Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Judge Slater.
“That’s good…oh.” She reached for the handle of the car, and got out, heading for her father who’d just rounded the corner.
I twisted in my seat and unstrapped Tallulah from her restraints, and then lifted her into my arms before facing the music.
And the music wasn’t good music, either.
The moment that the judge’s eyes met mine, his scowl went thunderous.
“What the hell are you doing on my land?” he growled. “Give her to me.”
I handed him Tallulah, expecting the move the moment that he started stalking toward me.
“Sir,” I murmured.
The judge glared hard at me, and I realized that it was going to take a very long time to win this man over, if I even could at all.
Glancing at Tally, I nodded at her and headed for my car, knowing when I wasn’t welcome.
“Have a good one, Tally.”
Tally looked confused as she stared at me leaving, and the moment I turned my car around and I could see her in my rearview, I realized that it would take quite a bit of convincing to get her back on my side.
Shit.
***
Tally
“You will not have anything to do with that man ever again,” my father ordered me.
I blinked.
“What?” I asked. “Dad, I’m nearly twenty-one years old. Surely you don’t think you can still tell me what to do.”
Dad’s eyes were so shrewd and calculating that I knew what was going to come out of his mouth before he even said it.
“You live on my land, and since your house is gone, you’ll be living underneath my roof. I sure as fuck can tell you who you can and can’t see,” he informed me.
I gritted my teeth.
“Tommy is a…” I started to say, but he interrupted me with a raise of his hand.
“Stop,” he demanded. “I don’t care what that man is. I know what I know, and what I know is that he’s no good. And now that I know he’s your teacher at the college, I’d be delighted to inform them of the criminal they have on their hands.”
I growled. “Give me her and leave me alone.”
Dad handed Tallulah to me, not one to hold my daughter against me.
At least he had that going for him right now.
That was one of his better virtues…allowing me to raise my child without his interference, even though I could tell many times throughout my so far short stint in motherhood that he wanted to intervene.
He let me make my own mistakes…but apparently he wouldn’t let me make the Tommy mistake.
Too bad I’d already made it, and it was glorious.
Now I just needed to find out what exactly he did to piss off my father, one of the most easy-going men I knew.
Chapter 15
I would eat healthy, but tacos.
-Every woman’s secret thoughts
Tommy
I let her have her space. I also was fairly sure that I wasn’t going to be able to continue to allow her that space, but I’d give it the good old college try.
Today had been a lesson in restraint.
Literally and figuratively.
It’d all started out fairly simple.
I was in the simulation lab with our students when I asked for a volunteer.
“Who wants to volunteer to try out these restraints?” I asked the class.
I looked at everyone, even Tally, and waited for someone to raise their hand.
Nobody did.
So I grinned and said, “Now, I don’t want everyone to step all over each other to get to the bed,” I teased them. “Come on, now. Someone has to do it. Don’t make me choose for you.”
Still nobody rose their hands, and I sighed.
“All right,” I said. “When’s your birthday?” I asked the girl who was at the front of the class. The little stuck up bitch who tried to kiss my and every other teacher’s ass in the entire building in hopes of getting a better grade.
“June twelfth,” she answered instantly.
“And you?” I asked the next girl. “August first.”
“Who here has a birthday after August first?”
The only person to raise her hand was Tally, causing me to grin.
“All righty, then,” I grinned. “You’re up.”
Tally’s eyes flashed, and I had to resist the urge to grin at her like a lunatic.
It was apparent as she walked to the front of the room that she didn’t want to be doing this, especially not with me.
It’d been a full two weeks since we’d held a conversation—one that didn’t have something to do with school during class— with each other, and I was beginning to wonder if it was intentional.
Her mother had somehow gotten her shifts changed so that she was on when Dr. Wild was there, and since there were only two doctors who worked the small ER at any given time, that meant that I never saw her, even if I had wanted to be there.
I knew it was a possibility, but luckily there was nothing that the judge and his wife could do about the class I was teaching. If there had been, they’d have already done it. But I knew they did try.