Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 121210 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121210 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
“Something?” she asks with the cutest tilt of her head, and I don’t mince my words.
“Damn near everything, really.”
“Good.” Her beautiful smile consumes her entire face, lifting her cheeks and lighting up her eyes in a way I hope I’ll get to see a million more times. “Now, come on! Last one to the truck has to wait for the other to initiate the next kiss.”
I’ll be damned if I’ve ever put my everything into a race with a woman before, but I turn on the turbo jets and run as fast as I can until I have to stop my momentum with two hands to the bed of my truck. When I turn around to look back, she’s walking.
Sashaying, really.
I throw up my hands as she’s finally arriving, asking, “What the hell?”
Her smirk is cunning. “I kind of like letting you be in control, but it sure was fun watching you run.”
I pull her to me then, spinning her around and pushing the back of her body up against the truck and trapping it within mine by placing two hands on the bed near her shoulders. She goes willingly, the corners of her mouth curving up even higher as I run a hand to her hip and pull her in tight. “I guess you owed me one, huh?”
“Uh-huh.” She nods, and I love the way her long eyelashes flutter up at me. “Though, a hardly crowded field of strangers’ cars isn’t quite on par with the church parking lot in Red Bridge.”
“You’re right,” I agree. “I’ve still got one coming for me.”
She shakes her head. “What is that? How are you like that? Just saying whatever you feel…conceding a point so easily… I’ve never heard a man…be so honest.”
“Nothing to lie about, I suppose. I am who I am, and right now, I’m a man who wants more than anything to be close to you.” I brush my lips against hers. “Really close.”
I know I’m pushing it, but I’ll be damned if Josie Ellis isn’t pushing me. I’ve never felt like this about anyone. Ever. I spent my early twenties being a rich prick—who hated my father for turning me into just that. I spent most of my days and nights partying and dating all kinds of women in New York, and not a single one of them made me feel like this.
Frankly, nothing has ever made me feel like this.
Thankfully, Josie is completely undeterred by my forwardness. “Get in,” she says with a wink. “I know the perfect place to go.”
I jump in the passenger seat of my truck and watch helplessly as she gets in on the other side. I’d never have let this happen a week ago, but facts are facts.
Josie Ellis is shaping up to be the dream girl.
And as a result, my priorities are shifting.
6
Josie
Saturday, May 31st
Out of all the places I could’ve taken Clay, I chose the one place that’s always been a little secret of mine. A place I ran to when I was a kid, trying to escape the grief of losing my baby sister Jezzy and, later, my father. A place that’s always given me peace and solace and felt like freedom when I was an eleven-year-old girl who wanted nothing to do with her horrible mother.
A place that I still go to sometimes. Just to think, just to breathe, just to be.
I don’t know why I wanted to bring Clay here, but here we are. At my water tower.
“I kind of thought this perfect place would be at a lower elevation,” Clay complains from behind me, climbing the beige rungs of Red Bridge’s one-hundred-and-thirty-foot-tall water tower like a puppy clinging to its mother.
I clear the edge and go under the bar to the deck, turning back to face him as he scales the last part of the ladder. “Come on, you big baby. You’re almost there.”
“Fear of heights is a real thing,” he says seriously, and it’s a struggle not to laugh in his face. Not because being afraid of heights isn’t real, but because I never imagined his cocky ass would ever look this pathetic.
Instead, I reach out a hand and help him up, and he doesn’t waste any time melding his back to the surface of the sphere. He’s a good five feet from the edge, but it doesn’t matter; his knuckles are white with fear.
“Listen, we can go down if you want,” I offer and honestly mean it. The last thing I want to do is make the man have a panic attack. “I didn’t realize it would be this big of a deal—”
“No, no.” He shakes his head, but his wide eyes don’t match the gesture.
“Clay, it’s fine. We can find somewhere else to—”
“No, now that we’re up here, going down is even worse.” He peers toward the edge for the briefest of moments before finding his safety net against the water tower again. “It’s better to just be here.”