Page 58 of Worth the Heat
I frown. “A shitshow? It’s just a book club. How wild can they get?”
“You’d be surprised. Five or six months ago they had the cops called on them.”
“No fucking way.”
He nods. “Yup. Wives of a couple of guys I work with attend, and they managed to sweet-talk their way out of tickets and fines. Excessive noise anddisorderly conduct.”
“What the hell do they do there?” I ask incredulously. My Isabella, leading a book club so out of control the police have to intervene? The beautiful soul who only recently began to smile directly at me? “Is this really a different group, and they call it a book club to cover up something else entirely?”
“No, there’s a book. Not sure if they read anything other than the sex scenes though,” Alex says as I take a sip of my rum and Coke, and I immediately inhale, choke, gag, then cough up everything in my lungs.
“What the fuck?”
“It’s romance books, Seb. And they usually have lots of wine and make some sort of phallic-shaped treat. Explaining the box of cock cookies to my kids was interesting, but now Nat knows to bring the treats directly to our bedroom when she gets home.” He pauses. “Kinda weird eating food shaped like a dick though.”
“Are we talking about the same book club? At the bakery? Isabella’s bakery.MyIsabella?”
He rolls his eyes. “Yes,yourIsabella. She’s not as tender and quiet as you think once she’s comfortable around you. Stubborn as a mule with a petty and vindictive side that is quite long. Clearly you know that, considering what she did to her ex-boyfriend’s apartment.”
I chuckle. “That was pretty creative. I’ll give her that.”
“I try to stay close because usually at least a couple of the ladies require a ride home. The local rideshare drivers have caught on to their shenanigans, and they camp out all night as well. With around fifteen women each month, and the amount of alcohol they imbibe, it’s good to have safe options. Usually I wait until the book club has been going for an hour or two, but this little dude,” Alex says, smiling peacefully down at his son, “was getting restless. Car rides always seem to calm him down.”
“Dude, I asked her about the book club, and she blew it off like it was nothing. Told me I wouldn’t know who the author is.”
“In her defense, she’s right. Natalie showed me the book, and it’s some romance author I’d never heard of.”
I raise one eyebrow at Alex. “And you’ve heard of a lot of romance authors?”
“Some. Natalie talks about them. Plus there are two that live in Mountain Springs, where my cousin lives, and they’ve both come up here to be special guests at the book club.” Alex peers down at his son, who gives me a gummy grin. “Best part is when Natalie comes home, she almost always wants to reenact at least one of the spicy scenes. So I’m all for this off-the-rails book club.”
Alex’s phone chimes with a text, and his face falls. “Shit. We gotta go. Nat just texted me the code word.”
“Code word?” I ask, draining the last sliver of whiskey before throwing a twenty on the bar for a tip.
“If she texts me ‘sausage,’ it means it’s gotten too out of control, and we need to step in before the cops get called again. The new lieutenant isn’t a fan of my family, and he’s looking to set an example.”
“Why your family?”
“Evidently his dad had a thing for my mom, but my dad stole her away from him. Then my damnNonnagot involved and said some less than stellar things about the lieutenant’s family. It was a whole big thing, and now he makes my work day hell, but it is what it is.”
“That’s fucked up,” I comment as I follow him out of the bar.
“It is. But I know it’s temporary. He’ll either be fired, or I’ll quit. I’ve been talking to Leo about possibly starting a business together. But he’s been pretty quiet about things since his injury, so I’m just playing it day by day.”
The code word suddenly sinks in. “Sausage? Really?”
Alex grins. “My wife loves a double entendre.”
I count the number of steps it takes me to get from the door ofthe bar to Isabella’s door, and I’m pleased to find it’s twenty-two steps. Should she ever need me, I could be here in less than a minute. Alex bypasses the front door, heading to a side door I’ve never even noticed. “This is the way to the basement.”
Fucking hell. I’ve been trying to keep her safe and I never noticed a goddamned door here. Trace has told me about the door, but I rarely walk past the tight alleyway between buildings, and hadn’t noticed the dilapidated entrance.
I hear the noise even with the door closed, then laugh when Alex yanks his bag from around his shoulders, opens it up, and pulls out a set of noise-canceling headphones. Placing them on his son’s head, he then opens the door. Smart.
Heading down the rickety old stairs into a dingy basement, I’m surprised to find around twenty women in varying stages of undress. My grandmother is standing on a stool, swinging what appears to be a piece of black licorice above her head. My mother sits with Isabella’s mom, and they’re both crying.
Guarantee they’re planning our wedding, which makes me smile.
