Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 124971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
I raised my hand. “Absolutely not.”
“Not even as my wedding present?” He wiggled his brows rather adorably.
“How’d you find out about this place, anyway?” I circled the air with my fork.
Riggs picked up his coffee and took a slow sip. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does,” I insisted. “I’ve been waffle hunting for years, and suddenly you just happened to stumble upon the best waffles in the city.”
“Walked past it.”
“Coming from where?”
He glowered at me, clearly annoyed that I wasn’t dropping it. “I stayed over with a friend.”
“A friend?” I grinned, shimmying my shoulders. Inside, it felt like I was being knifed in the chest by every felon in the zip code. “From school? Work?”
“A fuck buddy.”
“Nice that you’d think about me right after having sex with someone else.”
His lips twitched. “I always think about you. You’re my girl, Poppins.”
Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t control the butterflies stretching their wings in the pit of my belly.
“And your fuck buddies?” I asked casually, dumping too much creamer into my black coffee as a distraction. “What are they?”
“My outlet,” he answered shortly before flagging a waitress.
She came over quickly, shooting him a flirty smile. “Can I help you, handsome?”
“You sure can. Got any Advil?”
She threw him a pout, resting her cheek against her shoulder. “Sorry, but we’re not supposed to give away any medication. Liability stuff. We could get sued.”
“I won’t sue you.” He gave her his I’m-about-to-fuck-your-brains-out grin. The one I’d been avoiding all week. As expected, it worked like a charm.
Her gaze ping-ponged between us. “Doesn’t your girlfriend have any?”
So subtle. So smooth. Quick, someone give this woman a medal for diplomacy.
Well, as it turned out, I’d had enough of women trying to get a piece of what was about to be legally mine.
“Actually, I’m the wife.” I wiggled my engagement finger, flashing Riggs’s ring.
“But we’re getting a divorce,” he hurried to say. “As soon as today, seeing as wifey here is dead set on my not getting painkillers.”
I could see the waitress’s internal struggle before she sighed.
“All right. Be right back.”
Once she was gone, I swiveled to him. “Headache again?”
He nodded, rubbing his temples.
“You seem to get them a lot.”
“Yeah,” he groaned. “For a couple years now. They keep getting worse.”
“And you never got it checked?” I eyed his still-full waffle plate.
He shrugged. “One in every fifteen men has chronic migraines.”
“If you have to pop fifteen to twenty painkillers a week, they’re not just headaches. You should see a doctor.”
“Don’t have one,” he hissed out, obviously in pain.
Maybe he didn’t have any health insurance. Didn’t the magazine he worked for cover anything? They sounded like a bunch of twats.
“Anyway.” He nodded in thanks after receiving the painkillers the waitress disposed in his hand, along with a handwritten phone number and some water. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“We’re getting married this week.”
“May I?” I reached over to his waffles. He nodded. I knew he wouldn’t judge me for it. When I looked up at him with a mouthful of hot, fluffy waffles full of whipped cream and syrup, Riggs’s eyes gleamed with joy.
“If this was a real wedding, who would you invite?” I asked.
“It is a real wedding.” He swiped his finger over his whipped cream, sucking on it. “And I invited the usual suspects. Christian, Arsène, Arya, and Winnie. Maybe Alice. She’s Christian’s faux-mommy.”
“Sounds . . . delightful. What about family?” I asked.
“They’re my family.”
“I mean extended one. Parents, uncles, cousins. You must have someone.” I reached for his plate again, but he was quicker, switching between our plates and taking my empty one.
“Nope.” His eyes caressed my face. “No relatives whatsoever. Not even a pet hamster.”
“How come?” I remembered the offhanded way he’d told me he’d had a miserable childhood, and how I hadn’t pressed for more details, and I suddenly felt terrible for being so selfishly focused on myself in that moment.
“Well, I’m always on the road, so no sense in getting a pet. But hamsters specifically freak me out. They eat their young. Literally.”
“Riggs!” I chided. “How come you don’t have a family?”
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“I’ve nowhere to go,” I pressed.
“It’s depressing too.”
On a whim, I reached out, touching his palm across the table. It was the first time I’d initiated anything physical with him. “I absolutely love depressing stories. They’re my favorite. Remember, I’m the same person who told you I think Jane Austen should’ve killed off Mr. Darcy and had Elizabeth and her family join Scotland Yard and find his murderer. The same person who told you I went to school with torn clothes and empty lunch packs. Depressing life stories are my comfort zone.”
He hesitated, a smile on his face, before dropping his head in resignation.
“I’ll give you the condensed, comma-free version: My very gay grandfather ran away from Scotland to San Francisco in his twenties after his Catholic family disowned him because of his sexual orientation. There, he met an older man with a daughter from a previous marriage. That daughter was my mom. Elderly Gentleman and my grandfather fell in love and lived together. Elderly Gentleman kicked the bucket three years later, when my mom was fourteen, and left pretty much everything to my granddad—daughter included. He got full custody and raised her as his.