Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
He shrugged. “Not sure.”
He wasn’t sure? Did he not have a job to get back to? Was his flight a one-way?
“Is she in college?”
He smirked and shook his head. “No, she’s in politics. Works at the White House.”
Well, damn. I had not expected that. How old was she? Better yet, how old was he? He couldn’t be older than forty-five. But if his daughter was out of college, then…jeez. Was he fifty?
“Here you go,” the barista said, snapping my attention off Hale and to the drink the younger guy was holding out for me.
I thanked him, taking it, then turned back to Hale.
“You do not look old enough to have a daughter out of college,” I said bluntly.
He cut his eyes at me. “I turned fifty last month.”
Oh. Wow. He must have sold his soul to stop aging, like I was sure Jared Leto had—at least, that was my theory on him. Hale could also be a vampire. But I wasn’t suggesting that out loud. I’d sound crazy.
“Is she your only child?” I asked as we walked back out onto the street and toward his Escalade.
“Nope, she’s the middle. I got a twenty-eight-year-old son and one who is twenty-five.”
He didn’t wear a wedding band—I’d checked that already—but I had also once believed another man wasn’t married because he didn’t wear a wedding band, and now I was a flight attendant. That dark thought brought me back to reality.
“I would have never guessed that,” I replied.
“Thanks,” he said, then glanced over at me. “So, the other place you work, is it like a Boys & Girls Club thing?”
He was changing the subject. He didn’t like being asked questions. Interesting.
“I volunteer,” I corrected him. “After the Bell is kind of like that, yes. It’s a great option for kids in foster care. Not all those homes are places where they get help or even decent meals. The kids who need extra attention or just need to feel wanted come there. Reggie and Belinda have made it a home of sorts. I wish I’d had somewhere like that to go as a kid.”
“Were you a foster kid?” he asked.
“No, I wasn’t in foster care, but I might as well have been.” Hopefully he didn’t ask me more about that comment. I shouldn’t have said it.
Instead he walked over to the passenger side and opened the door for me. I did need a little help with my balance while holding my coffee this time, and I wasn’t as awkward as I took his hand and stepped up. He closed the door and walked back around. I took that time to appreciate the man’s appeal. Knowing he had kids made him seem less dangerous. But he still had an edge about him that made me uneasy.
Eight
Hale
“No, I wasn’t in foster care, but I might as well have been.” That response, spoken so softly and hesitantly, was the reason I had made the call to Wilder Jones to pull a thorough background check on Bay Fox.
Wilder worked in Ocala, directly with Blaise Hughes—the boss of the Southern Mafia. Wilder was the computer genius who could break into anything and track a son of a bitch better than the fucking government.
I heard the lock slide in the door of my daughter’s apartment before it opened. She was home early. Smiling, I folded the report I had pulled on Bay last night and tucked it into my pocket. Opal was observant, and she’d ask about what I had immediately.
I’d spent most of the day dealing with the reason I was here. Not Bay. But once I returned to Opal’s, I had let my thoughts go back to the woman.
Time to shut that down. Tonight, I wanted to spend some time with my daughter. We’d had very little of that since I’d arrived here.
“Hey, Dad,” she said, slipping out of her heels and walking across the white ceramic floor and onto one of the many blue rugs that she had around the area.
“Thought I’d take you to dinner. What are you feeling? Please don’t say sushi,” I told her.
She laughed, already knowing I wasn’t a fan of that shit. “I was going to make you dinner tonight.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You’re gonna cook?”
She rolled her eyes and sank down onto the white leather sofa beside me, moving one of her colorful throw pillows out of the way. “I was going to order some things from a market down the street that prepares the meal and I stick it in the oven.”
That sounded more like it.
“Ah, well, don’t and let me take you to dinner. No mess to clean up.”
She rolled her head as she stretched out her long legs in front of her. “Okay, you twisted my arm.”
She reminded me of her mother at this age. I might not have loved my wife the way a husband should love the woman he married, but she’d been a beauty. Which was why I’d knocked her up and we’d gotten hitched.