F-Bomb - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,1

got all the way through our visit before bringing it to her attention.

“I know,” she sighed. “I’m just…I’ve had a bad couple of nights with Astrid. She hasn’t slept much and she’s always in a terrible mood. And then Mom pulling that shit?”

She scrubbed her hands up and down her face. “And I had to clean a house yesterday that was a complete and utter pig sty. I wish I would’ve charged them more. I’m fairly sure they did a super deep clean right before I came over to quote them a price on cleaning for them. When I got there today? It was like a tornado had gone through it. I’m going to have to charge them more because it takes me longer to clean tornado destroyed houses than the one they showed me before.”

“Please tell me that you clean in Bear Bottom.”

We both looked over at the blonde who was now staring at Izzy with hope on her face.

“Uhh,” Izzy said. “I do.”

The woman’s face showed so much utter joy that I felt something low in my belly start to heat up.

“My name is Harleigh.” She held out her hand. “Can I get your number? Do you have a card? Oh my gosh. I’m so excited to hear this.”

Izzy’s eyes flicked to me and then back to the blonde, Harleigh.

Odd name, but it suited her.

“This is my man’s baby brother, Tray.” She pointed at the inmate next to me. I hadn’t actually seen him much, but that was because he was new and didn’t quite know his place in the hierarchy just yet, so he stayed to himself. “Dre, Tray’s brother, just moved his business to Bear Bottom and I’ve been doing my best to help him, but…it’s like cleaning up in the middle of a hurricane. It’s just not doable when the men don’t clean up after themselves—at all.”

Izzy pulled out a card that she’d had stashed in her pocket and handed it to the woman.

“Just text me,” she said. “If you call, I probably won’t answer.”

Harleigh’s face went bright. “I don’t answer my phone, either, so I’m glad to hear that.”

“I’m normally pretty fast answering text messages,” she said. “So if you don’t get one back, text me again. Sometimes I just miss them.”

Harleigh’s smile fell off her face when her eyes met mine, and I felt like the sun had suddenly been stolen.

I looked away and hunched my shoulders a little, causing me to appear slightly smaller.

I was a big guy.

At six-foot-five, there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t look down on most of the people around me.

Seeing the woman that I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes off of look at me like that? Well, I hadn’t realized I could be any more ashamed than I was. Turns out that I could.

Izzy, after a few more words to Harleigh, turned back to me with a smile.

The smile fell off her face when she got a look at mine.

“What is it?” she asked softly.

I shrugged and changed the subject.

“Tell me about Rome,” I ordered.

Izzy’s face went stoic, and she sighed before leaning back in her chair and saying, “Rome’s good. I’m supposed to relay a few things to you, but I’m not sure what they mean.”

I gestured for her to tell me, and she did, looking at me curiously afterward.

“Why couldn’t Bayou just tell you that?” she paused. “Or Rome, at that?”

Rome and Bayou both worked at the prison that I found myself an inhabitant of. It was better not to tell me directly so that they didn’t get seen talking to me.

That, and telling me that I had an inmate that was out for my blood would probably get them targeted.

Nearly a decade ago now, while on the job, my partner had been shot and killed before my eyes. My partner who just so happened to be my fiancée. My fiancée who just so happened to be pregnant.

When I’d found the man that had been responsible for killing them, I’d murdered him in cold blood.

I hadn’t cared that I’d go to jail.

Honestly, I hadn’t been thinking all that straight, but I never once regretted doing what I’d done.

To this day, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

“Slate?” Izzy nudged me with her foot under the table.

“Bayou and Rome are busy,” I shrugged. “And it doesn’t look suspicious when my sister talks to me.”

Izzy rolled her eyes and pulled a napkin out of her pocket, discreetly handing it