Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
If I wrote grisly murder mysteries or tentacle porn, he’d be the hero. He was always the hero.
I solemnly swear I will never write anything with sexed-up tentacles. Or tell anyone other than Chick that Wade is still my muse’s template for the perfect man.
When the uncomfortable silence stretched on too long, I said, “What’s the damage for Myrtle?”
He looked at me blankly. “Who?"
“The Honda? I’d like to know what she needed and how much it’s going to cost me.”
“You named your car Myrtle?”
I shrugged. “She was used when I got her, a little slow to start and bad on an incline, but she always got me where I was going so…Myrtle the Turtle.”
“I suppose that makes about as much sense as naming a Beetle after a cricket.”
And now he was smack talking Jiminy. What was he? The name police?
He towed you home and fixed your car.
I took a calming breath. “Did she need a lot of work done?”
“A new thermostat and four new tires, but the rest is in decent shape for its age. You might want to look into trading it in though. Sooner rather than later.”
“Four new tires?” That was going to pinch. “They were fine yesterday.”
He put his hands on his hips and stared at me. “They hardly had any tread left, August, and the steel belts were showing on the front two. You were one rough speed bump or rainy day away from needing to call for another tow. Or worse,” he added in a dire tone.
I hadn’t realized. “And how much more is your arbitrary decision going to cost me?”
“It wasn’t arbitrary, and I didn’t get around to writing up the charges yet.” He looked away, not meeting my gaze. “Don’t worry, I gave you a discount.”
“I’m not worried,” I blustered, because I totally was. “And I don’t need any friends-and-family discount. I can pay for the repairs to my own car.”
Even with four new tires and the charge for a tow to the garage and back?
He was back to staring me down. “Nobody said you couldn’t.”
He had no way of knowing that money and I weren’t on the best of terms lately. Morgan didn’t even know the extent of it. Which meant all he was doing was helping out his friend’s kid sister. And I was being a jerk for no reason again.
“I’m a little off-kilter,” I finally said, in lieu of an apology. “I wasn’t expecting company or, you know, that whole chokehold experience. Thanks again for that. I haven’t had the best few days, then you showed up without warning and everything got awkward.”
Wade let out a long, relieved exhale. “Yes. Thank you. So fucking awkward.”
Not the most flattering reaction.
You did just spit out peanut butter in front of him and then give him shit for fixing your car.
“I meant that I made it awkward.” He removed his faded ball cap to reveal the full head of dark hair with a few strands of silver at the temples and ran a hand through it in frustration. “And I’m the one that needs to apologize here. I brought your car back, but I should have called first to make sure this was a good time.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t think you’d answer,” he said bluntly. “Phoebe tells me you screen your calls.”
Entirely fair and probably true. Still, Phoebe was going to get a lecture from me about giving out that kind of information to the very people I screen my calls to avoid. “Well, for future reference, a one-line text from the driveway would have given me time to cover up and saved us both a lot of emotional scarring.”
Because I’d pointed them out like a moron, his gaze dropped right to my doxy-propped breasts.
And stayed there.
It was too late for this to be some hypoxia-induced hallucination. And unless I was reading his expression wrong, he didn’t look embarrassed, repulsed or emotionally scarred at all.
He looked interested. Very interested.
Not possible.
Our story was the same long-suffering and painfully unrequited kind I’d once applied to the side characters in my first series. No matter how my readers howled at the injustice, those characters would never be together, because that was my—or rather their—story.
I would always be unwillingly attracted to Wade and he would never see me as anything other than Morgan’s sister. Rinse and repeat until the sad, inevitable conclusion where the sidekick sacrifices her life to save the heroine, only confessing her love to her guilt-laden but oblivious bodyguard in a tear-jerking monologue as she dies at the end of the second book.
The point of that spoiler was that Wade shouldn’t be giving me sizzling looks and I shouldn’t be enjoying it. But he was and I was, and I had no idea what to do with any of that information.
“The apartment,” he said suddenly, only looking away after studying my nipples long enough to bring them to full and hopeful attention. “Have you accepted any applications yet?”