Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Rhodes was going to wring my neck for promising to save his dad a seat for the talent show, but Randall was trying and I’d give him credit. Rhodes still wasn’t totally on board with putting in effort in return. But I had a feeling he’d wear himself down eventually, for Am’s sake. For him to have another grandparent. You couldn’t erase years of a rocky relationship with just a few examples of effort.
Part of me hoped he didn’t find out that I’d been the one to tell Randall about the talent show when we’d run into each other at Home Depot in Durango, but it was worth the risk. It wasn’t like he would really actually get mad at me. Not for that, at least.
Rhodes grunted as he parked and then took his time looking at me, a tiny dent forming between his eyebrows. Those gray eyes roamed my face like they did pretty often, like he was trying to read me. He was real subtle about it, but if he could tell I was feeling down, he tried to cheer me up in his own ways. Some of those ways had included showing me how to chop wood when he’d had two full cords delivered. Another time had been taking me to snowshoe up to ice caves. But my favorite way was when he used that incredible body at night to get my endorphins going. It was comfort and bonding all rolled into one.
I loved him so much that not even my grief could mute how I felt about him.
And I knew without a doubt, that my mom would have been so happy I’d found someone like him.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
I didn’t have to think about it. “I’m okay.”
Those gray eyes moved over my face. “Just making sure.” He took my hand. “I saw you looking out the window in the kitchen before we left.”
I had been doing that. I’d caught myself doing it less over the last couple of weeks. My body and brain had gotten some time to cope. The surprise visit from my loved ones had really helped too. It had reminded me again of how much I still had, so much more love than some people would ever know. “No, I’m okay, I promise. I was thinking about how funny things work out sometimes. Like maybe if I had waited to book your garage apartment, someone else might have and we would have never met.”
“And here I grounded Am for six months and it was one of the two best things to ever happen to me.”
The other being Amos, I knew. And I smiled. There was a lot worth smiling for. “You scared the shit out of me that day, by the way.”
His mouth twisted. “You scared the shit out of me too. I thought you were breaking into the house.”
“You still scared me more. You were like two steps away from getting pepper sprayed,” I told him.
Rhodes’s mouth pulled into a beautiful smile. “Not as much as you scared me that day you were screaming your lungs out in the middle of the night all because of a sweet little bat.”
“Sweet? Are you high?”
His laugh sent my heart pumping.
I leaned over and kissed him, and that ridiculous, full mouth opened and he kissed me deeply in return. We pulled apart, and I smiled at him as he looked at me with tenderness, but the moment he could, his eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Rhodes’s mouth went tight. “I think someone has been following us.”
I turned in the seat to look out the back window but didn’t see anything. “You think? Why?”
“Yes. It’s a black SUV. I noticed it right when we pulled out of the driveway. They were coming toward us and pulled a U-turn almost immediately. It’s been following us since,” he explained. “It might be a coincidence, but it doesn’t seem like it.”
I touched his hand. “I don’t have any stalkers. Do you?”
That got one corner of his mouth to hitch up at the same time his fingers landed on top of mine. “None that I know of. Keep close, will you?”
I agreed, and we got out. The weather had taken a turn for a couple of warmer days, but I still had my down jacket on—the tangerine one he’d given me for Christmas that he’d said made me look like walking sunshine. Rhodes rounded the hood and came over to where I was waiting for him in the middle of the parking lot. He slipped his arm over my shoulder and kept me right there, next to that long frame that made me think of safety and home and love.
But mostly of the future.
For such a quiet, private man, he wasn’t stingy with his affection. Part of me thought that he knew how much I needed it and that’s why he sprinkled it on everything. I’d even caught Am looking a little funny sometimes when he’d randomly put an arm around his shoulder or tell him he was proud of him for the littlest things.