Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
“Better than my daughter, apparently, because my daughter has not called me back in four days.”
I close my eyes, wincing over the hurt in his tone. “I know, and I’m sorry. It’s been so busy at work and I dropped the ball.”
My dad sighs and I hear the guilt in that breath sound. “Oh, I’m not complaining, Josie. I’m just being overbearing, I guess.”
He sounds sad and it tears me up. I’m so happy he moved to be near me after Mom died and we’re as thick as thieves in an ordinary Josie world. I almost get killed and then get swept off my feet by a man, and I’ve left my dad in the dust.
“You’re not overbearing and this is all on me. I just got caught up in… well, again… work is a little overwhelming right now.”
“Anything I can help with?” he asks, and I can feel his excitement over the prospect. I’ve bounced many things off him, and why wouldn’t I? His entire career was in intelligence gathering and he’s one of the smartest men I know.
The urge to tell him everything makes my knees weak. He’d have ideas, probably ones I’d never be able to come up with on my own.
But I don’t.
I can’t worry him about my safety. He’d absolutely become overbearing if he knew what had happened to me. He’d do more than Finn insisting I go away. My dad would hog-tie me, throw me in the back of his car and drive me to the other side of the United States.
I can’t have him worrying and I can’t have him impeding me, so I do something that I did earlier today to my teammates. I lie. “No, nothing you can help me with. A big tech client wants a counterintel assessment and I’ve been head down on it. A lot of boring computer crunching.”
Leave it to my dad to know me better than anyone, as well as the intelligence community. “Head down on a counterintel assessment doesn’t usually require four days of not returning your father’s calls.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t have an overbearing boss like Malik demanding results,” I say, wincing at that lie and sending up a silent apology. Malik is the furthest thing from overbearing.
“All right,” he says reluctantly, but I can tell he’s not buying it.
“How about we aim for breakfast this weekend? Pancakes at Glo’s? I’ll buy.”
My dad chuckles. “You do know the way to your old man’s heart.”
“Because you are my heart,” I murmur.
“Ah, honey. You’re my heart too. Okay, you’ve sweet-talked me off the ledge. Text me the time to meet at Glo’s and I’ll be there.”
I have to hold back my sigh of relief that he’s this easily pacified. He’s normally a tougher sell. “Sounds like a plan. Love you, Dad.”
“Love you too, Josie-bug.”
He hangs up and while I should be steeped in relief to have put him off just a bit, I’m deeply, profoundly aware of the size of what I am not telling him.
That I almost got killed, that now I’m a witness in a federal trafficking case, that said trafficker and his men are looking for me and oh yeah, I might be falling for a criminal.
I haven’t lied to my father about anything significant since I was sixteen years old and now I’m lying to him about my entire life.
The kitchen timer beeps.
I cross to the oven and with my hands protected by mitts, baste the roast. I set the time for another fifteen minutes and check the clock.
Finn should be here soon.
CHAPTER 13
Finn
Josie’s little bungalow is lit up like a warm hug against the waning dusk. I worked so hard all my life to accumulate my money so that I would never know the poverty I grew up in and so that I could forget about sleeping on the streets. But whenever I’ve referenced my big house on the Sound, it’s always just been “a house.”
“Come over to my house for a cookout,” I’d say to Marcus or, “I’m having that delivered to my house,” I’d say to someone else.
But looking at the small abode where Josie lives, the first word that comes to mind is home and that has nothing to do with the square footage, but rather who’s standing inside.
I shake my head, somewhat disturbed by such notions, because I don’t consider myself to be overly soft in that way.
Still… I can’t deny the pull I’m feeling to the very concept of such normalcy.
I ring the bell and my heartbeat quickens as I see her coming through the frosted glass insets of her front door.
And there she is, in a dress so provocative, feminine and sexy that my mouth goes dry.
It crosses my mind only briefly, the smell of garlic and rosemary, but that dress. It plunges in the front and I can see the outline of her legs through the sheer material backlit by the living room lamps.