Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69534 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69534 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
I was a sweaty mess by the time that I arrived home to a bustling house.
Before I could say hi, the kids were out the door, heading to the rec center where they’d spend the day.
There was a summer program that catered to the lower income families like mine.
There they could get free breakfast, lunch, and snacks. They could swim, play, and enjoy their summer, all the while being in a safe environment.
The kids had been going since they were younger—something that I’d never had the privilege of doing because I’d been working since I was five.
The moment the house was quiet, I pulled my computer out and got to work on a book cover for a new client.
After sending out the first draft, I started to clean.
By the time mid-morning hit, I got ready to head to the diner.
Speaking of selfish mothers, ours hadn’t come home last night.
How did I know?
Because I was sharing a room with her for now because Koda was in town and needed his own room.
Before Koda had moved out, he’d shared a room with Kent. However, the first moment that he could, Kent had taken over Koda’s old room and made it into his own.
Not that I blamed him.
Sharing a room with a teenage boy was hard at the best of times. Sharing a room with a boy and a girl was a recipe for disaster.
Angrier now than before as I headed to my room to grab a change of clothes—Koda was still sleeping, and damned if I would wake him—I got dressed in my finest clothes and left.
My finest clothes consisted of a tank top that had a built-in bra in black, short shorts that helped me rack in the tips when old men came in, and my Converses.
I got them last year when a big payout came through for a book cover.
They were my favorite shoes, and I didn’t wear them all that often because I didn’t want them to get ruined.
But when I saw my sister wearing them home from school the day before, I decided that if she was going to wear them and destroy them, I might as well wear them myself and destroy them.
The distance from our house to the diner was a fifteen-minute walk—just shy of a mile.
I had to pass the Dollar Store, the Dairy Queen, and the feed store to get to the diner.
I’d passed the first two and was just to the middle of the parking lot of the feed store when some movement caught my eye.
My mouth went dry as I watched the man from yesterday—Mr. Jalapeño—helping a high school kid load the back of his truck with feed.
I was so focused on him that I hadn’t realized that I’d stopped walking until a honk had me twisting my head toward the car that was waiting to pull into the driveway.
And since I felt like they had plenty of room to get in with where I was standing, I flipped them off.
“You can make it in front of me,” I grumbled as I started my walk again.
I tried not to look back at the sexy cowboy, truly I did, but the moment I was free of the parking lot I turned to stare again.
He was in even more faded blue jeans than the ones he had on yesterday, a white t-shirt that was soaked through with sweat, and motorcycle boots.
It was the sexiest outfit I’d ever seen.
My phone pinged, reminding me that I had five minutes until I was supposed to open the diner for lunch, and I reluctantly finished my walk.
I fully expected to find my mom there already, but when I arrived, the whole place was closed and quiet. My mom wasn’t there opening up the diner, nor was the cook there getting the grills prepped.
And, because I was fucking over everything, I wrote with a Sharpie on the back of an old packing receipt: Only grilled cheese all day.
If I was going to be on my own, you bet your ass I wasn’t about to make this harder than it had to be.
Truthfully, if I could burn this place to the ground and collect the insurance payout, I would.
But, it was minuscule. A measly couple thousand.
And in the grand scheme of things, that really wasn’t all that much when you had rent to pay at home, three kids to feed, and had a mother that was so fucking selfish.
Angrily, I unlocked the door, turned on all the lights, and got the grills started up.
I was about to come back out and get a pot of coffee started when the first customer arrived.
I instantly curled my lip in disgust.
Taryn Durant.
I hated him with every fiber of my being, and the last fucking thing I wanted to do was wait on his ass.