Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
The dinner went well.
I enjoyed every second of being in Merriam’s presence.
It was completely natural for us to talk like we’d been together for years.
By the end of our dinner, with her face covered in barbeque sauce, I felt like being around Merriam was easy. She didn’t expect anything from me. She didn’t try to hide any of her personal life. She didn’t try to pry into mine without me first bringing it up.
Not to mention, she was sexy as hell.
“I’ll be right back,” she said as she got up. “I’m fairly sure I’m wearing more sauce than I ate.”
I agreed with her.
While she was in the bathroom, I looked up the candy place she’d said her father owned.
Brinkley’s.
I made a notation in my notes on the address, then shoved my phone back into my pocket in time to see her heading back to me with a clean face.
She smiled and took a seat beside me.
“I’m back, Kermit.”
I blinked at her words. “What?”
“Kermit.” She paused. “You know, Jeremiah the Bullfrog? Then it twisted in my brain to frog, then Kermit. And yeah…Kermit.”
I chuckled. “I guess that’s pretty inventive. I’ve never heard that one before.”
“At least it’s not Mia,” she offered up.
“True.” I glanced at Bryson. “Not sure how that came about, because it’s more like Mya and not Meeya, but whatever. Bryson’s an odd duck.”
“He’s a nice odd duck, though,” she said as she watched the four other people at our table talking and laughing about helping old ladies up.
“He is,” I confirmed. “There’s a reason I consider him my best friend. Odd or not, he always has my back. On and off the ice.”
“Speaking of ice,” she said. “Did you hear that it’s going to snow this week?”
“I did,” I said. “They said we might have a white Christmas.”
“I hope so,” she said. “Even better if that white Christmas happens before Christmas Eve, so I can spend some time at home and not making candy.”
“Sounds to me like you already have your answer on whether you want to do this for the rest of your life,” I pointed out. “Why not try to make it as profitable as possible, then sell it?”
“My dad would kill me if I did that,” she said. “He loves that place.”
But the way she said it almost made her sound…scared. Like she was terrified to find out what he’d do if she did that.
“Doesn’t mean that he can’t accept that you don’t want to,” I pointed out, studying her carefully.
She shrugged, her eyes darting to mine before they slid away.
What was she hiding?
Her phone pinged, and she glanced down at it, wincing slightly.
“Shit,” she said. “I have to go.”
My brows pinched together at the momentary flash of fear on her face.
“Oh, I brought you, though.” Gisela started to quickly lick her fingers clean. “Eliska, are you done?”
The urgency in Gisela’s voice had me tensing even more.
What had happened to make both women freak out the way they were doing?
“I’ll take you home,” I offered.
Merriam offered me a weary smile, and I knew her answer before she gave it. “That’s nice, but no thank you.”
I stilled my body, forcing myself not to reach for her.
“Can I have your number?” I asked quietly, hoping it would only reach her ears only.
She pushed back her chair and offered me a sad smile. “If I were in a place right now that would allow dating you, Kermit, I’d take it.” She looked at her phone when it pinged again. “But unfortunately, I’m not.”
The two women left, throwing enough money onto the table to cover more than their fair share.
The moment they were gone, I looked at the rest of the table and said, “Did y’all get a bad feeling like I did?”
“Sure did.”
“Yep.”
“Yes.”
Fuck.
Chapter
Six
I think he’s old enough to be changed to Ryan Goose now…
—Merriam’s secret thoughts
MERRIAM
I. Was. Screwed.
I’d meant to be home well before Dad had gotten home to see that I’d gotten a babysitter, but Dad had decided to get home early.
And he was pissed that I was out for the night, instead of at home taking care of my daughter.
I had a two-and-a-half-year-old little girl named Anleigh.
Anleigh was the light of my life. The one ray of sunshine in my perpetually cloudy day.
Four years ago, when I was young and dumb, I was a broke college kid desperate for a way out of the hellhole of a life I’d had.
I’d decided to defy my father’s wish of taking over his candy store and had decided I was going to use my business degree to become a teacher.
I’d become so dead set on it that I hadn’t realized that my father had caught on to my plans—leaving the mail I’d received on the counter had been so stupid—until he was already finished ruining them.
One second I was a twenty-four-year-old woman with plans to become a teacher, and the next I was in debt up to my eyeballs.