiving night to take care of a problem at a site in Manhattan—a group of protesters that had linked arms around an old brownstone we were set to bring down—I would have followed her fucking home.
Instead, I spent the last few days dealing with the PR mess created when the cops came in and dragged the protesters off the property, only to find out one of them was the daughter of one of our biggest clients. The irony was thick, seeing he was the one who wanted the building torn down, but seems his daughter isn’t following in the family footsteps of mega structures replacing working class neighborhoods.
When I finally got in yesterday evening, I called my other problem client, Ernesto Buffalino, who has been battling with some other property owner in downtown Detroit where his next casino venture is set to start land prep for construction. That’s if he can get the court to sign off on his eminent domain petition and force the old lady out so I can come in and do the last bit of demo, freeing him to start construction.