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)
That didn’t help in the way I thought he wanted it to. It was too sweet. “It….” It took me a second to try and get my voice steady, ignoring the way I failed and it still broke as I whispered, “It isn’t that I’m so scared someone will try and take him away. No one is taking my donut unless they want to meet their ancestors.”
His eyes moved from one of mine to the other.
I pressed my lips together and rehearsed the words in my head twice before I got them out. “I’m scared he’s going to choose to leave… and not ask me to go with him,” I whispered. We’d talked about this already, more than once, but I couldn’t help but bring it up again.
Maybe if I said it enough, it would get easier.
Or maybe if I said it out loud, it couldn’t come true.
His thumb drew a line under my chin. “He won’t. If he wants you to go, we’ll deal with it, Nina,” he promised. “I can get a job anywhere, and you can work from anywhere.” He paused and his throat bobbed. “You don’t need to work if you don’t want to. We haven’t talked about it yet, but we should.”
“Talk about what?” And had he said I didn’t need to work?
“Finances,” he explained. I wasn’t going to say he was projecting discomfort, but more… he sort of looked embarrassed? Was he sheepish? “How the property taxes get paid on this land.”
That was an instant distraction, and I squinted at him. “I did try to guess one day how much you owe yearly but…. Why are your ears turning red?”
His ears got even redder when I called them out. It was adorable. So was the expression that came over his face. “I live within my means, of what I make off my job.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
His cute ears went even more crimson, turning a color that made me think of Duncan’s eyes, and he shook his head very slowly.
“Fluffy Blackrock, are you rich?” I whispered.
“It’s complicated,” was his reply, definitely 100 percent uncomfortable. “I’ll tell you everything after we get today over with. Deal?”
I wanted to hear everything now because that sure sounded suspicious. “Am I going to give you a hard time?”
He didn’t wait to nod, his features sober, but his eyes… there was amusement there in between his ruby red ears. “There’s a trust, and I got an inheritance when I turned 21. We’ll talk about it later though, yeah?”
“Deal, but it doesn’t make a difference to me,” I told him with a smile that got me one right back. A nice, soft one.
“I know, Cricket,” he agreed.
I poked his forearm. “Were you trying to distract me right now?”
Henri’s eyebrows went up that infamous millimeter. “It worked for a couple minutes.” His smile eased the tension in my body. “But you need to know, Duncan’s not going to choose to leave you. I’d bet every acre of this property, he would live in a nuclear power plant for the rest of his life before he gave you up,” he said, looking me dead in the eye the entire time.
I knew he was right, but….
“The love you two have for each other is the same I smell in every close family. He isn’t going to choose strangers. Duncan thinks you’re his, the same way you think he’s yours.”
It wasn’t like I didn’t know that, but it was different hearing it from Henri. A little bit of relief eased the worst of my stomachache. Only the worst. I had to press my lips together before I said, “Okay… and if they try and take him, you’ll gouge out their eyes for us, so I don’t need to?”
Another line was drawn over my chin. “No, but I’m glad your sense of humor is back.”
I was only partially joking, but I gave him a tight smile and tried to play it off even though I was pretty sure he was well aware I wasn’t bloodthirsty under normal circumstances, but when it came to my donut, I’d become a cannibal.
For him too, I figured.
Fortunately, he didn’t quit smiling. “Come on. The faster we get it over with, the faster we can move on.” He looked at me. “Matti and Sienna get here in a few days, and your parents get here an hour later, and after that, the moon is going to be watching over us under the waterfall, and you’re going to be my mate.”
That had to be the only thing in the world able to pull me fully out of my panic. To give me hope for the future.
Whatever else happened, I’d have the rest of my life with the most handsome, wonderful man I’d ever met.
He bent his head and brushed his warm lips over mine. “Let’s get it over with.”