Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72647 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
“How’s it going?” a deep voice asked. “You must be Aidan’s friend from Australia.”
He glanced over, and there was a man in dark leathers, a black mask on his face. Nate was wearing one of those himself. The face mask felt weird, but he felt comfortable in leathers. Putting on a set of leathers helped him transition his mindset. It allowed him to let go of his everyday worries.
When he put on leathers and walked into a club, he felt like he belonged.
So why hadn’t he found the familiar peace here tonight?
Nate held a hand out. “Nate Carter.”
“Seth Taggart,” the other man said, shaking his hand.
“Ah, you must be one of Ian’s.” Nate stepped back, settling against the railing that demarked the lounge area from the dungeon. The lounge was on the second floor, so whoever was occupying the space could look out over the dungeon.
A bloke could stare out over the sea of gorgeous subs and wonder why none of them called to him.
“Yep, he’s my dad. I hear you’re his new hire,” Seth said, taking a sip of the beer in his hand. “Good luck. All of my siblings and most of my cousins have worked at McKay-Taggart at one point or another. Mostly as summer jobs. I lasted maybe a month before I begged to wash dishes at my uncle’s restaurant. My dad is a sarcastic asshole. I love him but I cannot work for the man.”
“I suppose I’m used to the type. Spent some time in the Army,” Nate replied. “Also, I’m in the bodyguard unit, so I don’t see much of the upstairs folk. At least not yet. My boss is Tessa Hawthorne.”
Seth nodded. “Yeah. She took over when Wade Rycroft got an executive job at Lodge Corp. To say my dad was unhappy would be like saying a nuclear bomb causes a little mess. At least they didn’t take his assistant. I don’t know what my father would do without Genny Rycroft. But Tessa’s awesome. She’s much easier to get along with than my father. The key with my dad is to pretend like nothing bothers you. Ever. Nod and agree with him, and then go do whatever you were going to do in the first place. It’s how I survived my childhood.”
Nate had to chuckle at the thought. “I grew up around a group very much like the one here in Dallas.”
“That’s right. Aidan was telling me you spent most of your childhood in London, right? Your dad worked for Damon Knight,” Seth said. “I’m sure we’ve met at some point.”
“Probably, though we were much younger. We moved back to Australia when I was eleven, and our visits here became more infrequent.” He’d lost touch with some of his closest friends from childhood. He’d heard Oliver Knight was working with his dad. He’d been close to Oliver and his brother, Archie, and their sister, Samantha, had been around Elodie’s age.
It was his mom’s relationship with Avery O’Donnell that had kept him close to Aidan, and even they had gotten distant when he’d gone into the Army and Aidan had gone into college and then medical school.
It was odd how easily they’d fallen back in.
“Yeah, life catches up to you, doesn’t it? I live close to a bunch of the kids I grew up with, but sometimes I only seem to see them on nights like this. Starting this club actually kept us all together. Huh. I always thought it was because my sisters and their friends were perverts,” Seth said thoughtfully. “Now I have to wonder. Not about Kala, but Kenzie might have thought this was a way to keep us all together.”
“Are you the older son or the younger one?” Aidan had been on an opposite schedule the week since Nate had gotten in, and honestly, he’d been trying to adjust to his new American time zone. It would be good to start putting names to faces.
Like Daisy O’Donnell, who he would meet later tonight when he got home.
“Older,” Seth explained. “You might have seen my younger brother, Travis. He was the dude asleep on the couch in the locker room.”
He’d wondered about the bloke snoring away earlier in the evening. The men’s locker room wasn’t elegant, but it had its charms, including a big living room area with a TV and game systems and a couple of couches, one of which had been occupied by a sleeping Taggart. “Is he okay?”
Seth stared out over the dungeon floor as though looking for someone. “It depends on your definition of the word okay. He’s a third-year law student and a single dad with an infant. This is the night my parents agreed to watch his son so he could have some form of a social life, and what does he do? He falls asleep in the locker room during the wildest party of the year. Didn’t even manage to get a beer in. I knew he likely wouldn’t indulge in the sex part of the evening, but I thought he would at least get a little drunk.”