Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 83990 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83990 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“Well,” I start to say, “technically, I bought it, but my mother picked it out.”
She stands there, looking at me. “Are you hungry?” I ask her, and she shakes her head.
“I want to get out of these clothes,” she says, looking at the outfit that she wore on stage. I grab her hand, and we go up the side stairs and see that the walls are all rock, the long hallway in rich dark wood.
“I have no idea which room you want, so how about we start in there and then work our way around the house?” I suggest, opening the first door I see. “All the rooms have their own bathrooms,” I tell her and see the big king-size bed and a huge window in the middle of the room.. “I’m going to get your bags, so why don’t you take a shower?” I say. Leaning in to kiss her on the lips, I then walk out before I take her against the shower. I jog back downstairs, looking for our bags, and they are right there sitting on the couch.
By the time I walk back upstairs and pull out a pair of her sweats and a shirt, she is walking into the room with a towel wrapped around her. “Your turn,” she says, coming up to me. “I’ll wait for you here,” she whispers. She goes to her bag on the bed and tosses it on the floor along with her clothes, then slides under the covers. And by the time I finish my shower, I find her softly snoring. I walk to the door and flip off the light, and then walk over and slide into the bed with her. I pull her to me softly, not wanting to wake her, and for the first time in over a week, I fall asleep peacefully.
When I finally open my eyes, the sun is shining bright. “It’s about time you woke up.” I hear from beside me and look at her, sitting up in bed with her back to the headboard. She leans over and kisses my lips. “Morning.”
I grab her and drag her back down with me, burying my face in her neck. “Morning,” I grumble. Her stomach makes a gurgling sound, making me laugh. “What time is it?”
“Four o’clock,” she says. “I got up maybe twenty minutes ago and tried to shake you awake, but nothing, so I got on my phone instead.”
“Okay, let’s go eat,” I say, rolling out of bed and putting on shorts while she grabs a robe. We walk down to the kitchen, and I open the fully stocked fridge and see trays and platters of cooked food all labeled. “We have mac and cheese, chicken fried steak …”
I look over at her, and she is holding a box of Honey Nut Cheerios in one arm while her hand is in the box, and she is shoving them in her mouth. “I don’t care.”
I grab both trays and put them in the oven. “Thirty minutes,” I tell her, looking at the instructions on the top of the container.
“Well, it gives you thirty minutes to fill me in.” She looks at me, and I just nod my head. Grabbing her around her waist, I head to the couch. She puts the box of cereal down and sits on the couch, and I sit next to her. I lean in and kiss her lips. “Spill it.”
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, let’s start with the obvious,” she says. “How did you find me?”
she whispers.
I close my eyes, not wanting to remember the moment my heart literally stopped in my chest. “The plan was for you to get off stage and then Cori was going to have you brought to the plane where I was going to be waiting for you.”
“I was going to my house,” she whispers. “Cori made sure it was all set up.”
“I was going to be on the plane, and I was going to force you to finally listen to me,” I tell her, grabbing her and pulling her on my lap. “I was going to tell you everything, but then she called me, and I thought my heart had stopped.”
“Honey,” she says softly, putting her hand on my face, and I turn my face and kiss the palm of her hand.
“Anyway, it all happened so fast. Cori called me, and Dante called Hunter. The team back home was already in place and getting a ping off his phone.” I breathe out a huge sigh of relief. “Then when I found out what he told you, I had Rachel dig into his background and check accounts, and I have to tell you it didn’t take long to put the pieces together. He was broke. He was even lower than broke,” I tell her, and she looks at me in shock. “He was at the end of his rope, and he was getting sloppy. We put a tracker on his phone. He turned it off, but you can still get a location from the Bluetooth in his car.”