Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
“It’s the job, sweetheart,” he replied, again distracted.
“Okay. Talk soon,” I said quickly. “Bye, Harry.”
“Later, baby,” he muttered and then rang off.
But I blinked.
Baby?
Oh my God!
Handsome Harry Moran called me baby.
It stunk Harry’s Sunday began like this, but oddly, it also felt right, because it was him, it was what he did, he was fulfilling his calling.
It absolutely did not stink that he called me baby and I got to cook for him that night.
I lay in bed, mentally scanned my inventory of food, decided on a menu and also decided, if I was going to bake bread, I needed to get going.
This was when my phone vibrated.
I looked down at it, expecting Ronnie or one of the girls.
It was an unknown caller.
With all that was going on, I’d been picking up the unknown calls, just in case. Of course, this meant I got a lot of marketers and other people whose sad job it was to waste your time and annoy you.
I couldn’t imagine, if there was news about Mom and Dad, Harry wouldn’t intercept it and give it to me himself.
But you never knew.
So I braced and took the call.
“Hello?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I shot to sitting in bed.
“Willie?” I whispered.
“Yeah, it’s Willie, your fucking husband,” he clipped.
“I—”
“You’re dating a cop?”
“Willie—”
“We’re a thing, Lillian. We’re the thing.”
I stared unseeing at my bedclothes because…
Was he insane?
“We’re divorced,” I snapped.
“Not my doing. Hello, woman. I did everything I could to stop your ass from pulling that off.”
Oh my God!
“We were together for six months,” I reminded him.
“Also not my doing.”
“Yeah, because I kicked you out,” I bit off.
“And again, not my doing,” he gritted.
“You’ve been married twice since.”
“Keeping tabs on me?” he drawled.
Lord!
“Leave me alone, Willie,” I demanded. “We’re over. We’ve been over for a decade and a half. We’re so over, you can’t describe it as over, because we didn’t even begin.”
“Oh, we began.”
“Nope, I’m not doing this,” I stated. “You’re the past. A depressing, stupid past. And I’m beyond it.”
“Lil—”
I didn’t hear what he was going to say because I disconnected, then I blocked him.
Flipping heck.
Was he really going to do this?
After I had the best date of my life with maybe the best guy I ever met and in the middle of maybe (probably) learning my parents were dead?
No, not dead. Murdered.
Yes, he was going to do this. Because he was Willie Zowkower.
And worse, I was probably going to have to tell Ronnie and (eek!) George about it.
Even worse!
Harry and I were just beginning, but even so, I knew if I didn’t tell him Willie had called, he’d be upset.
“Dang, damn, shit,” I whispered. Then, “Ugh!” I grunted.
With that, I threw back the covers and pulled myself out of bed.
It was time to make bread.
TWELVE
Planted My Flag
Lillian
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when I opened the door to Harry.
He was out of uniform, wearing jeans and a sweater that were more casual than what he wore last night, but no less attractive.
I didn’t stare like I did (mortifyingly) the night before.
I was preoccupied by the pinched skin around his eyes.
He noticed me noticing and tried to throw me off the scent by rounding my waist with an arm and dropping a soft, hey-there kiss on my lips.
He smelled great and his lips felt even better, but his attempt didn’t work.
When he tried to pull away, I curled my fingers into his sweater.
“That bad?” I asked, knowing the answer because of the word “fatality.”
He tried to throw me off the scent again by saying, “I don’t think there’s a better smell in the world than baking bread, except your perfume.”
This had me melting into him, but I tipped my head to the side, a nonverbal demand for him to share.
“Lillian, it’s a lot,” he whispered.
“Can I take this opportunity to remind you that my parents disappeared sixteen years ago, and I had help, I had support, but I survived it. I pivoted from the life I thought I’d have and made a life that’s good. In other words, I’m not breakable, Harry.”
He gave me a look that said everyone was breakable, and he’d know.
So I added, “If we’re going to try to do this, I mean, like, explore us, and we are,” I asserted, and was pleased to see some of the dreariness leave his gaze when I did. “It’s your job. You’ve got to know you can unload on me about it.”
“Okay, but maybe not on our second date.”
Left unsaid, While we’re waiting for news about your parents.
“It’s our third date, I’m counting breakfast. No, it’s our fourth. It was weird, but I figure if you vomit in front of a man, it’s a date.”
Some of the tightness dwindled around his eyes as he chuckled.
“Tell me,” I urged softly.
“I had to do a death notice,” he said quickly. “The wife was destroyed, but not surprised. Her husband had alcohol issues. We’d already picked him up for DUI twice, so he’d lost his license and shouldn’t have been driving. He didn’t negotiate a curve, ran off the road and slammed into someone’s garage, went right through the wall, and totaled their car inside. He wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. No one else was involved, but he not only had a wife, he also had three kids, all under the age of thirteen.”