Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Just walking up the winding drive, I saw no less than nine of them.
Did he have them inside?
Would he be watching me as I pretended to clean his house? Because I damn sure wasn’t going to actually be doing it.
I’d just made it up the front path when the door opened.
Then there he was.
In his jeans and black button-up, his gaze moving down my body, and I did not feel my skin warm where his eyes lingered.
“Come on, mama, we gotta talk,” he said, jerking his head into the house, then moving out of the way.
In a move I hadn’t seen coming, when I got close, he reached for the handle of my rolling suitcase, his tattooed hand covering mine.
My gaze shot down, seeing the big, bold “AC” tattooed there.
Alcazar Cartel.
In case anyone he encountered was ever wondering what he did for a living.
It took me an almost embarrassingly long second to yank my hand out from under his, then move into his house.
And, yeah, I had no idea what I was expecting.
But classy, yet understated, hadn’t really been what I’d pictured when I thought of A’s house.
To be perfectly honest, I’d pictured his house almost, well, empty for some reason.
But maybe that just had more to do with my lack of vision when it came to things like home decor.
But A’s house just spoke of wealth. Not understated wealth, either. Just… modern and minimalist money.
It was all high, high ceilings with giant windows.
“Bullet-resistant?” I asked, jerking my chin toward them.
“Don’t plan on getting shot when I’m walking down to get my morning coffee,” he said, shrugging. Which was a very A way of saying yes.
The foyer was bigger than my bedroom with a dark sideways staircase with open backs and a glass railing that was all probably going to fuck with me when I tried to go up or down it.
The space to each side was vast, both the living room and the library were three or four times bigger than my apartment that I thought was actually pretty roomy by apartment standards.
The living room had a sunken section where the low gray couches were, surrounding a wide medium-light wood coffee table that matched the wooden floors.
There was one wall painted dark black with a long, low gas fire feature that had a modern light brown leather chaise in front of it.
For reading in front of the fire, maybe?
To the other side of the foyer was Andres’s library.
Like the living room, there were massive windows, but they were on the wall facing the side yard, going floor to ceiling, so he could look out.
The other walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling dark gray bookshelves. Every single shelf was loaded with books. And, knowing what I knew about how he named his dogs, I figured that each of them had been read by him personally.
Or would be.
As my book-loving cousin Luna would say, “Buying books is not about reading them right away. But having them for when you are in the right mood some day to pick them up.”
There was one gray, long, wide couch that was practically a bed, where A probably did a lot of his reading, but also one simple black desk and chair, for when he needed to do, I don’t know, cartel paperwork or whatever.
“You want a tour?” he asked.
“If I’m going to be working here, that seems necessary,” I said, then followed as he moved down the hall beside his library and back into a room that worked as both the kitchen and dining room.
It was a massive space with gray tiles.
The dining room table was long and gray with light wood chairs. There was room enough for twelve, and I couldn’t help but wonder when A had the occasion to use that much seating.
To the side of the dining space was the kitchen. It was open with a sleek center island in the same wood color as the dining chairs, but with the under cabinets matching the rest of the dark gray cabinets in the rest of the kitchen. All the appliances were hidden, save for the barely-visible range.
I kind of hated to admit this, but I actually loved his house.
As a woman who wasn’t into frilly, it spoke to me.
There were personal touches and enough decor to feel lived-in, not like a show house, but it was all very neat and streamlined.
“If you’re looking for all the cooking shit,” A said, abandoning my suitcase to walk toward the back wall of the kitchen, and pulling up what I thought was just a normal backsplash sitting against the wall. But, clearly, it was a false backsplash that slid up behind the upper cabinets, put there to hide all the little gadgets that clog up the counter space.
There was the fancy coffee machine, the toaster, microwave, and what might have been an air fryer. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have one. Hell, I didn’t really ever cook.