Page 45 of Caged

“I won’t, Lady Luck is on my side,” I puffed out my chest like I was special.

She raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms. “I’m just not sure it’s a good idea. We need to save money for all the stupid house shit we weren’t expecting. You know, like buying a new washer and dryer.”

“Charlie,” Adam used her first name as he came out the door. “Silly me forgot there was an issue getting everything done. We would’ve called but you didn’t leave a number.”

“I didn’t? I’m so sorry.” She walked up to the window. “Are our clothes okay?” She added a little panic to her voice.

“Yes, yes, no need to worry. Your clothes are fine, but our machine went down and we didn’t finish them. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

I bet he is.

“Oh man, you had me worried.” She put her hand over her heart. “I don’t think I could handle any thing else going wrong.”

She’s good.

“They should be done tomorrow. And for the inconvenience, we’ll take another ten percent off.”

“Thank you. Here, let me give you my number, just in case.”

She rattled off the number like she’d known it her entire adult life, rather than memorizing it less than an hour ago.

“I’ll call if we have any other issues.” He looked at me. “I don’t want to overstep, Mr. Bishop, but I heard you talking about going to a Dallas casino. If you want to avoid the big city, we have a friendly local game you might be interested in.”

Jackpot.

“Oh, I don’t know.” I paused and put my arm around Maxwell’s waist. “The old ball and chain doesn’t think I should.”

“It’s a friendly game, low stakes. Surely that’d be okay,” he said, addressing Maxwell. “Come on Charlie, let your old man live a little.” I didn’t miss how he referred to me as Mr. Bishop but he called Maxwell, Charlie.

“Maybe,” she said. Then turned to me, “We’ll talk about it later. Okay?”

“Okay.” I gave a very good impression of being a whipped husband. “Maybe we can get some Chinese while we’re here.”

She smiled and patted my stomach. Wanting to impress her, my ab muscles flexed of their own accord.Traitors.

“He’s always hungry,” she said to Adam.

“I’m a big boy,” I straightened to my full six-foot-two height.Take that, Adam.He didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of winning over Maxwell when I was his competition. “And you know how much I love Chinese food.”

“Fine, we’ll get Chinese. Again,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Maxwell turned back to Adam and said, “Thanks again, Adam.” She flashed her mega watt smile. “I’ll stop by tomorrow, unless I hear from you.”

Chapter 19

Cate

Ihad to admit, it was a smart choice to stay in the plaza for lunch. It gave us a chance to re-evaluate the flyers we’d seen with new eyes.

At least, that was what I thought until we were walking back to Jaden’s truck and without warning he pushed me against the empty store’s front window and kissed me.

What the fuck?

One hand cupped the back of my neck while the other held my hip. His big, rock hard body pushed against mine, trapping me against the wall. It was the kind of toe-curling kiss that might have turned my insides to mush, if I hadn’t wanted to punch him.

When I tried to push him away, he held on tighter, crushing his lips to mine.

Focusing on the anger, and ignoring the fact that he was turning me on, I poured all my energy into pushing him away.

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