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 population was 3,000, the sign coming into town said. Elevation 7012, though it had to be higher at the ranch. They had an elementary school and a small high school, but I hadn’t seen a middle school. There were even two churches. I wasn’t sure why, but that got me thinking about other things.
“What is it?” Henri’s voice was loud in the cab.
“What’s what?”
“That look on your face.”
That got me to side-eye him. I patted my cheek with my fingertips. I hadn’t made a face. I hadn’t even been thinking negative thoughts or even good ones, not enough for him to pick up on. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him what had been on my mind either, not with the mood he was in after his visitor.
I tried to think of something believable, but nothing came to mind fast enough.
“It’s still there,” he accused. “We’ve got a thirty-minute drive left, you might as well tell me.” He paused. “I can try to guess too.”
This man… he looked so gruff and serious, and beneath that rough exterior, the sarcasm ran deeper than the Styx. Why couldn’t he pretend not to notice my mind was on other things? Not even Matti and Sienna called me out on my crap constantly. They let me get away with things from time to time. It was called privacy.
“Cricket….”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “When did you get to be this chatty, by the way?”
That got him.
“You think I’m talkative?” He sounded surprised.
“Compared to teenage Fluffy? Yes.”
There was a pause. “I can’t get a whole lot across grunting at people all day,” he claimed.
He had a point. “Nothing’s bothering me,” I clarified.
He didn’t say a thing. He sat there, his eyes burning a hole into the side of my face.
I blew out my breath, realizing he wasn’t going to drop this. “If you’re going to insist, everything is all right. I was just thinking about how I don’t know anything about what happened to you after you graduated and lived with Matti and his family for a while. I never even knew why you moved in with them in the first place.”
The snicker he let out wasn’t what I was expecting. Neither was the “Nina” he kind of chuckled in that ridiculous velvet voice, that was warmth and richness. “That’s what your mind was on?”
I waved my right hand at him. “Yeah. You’re so secretive about some things.” I thought about it. “I’d like to be friends, Fluff. I don’t want you to hate having me around for asking a bunch of questions or making you talk about stuff you don’t want to.” I shrugged. “And you have a cute chuckle, if you want to know that too. There? Are you happy now?”
There was a moment of silence so strong I considered opening my car door and tucking and rolling on the way out.
But before I could consider all the reasons why I wouldn’t do it, he asked in a funny voice, “You always this honest?”
I snorted. “No, but you weren’t going to drop it, and I figured I might as well get it off my chest and save us both time. What have you been doing for the last eighteen years?”
He angled his body against the corner of the door and the seat, attention still on me. He crossed his arms over his chest, flexing those arms that belonged on a men’s health magazine. “Matti hasn’t even been gone a couple hours, and you’re already giving me a hard time” was what he replied with.
“I was minding my own business. You’re giving me a hard time.” I glanced at him real quick sitting in my passenger seat.
He gave me the most nonchalant look. “You can ask whatever you want to ask. I don’t hate you being here, and we are… friends.”
There had been a pause there, and a part of me wanted to pry at it, give it a little poke, see what happened, but a bigger part of me, the part that was scared what might come out if I did that, said I better not. It said I should take what I’d been given and be happy with it. If Henri said we were friends, then we were friends. That needed to be enough.
I shifted in my seat. “Does that mean you’re going to tell me what you did in all those years?”
Part of Henri’s mouth formed into a smirk, and that same man I knew, and yet didn’t know, shook his head. “Nope, but it doesn’t mean you can’t ask.”
I snickered, and I didn’t imagine his smirk getting a little wider before he said the one thing I needed to hear more than anything else.
“You’re going to be just fine here, Nina,” he predicted. “I’ve got a good feeling about it.”