Page 12 of Beast

He shrugged.“No one’s looking for me, so it doesn’t matter.”

The waitress returned with the coffee and took our orders.Beast ordered a full breakfast with bacon, eggs, sausage, hash browns, pancakes, and toast.After giving him an incredulous look, I settled on bacon and eggs with sourdough toast.The waitress included both of us in her smile this time and headed back toward the kitchen.

I waited until she was out of earshot.“Can I ask you something personal?”

“You can ask.I might not answer.”

“So you’re not married, and you have twin girls that live with you.How does that happen?Most kids live with their mothers, or at least custody is shared.”

“You want to know if I intimidated her into giving up her kids?”He narrowed his eyes.

I shook my head.“No, just curious.”

“Their mother remarried, and they don’t like the guy very much so they opted to live with me.It suited their mom to let them, although she still sees them and they go visit her.Neither of us wanted to put the kids through a nasty custody battle so we let them decide.”

“How old are they?”I’d been picturing cute little toddlers but if they were allowed to decide which parent they wanted to live with, they had to be older than that.

“Teenagers.They’ll be sixteen this fall and are all excited about getting to drive.Now that’s something that scares me.”

“Teenagers!”

He grinned.“Yeah.Major reason why we’re not doing this once we get back to Georgia.”

I wrinkled my nose.“Guess I’ll just have to get my fill while we’re on the road then.”

“What about you?Anything juicy in your past, besides dating the heir to a mafia family?”

“Nope.Other than hunting down my father once I was old enough, my life’s been pretty boring.”

“Hunting him down?”

I explained that my mother had no idea who he was, and I’d had to go the DNA route to find him.“So we’re actually not that close.We’ve visited once, and we keep in touch by email and phone calls, but when this happened he was the only one I could think of who might be able to help.”

Beast let out a low whistle.“Must have sucked growing up without a father.”

I shrugged.“Mom did the best she could, but yeah.I really envied the kids who had two parents.”

The waitress came back with our food and placed it down in front of us.“Anything else?”

“No, we’re good, thanks.”

We stopped talking while we ate.I was impressed that Beast managed to polish off the enormous pile of food on his plate in the time it took me to eat my bacon and eggs.The waitress came by and refilled our coffees without being asked.It felt so normal, I almost managed to forget about Drake and the death threat.

At least, I did until my cell phone rang.

* * *

Beast

I watched Piper pull out her phone and glance at the number displayed on the screen.“My boss.I forgot to call and let them know I wasn’t available.”She hit accept and put the phone to her ear.Her eyes widened, and her face went white.

I grabbed the phone from her and held it up to my ear.A man’s voice spewed out of the speaker, detailing the horrific way he planned to torture her before he killed her.I disconnected the call and looked over at Piper.

“That was your ex?”

She shivered.“I think so.He said it was, and it sounded like his voice.”

“And call display said it was your work calling?”

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