Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
“I was being an asshole back then, so have at it. I deserve it,” Riggs invited.
“Took everything I had to stop Em from coming with me so she could lay eyes on this Wonder Woman who tamed the Untamable Doc Riggs,” Murphy ribbed.
“She’s welcome any time,” Riggs returned before another pull on his beer.
“Yeah, I feel that, Riggs,” Murphy replied. “I remember not giving a fuck you razzed me unrelentingly. I knew I was going back to Emma, so what did I care?”
“I now see why it was so fucking frustrating I couldn’t get under your skin,” Riggs remarked.
“That’s why I’m gonna let you off the hook,” Murph announced. “Because, if I approve of this woman once I meet her, I can just be happy, after you had to put up with that bitch who fucked you over so goddamned bad, that you finally have a good one in your life and get it.”
Suffice it to say, he and Murph caught up.
Murphy not only knew all about Nadia, he also knew about Angelica, Bubbles, the Haunting of Weaver Cabin, the Mystery of the Missing Fancy Grape Juice, and all that was going down, or they were theorizing, about the Whitaker Family.
Riggs offered the neck of his beer to his friend, and Murphy clinked as Ledger raced to them from doing whatever kids did when they were outside and not hanging with the adults.
It’d be good when Viggo got a few more years in. Ledger would always be a lot older than his brother, but at least he’d have someone who could string a sentence together to hang out with when Viggo was at Riggs’s.
Ledge stopped close to Murphy’s chair and leaned into it, so Murphy casually wrapped an arm around his son.
Riggs liked to see it. They were close. And he’d had to feel it when his bud moved away, but also feel it that Ledger wasn’t a fan of that happening either.
“Nadia and Maribeth are coming up the trail. And Gia!” Ledger announced elatedly.
“A gentleman escorts the ladies to the party,” Murphy noted.
Ledger didn’t need more coaxing. He broke free of Murphy’s light hold and took off toward the trail.
Eyes to the trail, Murphy asked, “Is that about the dog or the woman?”
“Right now, the dog. But he and Nadia are getting tight. He’s just known her longer.”
“Hmm,” Murphy hummed.
Both men took their feet when the party came into view, Nadia holding Gia’s lead, Gia sticking close to her side, but the dog’s attention went right to Murphy.
“Fucking hell, she’s a bruiser,” Murphy muttered.
She could be, she’d made that clear.
But if Nadia claimed you, she was a musclebound love bomb.
Hutch hadn’t gone the way of clipping Gia’s ears or docking her tail because, even if both could be vulnerabilities to her if she was in a situation, Hutch didn’t do what he did only to make a living. He was an animal lover and found those practices barbaric. On top of that, he had explained to Riggs that dogs communicate with their ears and tail, both to humans and other dogs. Since he trained his animals to work in sync with each other, and communication with their owners was key, it fucked with their ability to do their jobs.
When they got close, Nadia, who had discovered the tone that worked and kept using it (so Hutch said he’d be back a couple more times to check that things were cool, but Nadia had continued with her training, even though Maribeth was there, and had texted Riggs that day to tell him they’d essentially “graduated”), thus Nadia went through the “friend” command again.
Introductions were made, with Riggs getting the addition of Nadia getting in his space, putting her hand on his abs and rolling up to give him a soft kiss.
Riggs nabbed the opened but corked bottle of rosé from the cooler and the two glasses he’d brought out, and he poured the women a glass of wine while Nadia let Gia off the leash, commanded, “Go,” this to Ledger calling her and slapping his hand on his leg.
Gia loped to his son, and they took off. The women settled into the two chairs angled opposite the men at the table, and Riggs decided to carve out time to make a matching loveseat for the set that summer.
“Is Murphy up to date?” Nadia asked him.
“Yup,” Riggs answered.
She launched right in. “So, Maribeth thinks the assistant did it.”
Maribeth leaned forward, her pretty face animated, and Riggs saw that, yeah, these two were peas in a pod.
“Two words. Woman scorned,” she declared.
And yeah.
They could both be cute.
“Sorry, Maribeth. Doesn’t explain why Lincoln would go to the lengths he did to cover for her,” Riggs noted.
“Well, obviously because she’d been around awhile,” Maribeth returned. “She probably knew all about the whole brother-husbands thing, and when that Roosevelt guy didn’t initiate her as a sister-wife, she got ticked. It was her who showed and found them in the hayloft, and she’d had enough of yearning from not very afar, so she took care of business. Lincoln happened onto this, and she told him if she went down, she’d share their secret. So, to protect his brother, his wife, and maybe their franchise, because, yes, most people would think the arrangement sordid, but people get off on sordid, so that’s going to sell books, as is people thinking he murdered his wife and brother. But in the end, either way you cut it, their legacy is screwed. So he decided to take the fall.”