Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 55599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
I laugh at his flawed logic. “I’m not wasted.”
“You’re not sober.”
“That’s the truth. If you bolt on me right now, I don’t think I could catch you.”
His smile is wry. “I hate to break it to you, but there’s no chance you could ever catch me in a race unless I wanted you to.”
“Hey, I played volleyball in middle school.”
His deep, full-throated laugh makes me warm all over. “Can’t compete with that, Nosy. You’re a fucking boss.”
I turn up the air conditioning, swearing to stick to one drink only when we go out in the future. Or even better, none.
“You can talk to me, you know,” Dane says.
“I talk to you all the time.”
“No, I mean back at the bar when you said you talked to Lucas because I don’t care. That’s not true.”
I close my eyes, wishing everything would stop spinning. “I lost my biggest account at work today.”
“What happened?”
Usually, I protect Jane. I don’t know if it’s because of the alcohol or because she took away my client and didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me, but I don’t feel like making her sound better than she is.
“My boss is also my aunt. She’s my dad’s sister and she always hated my mom before my mom died, so she treats me like shit. She took it away because she could. Just like I’m here working twenty-four seven on a job no one else wants.”
“I’m sorry.”
My laugh is bitter. “The worst part is that I still want her approval so badly. I hardly have any family left. So I try like a fucking idiot to make her proud of me.”
“You’re not a fucking idiot.”
“Sometimes I am.”
“Karma will catch up with her.”
I scoff. “Bullshit. If karma was a thing, my car wouldn’t have been repossessed. My mom wouldn’t have died.”
“Hey--”
I cut him off. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
After pausing for a couple of seconds, he says, “Okay.”
He doesn’t say anything else. We get back to his place and I go straight to my bedroom to curl up with Mr. Darcy.
There’s a one-hundred-percent chance I’m going to be miserably ill and hungover on the flight. I fall asleep in my clothes, needing to catch five hours of sleep before we have to leave for the airport.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Josie
“Hey, I’ve been thinking.”
I just woke up and wiped away my drool, and instead of responding to Dane, I squint at him.
“How long was I asleep?”
“The whole flight. We’re descending.”
“Wow.”
I sit up straight, my neck protesting after being in a weird position for a long time. Dane asked the team doctor to give me something for my air sickness before we boarded the plane, and whatever he gave me did the trick.
“I didn’t get sick at all.”
I can hardly believe it. Instead of puking into a bag and feeling like death, I slept. I actually feel pretty decent. My hangover headache is even gone.
“What was in that drink you gave me this morning?” I ask Dane.
“That was my juju juice. I can’t disclose the recipe, but it kicks the shit out of hangovers every time.”
He does a ninja karate chop with his hands and nods.
“Juju juice,” I say, glad I drank it without question.
I glance over at him, wondering if I should give up on trying to figure him out. He can be a dick, but he can also be thoughtful.
“Anyway, back to my idea,” he says. “You should quit your job.”
I clear my throat and look around, still not feeling completely awake.
“Can I get some water?”
“Yeah, we’ll get you some water,” he says impatiently. “But did you hear me? You need to quit your job.”
I live paycheck to paycheck on my salary. A seven-figure earner like him just doesn’t get what it means to struggle.
“I can’t do that.”
“Yeah, you can. Just call your aunt and tell her to shove it up her ass.”
I glare at him. “That way you can get rid of me and I can live in a van down by the river?”
His jaw drops an inch. “You watch SNL?”
“Of course.”
He lowers his brows, looking skeptical. “Favorite skit ever?”
I consider, because that’s like asking a mother to choose her favorite child.
“I can narrow it down to ‘Schweddy Balls,’ ‘Dick in a Box’ and ‘Debbie Downer.’ Don’t ask me to choose between the three.”
His brows lower even farther. “What about ‘More Cowbell’? ‘Wayne’s World’?”
“‘Wayne’s World’ is in my top five. I’m not a big fan of ‘More Cowbell.’”
He arches his brows and puts his palms out in mock surrender. “Clearly you haven’t watched it enough times. I’ll have the videographer put it on a loop for you to watch on our next flight.”
“Sounds like an excellent use of her time.”
He laughs a single note and nudges my shoulder with his. “Last season, she made a looped video with a clip of Dalton tripping and falling while we were all walking through the tunnel at our arena. One of his hands landed on a dude’s crotch and they were both mortified. We watched it on the DVD players on our buses for the rest of the season.”