Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Pretty bad. I wanted to know pretty bad. I nodded before I could think twice. “Deal.”
Was I going to regret it? I hoped not. He was an adult. I was an adult. Maybe he would laugh.
And maybe there was a .001 percent chance he might surprise me.
My money was on a side-eye though.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, half expecting him to tell me to go first.
He didn’t, and I thought that said everything about him. “I was thinking”—he wiped his face clear—“that whoever your biological parents are, they really missed out on knowing you.”
It took me two tries to say, “That’s a beautiful thing to say, Fluff. Thank you for that,” without croaking it.
“I mean it,” he said in that serious voice, watching me closely.
And now it was my turn. I was almost tempted to try and cover myself with leaves and hide so he could forget I was there, but nooo, I’d agreed. Worst case, he’ll roll his eyes. “Don’t be weird, all right?” I warned him.
“I’m never weird.”
Maybe not, but I wasn’t betting on that after I told him what he thought he wanted to hear. I squinted. “I wasn’t planning on telling you, but you asked for this,” I went on with my caution.
He tilted his head to the side, holding on to that crunch so long it would have been impressive if I wasn’t just about to say what I was going to say. “Nina, I know what Matti’s capable of.”
The snort came out of me, because there was no way he knew Matti as well as he thought he did.
He had the nerve to make a face. “There’s nothing he could say that would surprise me. I had to deal with him when he went through puberty.”
I shrugged. “All riiiight,” I sang. “Don’t be weird.”
“I’m waiting,” he grunted.
No matter what happened, I wasn’t going to let him be too awkward about this, I decided. He’d asked, and we both knew his cousin was nuts. Mostly, he’d asked.
So I looked him dead in the eye, smiled a little, and said, “Matti told me to marry you, Fluff.”
Chapter
Twelve
The kids and I were on our way to the nursery room the next morning when we heard it—voices coming from the back of the house, where the meeting room was.
And whatever conversation was going on, it had to be heated for me to hear them as well as I did. The funny part was, I wasn’t the only one drawn in by the argument. Duncan stopped right where he was in the middle of the hallway to listen. He just plopped his little butt down, his ears twitching like he wanted to listen better.
It made me smile.
“What are they saying?” I whispered, even though he couldn’t actually reply in a way that would give me any valuable information.
“They’re talking about the gnomes,” the little girl surprisingly answered in her normal volume, like she didn’t care if we got caught. We’d found her in the kitchen earlier, already eating her protein-rich breakfast when Duncan and I had come downstairs. We had gotten into the routine where I walked both of them to the nursery afterward, at least the five days during the week, when it was in session.
I’d wondered where Henri had been during breakfast but had figured he was busy doing ranch stuff. Not because he was avoiding me or anything.
Riiiight.
I wasn’t going to say that I regretted telling him the night before what Matti had suggested, but my execution could’ve been better. Then again, if I would have done it professionally, he might have taken me seriously. He’d asked, and I’d warned him. I had even grinned at him afterward.
All Henri had done was blink, then he’d laid back down. When it had been time to go inside, he’d gotten up and held out a hand to help me to my feet too. His expression had been normal, I’d thought.
Only a very small part of me had died inside after I’d admitted what I’d admitted, but I was still here and still refusing to be awkward about it. It hadn’t been my idea to tell him, and in the one or two moments I’d thought about it since, it wasn’t that crazy. Not really. The difference in age between us wasn’t huge. There hadn’t been a single sign he was anything other than single, and so was I. I didn’t think he found me unattractive, and I thought he might be the most handsome man I’d ever seen.
Matti was known to say some ridiculous crap, and his comment was on that level, but it wasn’t that crazy. But I might have also been delusional to think it wasn’t.
A voice louder than the ones before it had us all staring down the hall again, only to spot a face pressed up against the glass of the back door, hands flat on either side of it. It was Shiloh… eavesdropping?