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)
Henri tugged me backward until I bumped into him. “I’ll make sure you get some when the time is right.”
I lifted my face. “Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise,” he said with a smile that touched my heart because I’d never seen him use it before on anyone, not even Agnes, which made me think about everything else that had been on my mind.
There was a lot.
I sighed and let my shoulders fall. “Henri….”
He ignored me. “Come here, there’s a boulder we can sit on,” he said, pulling me to the left, a few feet away, where there was indeed a flat-ish rock. He took a seat in the center of it, and I didn’t struggle when he tugged me down and onto his thigh.
I reeled back and grinned. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he replied, his arm slinging low around my back as a support.
I folded my hands and raised my eyebrows. “So, what are we doing?”
“Practice,” he explained, setting that warm hand possessively on my thigh. “How does it feel?” As much as I liked Serious Henri, I liked Flirty Henri just as much.
I patted his knee. “I don’t really know what to do with myself, but it’s pretty comfortable.” Leaning into him, I whispered, “Am I really sitting on your lap right now?”
“Yeah.” The corners of his mouth twitched, and I took a second to absorb the stubble that covered his jaw and upper lip. He had such expressive eyes when he didn’t have his neutral face on. “You don’t need to do anything but sit there and try this out.”
I looked down at his legs under me and patted the inside of his thigh. “It has good padding. I could see this being a nice spot to hang out on a regular basis. It has good back support.” Planting my palm on the muscle right above his knee, I tested it out. It was rock-hard. “How much do you squat?”
“Not as much as I can.”
There was a long, deep howl far, far away, but it sounded like a coyote—unless there was some coyote god that lived on the ranch that I didn’t know about, which was definitely possible.
Which reminded me….
“Henri…,” I started, dread making my stomach feel funny.
“Nina…,” he teased.
I was grateful for my good night vision when I could see his eyes and the color of them so clearly. His face was open, his body language easygoing. I’m sitting on his lap.
Dang it, I needed to focus. “I need to tell you something before we talk about anything else.”
“What are you worried about?” The hand on my hip gave it a little rub.
I turned a little more toward him and put my palms on him, one on his shoulder, the other on his impressive thigh. I was slightly concerned.
More than slightly.
“Hey,” Henri murmured, grazing the skin under my chin with his free hand. “Don’t. There’s nothing for you to be worried about. I know you. I like everything about you, even the smelly stuff.”
My face went red. “Huh?” What smelly stuff?
“You’ve thrown up on my bed more than once—”
I squawked. “What the…? I don’t remember that!” I laughed.
“You were five or six,” Henri explained, smiling a little.
“The first day I met the kids, they talked about Matti peeing his bed, not anything about vomit,” I told him.
His smile grew. “He did pee, and you did throw up, but I don’t feel bad making fun of Matti. I never told anyone about what you did,” he tried to reassure me.
I squinted. “Why do you even remember that?”
“You know how hard it is to get the smell of stomach acid and Doritos to go away?” he asked in a voice that sounded serious, but his expression gave him away. He had that glimmer in his eyes.
“I’m sorry?”
A hand palmed my lower back as he looked at me. “All I’m saying is that we’re past you being nervous around me. You weren’t even that way when Duncan was hanging off my tail like a Christmas ornament.”
I blinked at him.
He patted my back. “Now tell me what you think we need to talk about that’s stressing you out.”
He was smart. He had to know. This wouldn’t be so much of a shock for him, would it? Searching his rough, handsome face, all I found was sincerity reflected back at me. Affection in the lines at the corners of his mouth. Maybe even more than that.
But a small part of me was aware that this could change everything.
The universal truth was, you couldn’t build anything worthwhile—not a friendship, much less a relationship—on secrets and lies.
And I would never do that to Henri.
“First off,” I swallowed, “if we had kids, there’s a chance they might turn out like me. They might have my magic.”
His eyes narrowed, and the way he agreed made it seem like that was a moot comment. “I know.”