Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3), Kristen Ashley [reading eggs books txt] 📗

and it was tougher for her to get out.”

“That why you’re an only child?” he guessed.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “It was Mom who told me that. Once we became mom and daughter friends.”

Her last was said with a smile in her voice, so he glanced at her again and saw it was also on her face.

Pretty all the time.

Smiling?

Gorgeous.

He looked back at the road and she kept talking.

“She wanted more kids. She just didn’t want more kids with him. And I think she wanted to leave way before she actually did. But they got pregnant within a year of the wedding. It was a time she still had hope that he wasn’t what he was seeming to be. Or she thought it was just youth and she’d train him to be a better husband. But …”

She trailed off.

Then again, she didn’t have to say any more.

“Think my mom put it off, having more kids,” he told her, seeing as she didn’t end what she was saying sounding like she was smiling. So he took his turn in order to turn her mind. “Thought she’d get back to work. And then she didn’t.”

“Yeah,” she said softly.

“In the end, it was more Dad didn’t want another kid. If they had more kids, he’d have less of her attention, and less of it to take up with all the shit he thought she was supposed to be doing. And what Dad wants, Dad gets.”

“Yeah,” she repeated, just as softly.

Definitely the smile was gone from her voice.

He reached her way and she gave him what he wanted, her hand.

When he had it, he said, “This is a bummer. Let’s have a bummer-free zone for the rest of our first date.”

She let out a cute laugh and said, “That works for me.”

And except for him telling her they’d set up cameras, and he had to let his guys into her pad to check for prints, and she’d have to give him her laptop and her two exes’ names so they could run them, that was where they kept it.

Mostly it was Hattie talking about her day with Sly. How much he liked hanging at rehearsal (not a surprise). How much he didn’t like helping her pick out her dress for that night (definitely not a surprise, no man would see that dress and like not being the one who was on the date with her, though it was hilarious, thinking about Sly sitting there while Hattie showed him dresses).

Last, how she thought it was weird, everyone involved with Brett seemed so cool when he was a self-described “motherfucker.”

This was where they were at when Axl found a parking spot not close, but not far from Beatrice & Woodsley. Though, it was closer than walking there from his house, which was what he’d normally do since the restaurant was in his ’hood and they didn’t only serve great food, but they had excellent cocktails. He wasn’t a regular, though he was no stranger.

But after he shut the Jeep down, instead of getting out, he turned to her

“First, honey, do not get caught in this fairy godfather gig Cisco has going on. He is absolutely a motherfucker.”

Her face fell and he hated that.

But he was not lying, and men like Cisco had three paths: they got caught and went to prison, they got dead, and for the rare, they retired.

Axl wanted to protect her from the first two, and he wasn’t fired up about Cisco—doing what he did—being in her life whatever time it took him if he was destined to make it to the last one.

“He seems nice,” she said.

“He likes you. If he didn’t like you, you would one hundred percent not say that.”

She rubbed her lips together.

He continued talking.

“But that’s a bummer. So we’re moving on. The second thing you gotta know before we get out of my car is that dress, Hattie … ” He allowed his eyes to wander down then up again, and looking in her pretty brown eyes done up for him, her big mass of long, dark curly hair framing her face and falling all over her bare shoulders, he finished, his voice gruffer, “You look beautiful in that dress, baby.”

“Thank you.”

There was something deep in those two words, deeper than normal when receiving a compliment.

Heavy.

But he had a feeling, if he tried to tease it out, knowing it probably had to do with the fact her father treated her like garbage, it’d be a bummer for the both of them, so he asked, “I open doors for women. You got a problem with that?”

She smiled. “One hundred percent no.”

He returned her smile, added leaning her way to touch his lips to her neck, getting the scent of her perfume, which was girlie and flowery, but subtle, and as with everything that was Hattie, he liked it.

He got out, moved around the hood of the car, helped her out and walked with her toward the restaurant.

Baker District was hip. Nighttime, it could get busy.

Once he tucked Hattie’s hand through his arm, spreading her fingers over his biceps, keeping his over hers, she took his cue and walked close to him. Her shoulder to his. Her hip brushing his. Her perfume doing a number on him.

That was when he noticed it.

People looking at them as they passed.

He knew what they saw.

He liked what they saw.

He got off on what they saw.

Like his dad, Axl had gone prematurely silver in his late twenties.

His father called it the Pantera Curse.

Axl thought it was the shit, being twenty-seven and people treating him like he was forty-five.

Then again, except in the army, and after, he hadn’t been shown a lot of respect by people who were meaningful in his life.

When he’d shared with his father it didn’t bother him, Sylas Pantera said, “Kid, you never want to lose the advantage. Not with anyone. You want them underestimating you. Not the other way around.”

First, Axl hated his dad calling him “kid.”

It wasn’t a nickname, familiar and