Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 55769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
“Ugh,” she groaned.
Darius turned his head and grinned at her. “What?”
“Look at them,” she said, throwing out her hand. “I wish they would just get together already.”
Darius looked, but he knew what she was talking about. He’d been watching this shit play out for a long time.
Indy was flirting with Brian Archer, doing this to rile Lee. Although she was too into doing it that she didn’t notice she was achieving her goal: Lee was staring at Archer like he wanted to rip his head off.
Indy had the patience of a gnat. If she’d stop trying so hard to get Lee to notice her, she’d notice he was all about her, and she just had to wait for him to make his move.
Good or bad, guys needed it like that.
At least, guys like Lee.
“She’s fourteen,” Darius pointed out.
“So?” Ally, also fourteen, asked.
“He’s gotta wait at least until she’s eighteen.”
“Why?”
Darius fake leered at her.
“Gross!” she shouted.
Darius started laughing.
She put her hands to her ears. “La, la, la, not thinking about that.”
“You’re the one who came over here, complainin’ about them getting together.”
“Yeah, Darius,” she said his name like “duh,” and he fought busting a gut laughing.
Shit, Ally Nightingale was funny.
He loved her. It was a brother-sister type of love, but even if he was seventeen and she was fourteen, he felt it in a way he knew it’d never die.
“But that’s about me,” she concluded.
Now he was confused. “What?”
“They get together, stay together and get married, she’s my real sister, and, like, we’ll spend Christmases and vacations together.”
“You already do that.”
“Well, some other guy takes her and whisks her off to some boondocks, I won’t get to do that anymore, will I?” she returned.
“India Savage is never gonna live in the boondocks,” he replied. “And she’s never gonna leave you.”
Or Lee, he didn’t add, but if anyone knew that, Ally did.
“Whatever,” she muttered. “We need someone to go out and score some beer.”
“We’re in your mom and dad’s basement.”
“And?”
“And your dad is a cop and he’s sitting upstairs, watching TV.”
She rolled her eyes.
Rarely did Ally let that get in her way, except when she was under her father’s roof.
He had this thought as he noticed movement across the room.
He shifted his attention there and watched Hank, down from school in Boulder for the weekend, stick his head in the door. He whistled then gestured to Lee. Lee stopped staring murder at Archer and went to the door. Hank repeated this with Eddie. Eddie quit jacking around pretending not to flirt with Jaclyn Johnson while still flirting so good, he was going to get in her pants soon, and he followed Lee.
Darius waited for his summons. Hank’s face had been weird.
What was weirder was the summons didn’t come.
The door closed behind Eddie and that was it.
“Sooooooo,” Ally drew that out, also drawing Darius’s attention. “Malia Clark. You two are hot and heavy, hunh?”
“Gonna marry her,” Darius said without hesitation, and he shook off the weird feeling he got from the look he saw on Hank’s face, the fact Lee and Eddie got the call, but he didn’t, and he was never left out, and he grinned big at Ally’s huge eyes.
Mostly, he grinned big thinking about Malia.
“She’s smart. She’s classy. She’s beautiful,” he explained.
“Check. Check. And check. But, dude…married?”
“Not like…now. After I get back from Yale and she finishes getting her law degree. Okay, maybe before she finishes that. We can get married when she’s in law school.”
Ally stretched out her lips. “Yikes. You have it all planned out.”
He did.
His dad told him he knew, the minute he met Darius’s mom. He knew that was the only woman for him.
Darius didn’t get it when his dad said it.
Until he met Malia.
One thing he did get, and always got, was that he was totally like his dad.
“I like you two together,” Ally said quietly. “You’re sweet. She’s sweet. You’re good-looking, or as good-looking as my brother from another mother can be.”
He shot her another grin.
“She’s gorgeous. Perfect match,” she finished.
“Yeah,” he agreed, distracted because the door opened again, and Eddie came through.
But he didn’t fully come in.
He stepped to the side and Lee filled the doorway.
They both had eyes to him, and he liked the looks on their faces a whole lot less than the one that was on Hank’s.
“Hey, bro, can you come upstairs a second?” Lee called.
“What’s going on?” Ally asked.
“Don’t know,” Darius said, pushing out of the couch.
Ally came up with him.
“Just Darius, yeah, cariño?” Eddie said to Ally, all gentle like.
And…damn.
Eddie didn’t pull out the cariño for anybody.
Ally must have felt that too, because for once, Ally did what someone asked rather than doing whatever the hell she wanted.
Lee walked partly up the steps to get out of his way before Darius stopped in the small landing at the foot of the stairs at the door to the rec room. Eddie came into the space, crowding him and closing the door behind him.