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)
She whistled long and low. “I had a feeling about this two nights ago.” Her eyeball flicked to the side where Matti was sitting. “Didn’t I tell you my sixth sense was going off?”
“You did, baby,” he agreed from out of the shot.
I smirked, and Si nodded.
“See? I’m ready when you are,” she let me know.
The smirk fell off my face. “You pick. I don’t know where to start. My maybe biological father waking me up in the middle of the night—”
She gasped, and it was my turn to nod.
“The bogeymen and the gnomes who want to have kids.” Her eyebrow arched at that. “Or do you want to hear about how someone’s cousin is ignoring me now because I haven’t been able to stop asking him if he wants to marry me, even though he kissed me… or he gave me a peck, if we’re going to be technical.” It was not my finest moment. But I didn’t want to regret not putting myself out there, especially not when the only person I wanted to mate with to stay here was him.
I held up my finger. “He also rubbed his face all over me after a bunch of werewolves showed up to cook.”
I was suddenly really glad Sienna wasn’t around to smell the despair that I had to be emitting at the acceptance that I wasn’t going to get what I wanted.
The thing I wanted being Henri.
“You didn’t,” was all she said.
“I did.”
“Nina.”
I shrugged.
The camera zoomed back, and she shook her head slower than anyone I’d ever seen before. “That. I pick that. I want to hear about that son of a bitch DNA donor, but later, and you having a bunch of werewolves wanting to mate with you has been old news before it was even news. I’ve always known you were boner material.”
I beamed. “Have I told you lately that I love you?”
“No, but thank you. Now tell me what’s going on with someone’s cousin. Henri kissed you?” Her voice went high and everything.
Out of view, Matti muttered, “Ugh.”
Even though I’d told Matti some of what was going on, and I was confident he’d shared it with her, it took about two minutes to rattle off the first brief mention I’d made to Henri about Matti’s suggestion. I followed that with the most recent and wrapped it up with a brief explanation about him being stressed, letting him borrow my RV, and him coming home and giving me that smooch that was still haunting me.
It had been three days since I’d last seen him, for the record.
I told her almost everything but skipped out on him being half-naked and all the stuff with my father since this was a three-part miniseries. “He’s avoiding me now.”
She scrunched up her face. “Why do you think that?”
Holding up a finger again, I peeked through the blinds behind my back and then got up and checked the other windows. There still didn’t seem to be any other community residents walking around; for the most part, none of them got home until late in the afternoon anyway. Once I was back at the table, I leaned forward and whispered, “Because I take the kids—Duncan and the white wolf, Agnes—out every night for a game of tag and a popsicle, and we look at the stars. We go out at the same time, and I know he knows that because there were a few nights before all this that he would come home and sit with us when we were out there. Since that night when I’d asked him if he was sure he didn’t want to marry me—” I realized then I’d forgotten to tell her the part of me telling him he was attractive. “—he’s purposely gotten home fifteen minutes after we would’ve gone back inside the clubhouse. Same time every night.” I’d timed it.
“You sure it isn’t a coincidence?” She squinted. “Matti’s said before he’s blunt. Wouldn’t he tell you if something was going on instead?”
“I know one night his shift ended an hour earlier because one of the other wolves called him and asked where he was.”
That had left a little knot in the center of my chest. The idea that Henri might be avoiding me, hurt.
But I’d taken a risk with him that night in my room, even though I hadn’t actually thought he would say yes, no matter how much he seemed to stare at me sometimes, or touch me, or how helpful or kind he could be.
Or how playful he could be with me. Or affectionate. Or protective.
Or regardless of what Matti had smelled coming from him.
I’d been doomed.
On the screen, Sienna got even more squinty, and Matti was blinking very casually at the screen—he’d slid closer to her at some point—and I knew I needed to change the subject.