Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Damn, but I liked that guy.
Me: I didn’t come up with it. Mal did.
Paul: Mal? WTF? The short, skinny dude who’s incapable of safely heating a corn dog for his girlfriend is a marketing savant now? I don’t believe it.
I tamped down a flare of annoyance at what I was starting to realize was Paul’s ridiculous jealousy.
Me: Wait, are we still PRETENDING to talk like cavemen, or is that just who you are now?
Predictably, Paul didn’t reply.
Mal waved goodbye to the Mitchells and bent down to retrieve something from a box on the ground. His dark green T-shirt pulled tight across a pair of broad shoulders and a leanly muscled back I now knew had been honed by hard, physical labor, welding his sculptures together. When he straightened, he cocked his head at his display, intelligent eyes narrowed with a level of concentration that made me full-on shiver, despite the bone-singeing heat of the sun, wondering what it would be like to have that concentration focused on me.
Yeah, no, short, skinny, and incapable were not how anyone should describe this man.
The chemistry between us had been undeniable from the second I’d laid eyes on him, a crazy-intense attraction like magnets aligning that I would have told you couldn’t be real since I’d never felt anything like it before. But whereas most of the guys I hooked up with back in the city got less attractive the second they opened their mouths—legit, there were only so many times I could hear about a guy’s six degrees of separation from someone famous, or “the hottest new club in Billyburg, Brooks!” without rolling my eyes so far back they’d stick—with Mal, every damn thing I learned about the man made me want to learn more, despite how fucking impossible the whole situation was.
I rubbed a hand over my mouth, low-key checking to make sure I wasn’t literally drooling over him, and Mal’s curious gaze met mine.
“You about ready?” I asked.
“Oh.” He turned in a circle and nodded, stacking the boxes filled with packing material under the table. “I guess so. What happens now?”
“Now you close up your tent and lock it with that padlock.”
Mal surveyed these cutting-edge security measures with a raised eyebrow. “That’s it? No armed guard, no nothing?”
I shook my head. “Not in the Thicket. Sheriff Nutter and his crew will keep an eye on the square overnight, but there’s not much crime here. Except for the people who keep stealing the Welcome to Licking Thicket sign,” I added sourly.
“Wait, you mean the sign we saw on the Lope?” Mal asked, bending down to fasten the tent closed. “Or, the empty spot where the sign used to be, I mean?”
I sighed and briefly explained everything my parents had told me. By the time I was finished, Mal was laughing so hard he was almost in tears… and I was nearly hard just from watching him laugh, which made me wanna cry for a different reason. The longing I felt for him was becoming seriously annoying.
“Who wouldn’t want that sign?” Mal demanded, wiping his eyes. “This town is a parody of itself, and every single person here is in on the joke.” He delivered this truth bomb in a tone of frank admiration that made me want to kiss the shit out of him for articulating something I hadn’t been able to say.
Instead, I reminded myself that I was heading north in exactly four more days, while he was heading west, and he was Ava’s boyfriend, at least as far as the town was concerned.
I took a step backward. “Come on. I need AC before I melt.”
Mal nodded.
When we were in the truck a little while later with the AC cranking and some country song on the radio, I gave him a sideways glance. “So, thanks for your help. With the campaign, I mean.”
“Sure.” Mal grinned at me across the cab. “Do I get royalties?”
“If by royalties you mean my endless admiration and thanks, then yes.”
His grin spread. “And if I meant dollar bills?”
I smirked. “Then no.”
“How about a favor?” He wiggled his eyebrows, and it was the cutest goddamn thing. “Like, one favor to be redeemed at the time and place of my choosing.”
“Hell no,” I said automatically. “Do you not read fairy tales? This is how people lose their firstborn child.”
“The fuck would I want with your child, Brooks?” Mal’s cheeks went pink. “I mean, just thinking about being an uncle is…” He cleared his throat. “I’m the only dependent I can handle, thanks.”
Fair point. “Fine, then. I owe you one favor.” I paused at the four-way stop sign on Orchard Street. The air shimmered with summer heat. “You sure you still wanna go to that junkyard?”
“Is that my favor?”
I barked out a laugh. “So suspicious. No, Mal, this is a separate thing.”