Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I don’t remember saying I was, but I do appreciate the sentiment.”
“So it’s done, then?” Dylan asked. “Papers all signed? Money and keys exchanged? No need to spend weeks convincing you that this is a fantastically horrible idea?”
“Yep. All done. The Grille closes on Friday, and then I have a demo crew coming in on Saturday to help me with the heavy lifting. I’m trying to save some cash by doing a lot of the easier renovations on my own, but I’m a one-woman show. So we’ll see how that goes.”
“Okay, then.” Dylan leaned back in her seat. “No use harping on a done deal. Give me all the deets.” She poked at her soggy bread. “Please tell me you’re firing the chef.”
I grinned. “Yep. All new kitchen staff. I’m aiming for an upscale café. Farm to table with everything fresh and locally sourced. A menu that changes quarterly, highlighting whatever produce is in season, and weekly specials that feature homestyle comfort foods. I want The Rosewood Café to appeal to every age and demographic, from the trendy twenty-somethings to mom and pop’s Sunday supper.”
“That’s…a lot,” Angela said, flashing me a tight smile.
“I know, but it will keep me busy. What’s the old saying about idle—”
“Mooooom,” Daphne interrupted.
My gaze sliced straight to my son.
Still holding the smoking gun—or in this case the straw—next to his mouth, he shouted, “I didn’t mean to!”
Yes. Shouted.
At me.
In the middle of a restaurant.
I took a brief second to ponder if it would be more difficult to teach him to knit or crochet.
Narrowing my eyes, I whispered, “Did you just yell at me?”
“No! I mean…yes. Kinda. But it’s Pike’s fault. He made me laugh while I had the straw in my mouth! It just flew out and it didn’t even hit her!”
Pike defended himself in an equally loud tone, and Daphne joined to referee the nuh-uh, ya-huh brawl.
Through the chaos, I heard the rumble of a deep baritone. The hairs on the back of my neck instantly stood on end.
“Shit,” the man said, a loud clatter following the curse.
I turned in time to see a mammoth of a man lurch to his feet, water soaking his stomach and his lap.
Stunned, I stared at him. It was like that scene from The Terminator when Arnold was in scan mode, searching his database for answers of what he was seeing.
After a few attempts, my frazzled brain identified him as none other than Truett fucking West.
It had been years since I’d seen him. The last time our paths had crossed, he’d been passed out drunk on the front lawn of a frat party. But he was a hard man to forget.
He was gorgeous. No denying that, but not in the traditional clean-cut, tailored-suit sense. He was more like the GQ version of a convict.
His dark-brown hair was the same military cut he’d been sporting since his high school JROTC days. Slightly longer on top now, but it was styled with a skilled hand. A thick beard peppered with the slightest bit of gray masked his face, but it was the tattoos covering both of his arms that truly gave him away. Judging by the muscles carved beneath the fabric of his shirt, time had been good to Truett.
His cold, distant brown eyes collided with mine, and while there was definitely a spark of recognition, his handsome face remained otherwise blank.
I sucked in a sharp breath as a chill over two decades old pebbled my skin. That was the Truett West effect. Only this time, it no longer held me captive.
The air seemed to thicken as a rush of emotions, long dormant, surged within me. Disdain. Anger. Bitterness. The laundry list could go on for a mile, but as I visually added up the one-plus-one of the situation where my son’s spitball was responsible for the overturned glass and water dripping off his table, I couldn’t very well lead with any of those. My emotional grid went with my old friend Indifference instead.
I grabbed the stack of extra napkins off our table and walked them over. As I stopped in front of him, it struck me how tall he was. I wasn’t a short woman by any means, but he towered over me. His broad shoulders made him seem larger than the six foot three I knew him to be.
Extending the napkins his way, I issued a monotone, “Sorry about that.”
He hummed an acknowledgement as he took the napkins and spread them across the table. His club sandwich swam in a pool of water, but given how bad the rest of the food had been, I assumed Nate had done him a favor.
I awkwardly stood there, waiting to do the whole, “Hi, how are you?” bit that was required when you ran into someone from your past. But not surprisingly, Truett said nothing.