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)
The man, who I had started getting to know over random meals the last few weeks, was leaning against the building, texting on his phone, but when he sensed me, he dropped his hand and gave me a friendly smile. “Morning,” he called out.
“Hi, Randall. How’s it going?”
“All right.” The man who had told me he was one of the few people who had been born at the ranch tipped his head toward the clubhouse. “They wrangle you into their gnome discussion?”
“Yeah….” I trailed off, not being willing to talk badly about the elders.
I figured he understood when he grinned. “What’s going on?”
“I wanted to ask, could you tell me how to find Spencer the sasquatch?”
You would have figured I’d told the nice man a few years older than me that I had proof Santa was real from the way his entire body reacted to my question. “You want to find Spencer?” He made a face. “Why?”
I held up the bar of conditioner, feeling about an inch tall. “Remember I hurt his feelings when I first got here? I wanted to apologize and give him conditioner to make up for it. I should have done it sooner, but it took a long time to get here. The conditioner, I ordered, I mean.”
“You hurt his feelings?” Randall couldn’t believe me.
But he needed to.
I nodded. “Can you tell me where to find him?” I thought about it. “I’ll be all right. He can’t hurt me unless I let him.” I wanted him to understand that, otherwise he might be worried that this could go wrong.
It could. Only if I let it.
I wanted him to forgive me, but not at a risk to my safety. I wasn’t that dumb. “Please?” I tried again.
The redhead thought about it for a second. “Sure, but I might as well take you. Someone needs to head out that way to check some batteries, I’ll switch.”
“Okay,” I agreed, so grateful. “Can I help?”
“I got it. Let me swap the UTV for the side-by-side, and we’ll get going,” he offered, and I nodded.
It didn’t take him long to change vehicles, and I heard the door to the main house open and close before a voice I recognized spoke up. “All good?”
It was Henri making his way over, all six-foot-six, prime rib of a man.
How did normal people not tell he was something else just by looking at him? Did they assume he’d played football at some point in his life? Or imagine that he’d been a wrestler? People just weren’t built the way he was.
I put a lid on that thought too.
“Everything’s fine,” I answered him as Randall wandered out of the warehouse.
The other man lifted his chin. “Hey, boss. We’re heading to the western side of the property. Probably be gone a couple of hours. You mind taking the north—”
Henri’s steps slowed, and those dark eyebrows crept up a millimeter. “You’re going together?”
Did his tone come out a little… different, or was I imagining it?
I nodded. “I asked Randall to go with me to run an errand.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to know where we were going, but I didn’t want to risk getting a lecture on why I didn’t need to apologize, or whatever else he could come up with.
But I was underestimating the curious nature of a werewolf, and that was always a dumb thing to do. Henri asked, “What errand?”
“We’re checking batteries along the fence and going to see Spencer,” Randall answered.
“Spencer?” He sounded even more surprised than Randall had.
I gave him a weak grin. “Yes, Spencer the sasquatch, formerly known as the bigfoot.”
“Why?”
This was why I always explained everything at once to my parents. I was going to have to remember that. “I have a conditioner bar I want to give him that’s good for his hair. I feel bad about making fun of him.”
To give him credit, Henri looked perplexed for about two seconds more before his features smoothed back into that serious expression that was standard for him. His boss face. He held out his hand to Randall. “I’ll go.”
Dang it. “I want to go. I want to apologize to him,” I explained. “Not just give him the conditioner.”
Amber eyes slid toward me. “I understand. I’ll take you, and we’ll check the western fence line.”
Under no circumstance had I meant for this to turn out so complicated. “I can go by myself. You both seem busy….”
“No” came out of both of their mouths.
All right, I’d probably get lost anyway. I was going to need to learn to navigate with their map app and coordinates if we were going to be sticking around, which was the plan, contrary to popular belief.
Henri caught the set of keys Randall tossed and didn’t say a word from the moment we got into the side-by-side.