Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 133213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 666(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 666(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
“Good for you,” she said and couldn’t keep the sour note from her tone.
“There’s room for two,” he offered. “Or I could stay with you.”
She hadn’t let Aidan stay with her. She certainly wasn’t about to invite Tristan in. She slammed the door in his face.
“All right, then,” he said. “I’ll be out here doing the Taggart tradition proud.”
Carys turned off the lights and forced herself into a lonely bed.
* * * *
Tristan came awake suddenly with the knowledge he wasn’t alone. Adrenaline flooded his system as his brain came back online.
He reached for his gun, kept hidden under the pillow, and brought it up.
“Hello.” Daisy O’Donnell sat cross-legged at the end of the torture device the twins called a pull-out sofa bed.
Fuck. He was at the twins’ place. He wasn’t out in the field. He wasn’t The Jester here. He was Tristan Dean-Miles. He was himself. Whoever that was anymore.
He’d offered to stay on watch when Aidan had come to relieve him at four this morning, but Aidan had insisted, and his best friend had obviously had enough, so he’d given up his fairly comfy spot for this…punishment of a “bed.”
He pulled the gun away and forced his body to an upright position, taking a long breath to banish the fear response. “Sorry.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Daisy said with a wave of her well-manicured hand. Aidan’s sis was a few years younger and what Aidan liked to call a walking ball of chaos. She had good intentions, but things went haywire around the gorgeous brunette. Today she was dressed in shorts and a pink halter top, her hair piled in a messy bun. She’d ditched her shoes at some point, or at least he thought she had. Daisy might have taken to the barefoot life. “It’s totally not the first time I’ve had a gun in my face, so don’t worry about it. I do not take it personally.”
He was actually surprised she’d managed to sneak up on him. He was a light sleeper. Since the episode in Taiwan, he was definitely concerned with people attacking him while he slept. It was the very incident he’d mentioned to Carys the night before where his black belt had come in handy. “What are you doing here? Aidan’s sleeping…”
“In front of Carys’s door,” she said with a wistful grin. “It’s romantic.”
“Well, he’s taking his turn.” He felt the need to point out Aidan wasn’t the only one watching out for Carys. “I took the earlier shift.”
She shrugged, the action making the massive gold hoops in her ears shake. “Well, I’m sure that was easier. It would be better if he was in bed with her, but I can understand why she’s upset. I have recently had to deal with men not treating me like the grown-up, capable woman I am. And I’m here because I thought we should talk. We haven’t talked in a while, have we, Tristan?”
He wasn’t sure they’d ever really talked. She was his best friend’s kid sister. Daisy was close to Carys and to her brother, but it had been years since he’d been in a space with the younger O’Donnell. The truth was Daisy kind of scared him. “No, we haven’t. I’m not sure what we would talk about.”
Were there cameras on him? Was this some kind of prank?
He felt…weird. Like someone was watching him. He glanced around the small room the twins and Lou used as an office. Brianna, too, now. His sister was living here, and she didn’t want to talk to him at all. She’d laughed in his face when he’d suggested he could sleep in her room on her large-enough-for-the-two-of-them, comfortable bed. It wasn’t like they’d never gotten shoved into a small space together. They were brother and sister. How many times had she gotten scared and spent the night in his room? They’d survived a childhood together, but would she do her brother’s back a solid? Nope.
Something was definitely wrong but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Every instinct he had was tingling, but it might be the cloud of craziness that followed Daisy around.
“You can’t think of anything? Not a single thing?”
He sighed. Daisy could be relentless. “You want to talk about Aidan?”
She nodded like she was thrilled a toddler had figured out how to solve a problem. “Very good, Tris. Yes, I thought it would be good to talk about my brother. We should throw some Carys talk in, too. Lucas and I had a long discussion after the whole helicopter thing. I think I convinced him not to poison you.”
Carys’s brother used to be one of his best friends. “Poison?”
“Well, he knows you can probably take him in a fight, so he’s using his talents,” Daisy said like they were discussing something normal and ordinary and not his death by food. “Like I said, I think I talked him out of it, but like me, Lucas takes his sister’s happiness seriously. Now Kyle and David are another story. You would think David would be the reasonable one, but he’s studied a lot of history.”