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)
He looked at me.
He just freaking looked at me.
Then he lifted his arm, palm up, between us. “Let me smell your hand.”
I pulled it in close to my chest. “No.” I thought about it. “Why?”
“I want to know where he touched you,” he answered with zero hesitation, his eyelids low.
But why? I clutched my hand closer to my body and shook my head. “Look, Fluff, I appreciate you keeping an eye on me and wanting to protect my honor, but that ship sailed a long time ago.”
Why? Why did I say that?
I kept on going and ignored the face he made at my poor choice of words. “I already told you. Nothing happened that you need to worry about. We were only talking, give me a break.”
Those orange-brown eyes slid over my features. “I like to worry.”
“I don’t know why.”
Why that comment shocked him, I didn’t understand, but from how tight his face went, he made it seem like I’d kicked him in the shin.
But that wasn’t what I wanted either. I really wasn’t trying to be petty.
“You all right?” I asked, keeping an eye on him. “The kids okay?”
“Kids are fine.”
I wanted to ask more about them, but I’d wait a second. That had only been a partial answer. “Are you okay?”
“You’re asking if I’m okay?”
I nodded. His face had haunted me for the first hour or two after we’d gotten back. He had seemed so upset. Self-contained, responsible, had-zero-doubts-he-could-stand-his-own-against-a-sasquatch Henri. Sure, he’d been worried about the kids, and I would have been hurt if he hadn’t been worried about me too, but….
“I’m not used to seeing you so concerned,” I told him. “And you seem like you’re in a bad mood.”
“I am in a bad mood.” The thick column of his throat bobbed. “I’m not used to feeling….” He did some up and down gesture with his hand.
Something in my chest stirred. “I don’t know what that means.”
There was a pause. His palm swept down his mouth. “Torn.”
“Over what?”
“Doing what I should instead of what I want,” he answered.
I squinted at him.
He raised his chin. “Tell me you didn’t jump into the river, Nina.”
Those bigmouth kids. I’d only been partially paying attention when they’d retold the story about what had happened, but maybe that had come up afterward with their parents. “I didn’t jump into the river.”
He looked down his nose at me. “How exactly did you end up wet then?”
I wished, not for the first time, that I could lie and get away with it. “A log hit me in the back and swept my feet out from under me,” I muttered the explanation.
Henri’s eyes went so wide, I was surprised they didn’t fall out of their sockets.
Where had Neutral Face Henri gone? I wondered as I bit the inside of my cheek and figured I might as well keep going. “I climbed in, to be specific. I was on a rock, and I sat down into it, and then kind of… shuffled over?”
“Then the log in the river hit you?”
Did his voice have to be that flat? “Exactly.”
His right eye was the part of his body that decided to react. “You didn’t see how deep the water was or….?” he asked, crossing his arms over that impressive chest. His biceps were so lined, I wanted to drag my fingertip across the overlapping muscles.
Instead, I tucked my hands under my armpits, grateful I’d changed into fleece pants and a warm sweater. But I dropped my voice into almost a whisper. “No, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to cross half the dang river to get to him, but what was I supposed to do? Wait for someone with longer legs to reach him and risk their life too?” How was that fair? What made my life more valuable than someone else’s? Randall had a family on the ranch who loved him. Ani was a mother. And so was I.
“Yes,” he tried to argue.
The face I gave him was the equivalent of rolling my eyes. “No, Pascal was scared, and I was scared, and Shiloh was crying. It would’ve been so much worse if he’d fallen in.” I pinched the material of my sweatshirt between my fingers. “Don’t be mad. I had to make a decision, and I did, and we’re all still here.”
A low growl formed in his chest that might have been intimidating if I didn’t know by now how great his self-control was. “But you got hurt.”
“I could’ve gotten hurt worse,” I tried to compromise.
His eye started twitching even harder. “You think I didn’t see your back? Your hands and arms?” Henri took a step forward. “It’s a goddamn miracle that log didn’t hit you in the head and kill you.”
Oh, I knew that better than he did, but… I shrugged. “I had to try.”
His nostrils flared, and for one brief moment, his nose wrinkled. Those light-colored eyes bore right into mine in a way that made me think some part of him wanted me to look away, that he was trying to do some dominating crap. He might be mad at me for risking myself, but I wasn’t scared of him.