Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“Does she know that you don’t like horses?”
“Well,” I hesitated. “No. The one and only time that she asked me to ride with her, I was called in to work and got out of explaining to her that I was kinda halfway scared to get on one. She hadn’t asked again, and I’d taken it as a blessing.”
“She likes her horses?” Winnie guessed.
“I can only assume so. She went home every single day to check on them despite having moved in with me and having a neighbor watch after them for her. When I asked her to sell them, she had a mini panic attack.”
“She likes them,” Winnie confirmed. “Tell her that if she gets half of your stuff, you get half of hers. Make sure to specifically mention horses. Oh, and maybe mention to her that it takes a lot of money to have horses. They require a lot of upkeep. Meaning that she’s not hurting for money. What does she do for a living?”
“She’s a nurse anesthetist,” I answered.
Winnie’s eyes went wide. “They make at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, Steel.”
My brows went up. “Yeah?”
Winnie nodded. “Oh yeah, if not more. She has to be smart, too, if she got a job like that. She probably has a pretty good pension going herself. Maybe lay claim to half of that, too. You might also bring up the fact that alimony works both ways. You could actually wind up being the one who gets it since you make less money than her.”
I stared at Winnie in surprise. “You’re devious. How do you know all of this?”
Winnie’s lips thinned. “Just went through it, remember?”
Understanding dawned. “I…”
The front door slammed and Cody ran out, his backpack on his back but the zipper hanging wide open. Each step he took he lost something out of it.
First his folder. Then a library book. A sweatshirt. Papers.
I started to laugh and nodded my head toward him. “Check out your boy.”
Winnie turned, saw what was happening, and shook her head.
“Hey, boyo!”
Cody stopped and looked up. “Yeah?”
“You’re losing your stuff.”
Cody looked behind him where Winnie had gestured, and he threw his hands up in the air. “Awww, man!”
Chuckling under my breath, I waited for Winnie to turn back around before I said, “I’ll call her now.”
The front door slammed again, and Conleigh’s stomping feet could be heard on the porch.
I looked up to see that she was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that said “Buck” on it. I shook my head and returned my eyes to her mother.
Winnie sighed and fished her keys out of her front pocket. “You do that. I gotta get these kids to school.”
“Have fun at work.”
She held her thumb up. “Will do. You, too.”
My lips twitched as I watched her walk away. Then I pulled my phone out and placed a call to Lizzibeth.
“I’m not budging on the alimony or the car,” she greeted me.
I watched Winnie start her car and then Cody and Conleigh pile in before she backed out and accelerated down the street.
Then I went about explaining what was going to happen now.
“Is that what you want me to do?”
“Those horses are mine. They were mine before we married, and you don’t like horses. You even said so multiple times when we were married.”
“I don’t remember saying that,” I agreed. “But I’m finding a sudden fondness for them now.”
“Fuck you,” Lizzibeth snarled.
“Sign the fucking papers.”
Then I hung up and got into my cruiser and drove to work with a huge fucking smile on my face.
Chapter 13
Being an ugly woman is like being a man. You’re going to have to work.
-Things not to say to a woman
Winnie
The creeper was in the ER, and it only took one second after he gave me his name for me to understand exactly why the man had given me the creeps in the first place.
“Anderson Munnick.”
I shuddered as I processed his name.
“And can you tell me why you’re here …” I trailed off as the name finally sank home.
Anderson Munnick. The man that had followed me home. The same man that I’d testified against.
The same man that had been in prison for ten years.
The same man that I was supposed to be notified about if and when he ever got out of prison.
Ten fucking years.
He only had to serve ten fucking years? What the absolute fuck?
And then the fear started to sink into my bones.
I couldn’t defend myself. Conleigh was a young girl of age. She was fucking beautiful. She looked exactly like me but still in her prime. The exact same type of girl Anderson Munnick liked.
My stomach convulsed.
I stood up so fast that my chair kept going and hit the wall behind me.
“Get out,” I hissed.
“I’m not getting out,” he disagreed, leaning back calmly in his seat. “My, my, have you changed. You put on weight. Tisk-tisk.”