Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 76000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
I’m not going to make a scene in this restaurant and embarrass my friends, so I wait until we reach the driver’s side of my truck, and I turn to him.
“No, I’m not saying that I want to skip dinner so we can have sex. I’m saying I’m not interested in anything with you, Eric. This date was a mistake.”
His handsome face twists into an angry snarl.
“What are you, some kind of fucking tease?”
“No, I’m an intelligent woman who knows an arrogant, narcissistic asshole when she sees one. You can go back to New York, Eric.”
I turn to open the door, but he yanks on my shoulder, pulling me back around to face him.
“Listen, you bitch—”
“No, you listen. Take your hands off me. I didn’t give you permission to touch me.”
“You small-town, white-trash hillbilly, I’ll fucking touch you all I want.”
He grabs for my face, to cup it in a twisted charade of a sweet kiss, and I pull back and punch him in the stomach as hard as I can.
He doubles over in pain, the wind knocked right out of him.
I lean over him. “I said don’t fucking touch me.”
“Gonna,” he wheezes in a breath, “sue you.”
Now that makes me laugh. “You go right ahead, sweetie.”
Eric straightens, and the anger shooting from his eyes tells me that I might be in for a fight—a physical fight, which is fine by me.
“Go ahead,” I urge. “You want to put your hands where they don’t belong again, Eric? Go ahead, and see what that gets you.”
He looks like he wants to tear me apart, but instead, he throws out, “Fuck you, bitch,” before stomping off to his rental car and peeling out of the parking lot.
I let out a long breath, shake my head, and turn to my truck, freezing when I see Apollo standing on the other side of it. His jaw is tight, every muscle in his face set in angry lines, and his body looks like he was poised and ready to come save me from that asshole.
Then he relaxes and just watches me with those dark eyes.
Shit.
“Were you going to save the damsel in distress?”
“I don’t see one of those.” He looks around and then back at me. Anger still hovers in his eyes. “You handled yourself very well.”
“No city boy is ever going to get one over on me. What a prick.”
“Yeah. He’s a prick. You okay?”
“Mostly, I’m pissed off. He didn’t hurt me physically. Jesus, I didn’t even have time to order a drink before he pissed me off so badly that I got up and left. He thought that was an invitation to come with me.”
“Sounds like he’s an idiot.”
“Yeah.” I blow out a deep sigh. “I guess I’ll go home and wash off this war paint.”
Apollo frowns. “Seems like a waste to me. Why don’t you and I go inside and have dinner? I’m starving, and you have to have worked up an appetite with that right jab to the gut.”
My lips twitch. “Yeah, I guess I did. I was looking forward to Mira’s meatloaf.”
“And I’d say you’ve earned it. Come on, Juniper, let’s eat.”
I walk around the truck, and when Apollo holds his hand out for mine, I eye it warily.
“Truce, for tonight. No funny stuff,” he says, still holding out his hand.
“Truce.” I take it, and he gives mine a little reassuring squeeze. “I can do that.”
When we walk inside, Darla looks a little startled and then worried. “June, are you okay? I saw you hurry out, but—”
“I’m great,” I say, offering her a reassuring smile. “We’d like a table for two, please. Not the same one from before.”
“You got it.” She winks at me and leads us to a table on the opposite wall. “Just water?”
“No, I want a dirty martini with three blue-cheese-stuffed olives, please.”
Darla laughs. “You got it, babe. How about you, Apollo?”
“I think I’ll be the one to stick with water for now.”
When she leaves, I take a long, deep breath, not missing the way Apollo’s eyes skim over my outfit and hair.
“If you tell me that I clean up nicely, I’ll punch you in the stomach.”
That makes him smile. “You look pretty tonight, but you were no less pretty this afternoon.”
That takes me off guard, so I frown and glance out the window to the darkness beyond. I know that there’s a view of the ocean here, but it’s too dark to see it.
“What did he say?” I glance his way again, and he keeps talking. “To make you get up and leave?”
“Well, aside from being a jerk in general, I didn’t like the way he spoke about Huckleberry Bay.”
That makes Apollo’s eyebrows climb in surprise, so I settle in and tell him about what Eric had to say, pausing only to place my order for meatloaf with Darla.