Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Wait, with all the rest, I hadn’t noticed his lips.
Dayum.
He had nice lips (or at least the lower one was fine, the upper one was hidden by the mustache part of his beard).
Okay, generally, the man was good-looking. Scowling, he was also good-looking. Stoic, same.
Smiling, be still my heart.
And it wasn’t even a full smile.
I came to when Luna snapped her fingers in my face. “Earth to Raye, pissed-off best friend in the room.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“What? Are you a cop?” she asked Cap.
“No,” he answered.
She swung her head to me, brows raised in a silent demand for an explanation.
“He’s a PI. Elsie Fay’s grandparents hired his firm. He was kinda in on the, um…rescue operation.”
“Rescue operation?” she asked.
Here we go.
“Um…” I didn’t quite answer.
“You told me you were just looking in his windows,” she snapped.
“Well, in one, I saw Elsie Fay.”
“Just hanging out, watching some Wild Kratts with her abductor?” she asked sarcastically.
“What’s Wild Kratts?” I asked back.
“It’s a kid show,” she told me.
“How do you know kids’ shows?”
“Hello?” she called. “I have a nephew and a niece since Dream is working on making baby daddies of as many dudes as she can divest of their sperm.”
Oh yeah, right.
Luna’s older sister, Dream, was an interesting one. I wasn’t sure she resided on our same planet.
Then again, Luna’s parents were a lot like Dream, though a little more down to earth.
Luna hadn’t entirely fallen far from that tree, but she didn’t live in a house in Tempe obscured by an overgrown garden, owning and fostering more cats and dogs than was probably legal, and using her spare time to march in every protest organized, or standing outside grocery stores asking for people to sign petitions.
Nor did she flit from dude to dude, casually getting knocked up, and having babies she treasured who she put in cloth diapers because the disposable ones didn’t biodegrade (or whatever).
The diaper bucket at Dream’s house featured prominently in a number of my nightmares. Just sayin’.
“Raye, I’ve been worried sick,” Luna said, taking me out of my reverie about why, exactly, she didn’t put Jacques in that Tiffany’s dog collar.
“Okay, I looked in more than his front window,” I admitted.
She threw her hands up, stared at the ceiling, then turned to Cap.
“And you fed into her crap?” she demanded.
“When he’d thrown her on the floor of his dining room, she’d stun-gunned him, and he collapsed on top of her, Mace and I interceded.”
I was wrong earlier.
Now, here we go.
I felt my eyes get big and my mouth cried, “Oh my God, dude! Total snitch!”
Luna turned to me and yelled, “You confronted the guy?”
“He was headed in Elsie Fay’s direction.”
“Did you have your phone on you?” Luna asked.
“Luna, I—”
“Did you?” she pressed.
“Yes.”
“And you know what hitting the digits nine one one will get you?”
I looked to Cap.
He had his arms crossed on his chest and an expression on his face that teetered between entertained and tacit agreement with Luna.
“So, no help from you, then,” I groused.
He looked to Luna and “helped.” “My bad about Lenny’s. She’d left her wallet in her car, so I covered it for her.”
“That isn’t exactly help,” I informed him.
His lips flirted with that smile again.
I liked it again.
Someone, shoot me.
I turned back to my friend. “I’m fine. He’s fine. Mace is fine. Most importantly, Elsie Fay is back with her parents and she’s fine.”
Or she would be if they bypassed religion and took her to see a child psychologist. Jesus was good for a whole host of things, and he might be the son of God, but he was also a carpenter, not a counselor.
“Did you also take her by CVS and get her tampons?” Luna asked Cap.
Right.
I was done.
I went to my bed, and making sure my robe stayed closed in all the important places, I fell backward on it.
“No,” Cap drawled. “We missed that errand.”
“Okay then,” Luna said to Cap. “She’s fine. You’re fine, in more ways than one, by the way. Whoever this Mace is, is fine. Elsie Fay is too. Someone needs to go to CVS, because it’s two days and counting, but that’s not gonna be me. I’ve had enough of Raye’s harebrained deviltry for one night. I’m outta here.”
Told you she had a good vocabulary.
I sensed her walking away and knew she was doing it when she bid, “See you at work tomorrow.”
“See you,” I mumbled.
She made no noise since she was wearing a pair of her beat-up Toms, but I heard the front door close.
Then I felt the bed depress as Cap sat, his hip by my hip.
He leaned into a hand on the other side of me so all I could see was him.
My brain took this unfortunate moment to remind me how much I liked his hands.
Also, his beard.
“So, you can tell me tomorrow when I take you out to dinner about that shit on your wall,” he declared. “Now, tell me what this music is.”