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

those too.”

She paused again.

They waited again.

“It’s been awhile since those books came out,” she said low.

“So Nightingale is a target?” Axl asked.

She shrugged. “Nightingale. Delgado. One of the Chavezes. Sebring. Rush Allen of Chaos. Who knows? Who cares? They did you a solid. Delivered those cops to you. Let Cisco off the hook. You didn’t take the hint. You keep stirrin’ up this hornet’s nest, the gloves gonna come off.”

“Why’d you mention the women?” Axl demanded.

“You boys droppin’ like flies,” she noted on a shrug he couldn’t tell if it was fake casual or real.

“Explain,” Axl ground out.

She did that. “As in, gettin’ your asses claimed.”

“And?” he pushed.

“Chill, asshole,” she bit off. “Just that hot dick going off the market makes the rounds. Jesus.”

“That’s all?” Auggie kept at her.

She looked offended. “Okay, you gotta know, a sister’s ass is swinging in the wind, that sister doin’ her best to keep it together by strippin’, I’m gonna share they got problems. They don’t. If they did, like I said, I’d share.”

They did not know that. She’d never been outspoken for the sisterhood nor had she ever shared anything without getting paid.

But she looked like she genuinely meant it.

“Now, are we done?” she asked.

“You got more?” Auggie returned.

“Dude,” she snapped.

She had no more.

“Then we’re done,” Axl said.

“And even?” she pushed.

“We’ll see,” Axl muttered, giving Auggie a look and starting to turn to the door.

“Motherfuckers!” she called.

They turned back.

“I am not on your leash to yank whenever you want. You leave, we’re square,” she declared.

“B, you don’t get to make the rules,” Axl informed her.

“And you do?” she asked.

“Well, yeah,” he answered.

“Fuck you,” she spat.

After having hit his limit of “fuck offs,” that officially hit his quota for the day of “fuck yous.”

With another glance at Auggie, they moved out.

They waited until they were in the Hummer to break it down.

“Whoever this is, they’ve been active awhile. And right now, they’re setting up to steal a huge-ass appropriation of coke and arms from evidence, move it, and then buy fishing boats,” Axl stated.

“And if we get in their way, they’re gonna fuck with us. And since they’re faceless cops we don’t know, which means they have resources, they can make that hurt,” Auggie finished.

Axl pulled out of the parking spot and said, “Call it in.”

Auggie called it in.

While Axl listened to him agreeing to be back at the office for a meet about it, Axl’s phone binged.

He pulled it out of the side pocket of his cargos and waited for a stop at a light before he glanced at the text.

Hattie.

Telling him she was up, which was what he’d asked her to do in a note he left on the pillow beside her.

“When’s the meet?” Axl asked after Aug got off the phone.

“Two.”

“Right.” He waited for another light before he said, “Gotta make a call.”

“Go for it,” Auggie muttered.

He hit buttons and put the phone to his ear.

“Hey!” Hattie greeted.

Fuck, but he liked when she was chirpy.

“Sleep good?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she replied.

He did not.

He would have, if he’d been able to jack off to thoughts of her in that dress, and what he wanted to do to her in it. But he didn’t want her wandering out for a glass of water and catching him jacking to her.

At least, not at this juncture.

Then again, when they got to that juncture, he wouldn’t be on the couch.

“Sly there?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she told him.

“Good. Tonight, I’m cooking and we’re hanging before you go to work,” he declared.

Nothing from Hattie.

“Baby?” he called.

“Dad,” she said.

Shit.

Right.

To keep their date bummer-free, he hadn’t asked how it had gone down with her dad when she told him, for that night, she wasn’t going to take care of his grown ass.

And it wasn’t his place to intervene with her father.

Not yet. Not ever.

That was hers and he could share his opinion and advice.

But he couldn’t get in the middle of it unless it was harming her.

And after she broke it down for him the night before last about what was messing with her head in that studio weeks ago, he had yet to ascertain if it was still harming her, or what harmed her was in the past and the man had lost his power, outside what he’d done to her back then and how it still messed with her head.

“Okay, how do we juggle that?” he queried.

“Pardon?”

“I wanna make you dinner. I want time with you. You need to see to him. My guess, you’re not ready for me to go hang with your father while you sort out his dinner. So how do we juggle that?”

She didn’t readily answer.

So Axl got in there.

“What time does he eat?”

“I usually go over early because I don’t eat with him and I have to fuel before I dance.”

“What’s early?”

“Five.”

“Okay. Sly can take you over to deal with him and I’ll have dinner ready for us six, six thirty. Cool with you?”

There was a hesitation before, “Yeah.”

“Anything you don’t eat?”

“What are you making?”

The first meal he was cooking her?

Totally pulling out all the stops.

“Tuscan chicken.”

Auggie made a noise.

Axl ignored it.

“What’s that?” Hattie asked.

“You like chicken?”

“Yes.”

“Prosciutto?”

“Definitely.”

He grinned. “Spinach? Goat’s cheese? Sun-dried tomato?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Yes,” she answered in line.

His grin got bigger. “Then you’ll like this.”

“I’ll be home by six.”

“Okay, honey, see you then. You got the key I left?”

“Yes, and Axl?”

“Yep?”

“I really like our bummer-free zone. We’ll talk about Dad when that time comes. But it means a lot that you know how, uh …he was and you’re not being …”

She didn’t finish that.

“You don’t have to say that. Get yourself coffee. Enjoy the deck. Play Pac-Man. I’ll see you later.”

“Later, Axl.”

“’Bye, babe.”

He disconnected.

Instantly, Auggie asked, “Can I come to dinner tonight?”

“Fuck off.”

Aug chuckled.

Axl drove.

It took some time before Auggie said quietly, “I’m glad it’s going good, Axe.”

“Yeah,” Axl replied.

And he let it be.

Meaning, he didn’t get into Pepper again.

Auggie was right. He’d had only one date with Hattie.

But Aug didn’t know about her art, and as such, hadn’t seen it.

He also hadn’t been