Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Lucas, still cringing a couple of dozen paces behind the couple, slowed even more so the man up ahead had less of a chance of noticing him. If he could avoid conversations with a handful of people tonight—perfect.
Brennan was high on that list.
The mayor’s personal assistant, a young, eager man, welcomed guests at the double doors before directing people inside by way of the bottom entry or the top of the house at the end of a zigzagging wooden ramp.
Lucas took the ramp option because regardless of the chilly temperature, he’d rather be outside watching the guests’ children take on the snow-covered rolling hills on sleds and three-skis than inside making rounds with people he barely spoke to on any other given day of the year. He wasn’t one for pretenses, but he also couldn’t be a no-show when the mayor had personally made a call to him the week before confirming his father had passed along the invitation when Lucas didn’t immediately RSVP.
He shot himself in the foot here.
Badly.
Few adults milled about on the upper deck that continued all the way around the house, monitoring the children. Lucas, polite to the one or two he did recognize, only nodded at the ones he didn’t. Not even the sight of his own breaths making plumes of gray in front of his face could convince him to hide from the cold air outside.
Instead, he walked the deck and listened to the children squeal down below.
“Excuse us, sir,” a young boy said as he and a girl of about the same age pushed beyond where Lucas blocked the stairs at the side of the house leading down. The two couldn’t be more than ten or so.
Under his arm, the kid held a red rolled up silly carpet that would really let the two fly down the rolling hills. Typically, Lucas loomed over kids and some didn’t take that well, so despite his quiet mood, he forced on a friendly smile to the cheeky two more interested in sliding than him.
“Sorry, mister!” called the girl on her way down the stairs.
“No worries,” Lucas replied in a chuckle.
The girl, with ski pants pulled up high under the skirt of a pink dress that peeked out from under her parka jacket, beamed over her shoulder as she raced after the dark-haired boy. “You should slide, too!”
On another night with different people, maybe Lucas would. In fact, as a younger man he had. Having a younger brother ten years his junior kept Lucas’ heart young … in the ways that counted, he supposed. When he had been twenty and should have been enjoying the college life of a bachelor, he had a ten-year-old brother with a penchant for getting into trouble because he had zero parental guidance and needed a male figure to look up to. Someone to give him a reason to toe the line.
Lucas took the role seriously when he was old enough to grasp how growing up like he had with careless parents affected him. He’d wanted to make the outlook better for his brother somehow. Jacob, on the other hand, never let his older brother forget how to have fun when it mattered. Things worked out.
Tonight wasn’t that night, unfortunately. His tweed coat and thermal-lined leather gloves might keep him partially warm, but the same couldn’t be said for his Oxford loafers. Those weren’t made to wade snow. The idea of freezing his nuts off and exhausting himself climbing back up the hill with the kids looked like a far better option than what waited behind him even if there wasn’t a single adult out there enjoying the snowy hills with the kiddos. He didn’t even turn to face the wide, tall windows overlooking the dining room inside, but he didn’t have to, either.
Lucas could hear the party perfectly well.
He already regretted doing yet another thing to somehow please his father when in the end, the effort would be pointless.
Fruitless.
For absolutely nothing.
The fact Lucas showed up to something he couldn’t and wouldn’t enjoy for nothing more than to fulfill his father’s request would continue to add to Ronald’s constant how high mentality. How high could he make his oldest son jump before the man’s knees finally gave out? Lucas didn’t have many options when it came to Ronald. He could bend over backwards to avoid the man altogether, or make magic happen to give Ronald everything he wanted to keep the peace otherwise.
Regardless, only Lucas really suffered.
Luke, dude, he told himself to get out of his damn head, you’re being a bit dramatic here.
Or wallowing.
It didn’t matter. Neither of the two things would help and really only served to avoid the real problem facing Lucas at that moment. That he’d rather stand outside with his face freezing in the minus fifteen Celsius breeze than chance going inside where he might have to have a conversation with his father.