Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
He nods like he’s already forgotten it. “First time waking up with a stranger, I take it?” When I stare at him in shock, he laughs. “First rule is, don’t freak out. Second is, don’t use names. Third, offer coffee. Want some?”
“Yes, please,” I sigh. But I note that he’s broken rule two, because he definitely called me Hope, so he hasn’t forgotten my name. Of course, yesterday was pretty memorable. He’s going to have a hell of a vacation story about me, the crazy runaway bride who attacked him. Twice.
He gets up and heads to the kitchen like this is a normal morning. Maybe for him it is? It takes me a few minutes longer to rally myself into following him.
As he starts the coffeepot, I ask, “So have you woken up with strangers often?” I don’t know why I care. It just seems so opposite to my life experience that I can’t imagine what that’d be like.
He shrugs, and I watch his back as he makes the movement. He’s fit, lean but muscular, and his black sweatpants are sitting dangerously low on his hips. Low enough that I can tell he’s going commando beneath them. Whatever nightmare I had that brought him running must’ve disturbed his sleep last night, because when I left him, he was still in jeans.
“I wouldn’t say ‘often.’ But more than you, obviously.” He throws a smirk over his shoulder, and I roll my eyes. More seriously, he says, “I was a shy kid. When I got older and more confident, I wasn’t so shy.” A beat later, he adds cryptically, “Well, in some ways.”
“I don’t buy that you were ever shy. That’s pure bullshit, and you know it.” I look him up and down pointedly. He’s attractive—hey, I’m messed up in my head, not dead—but he knows it too. Not in a cocky, arrogant way, but rather, like he’s comfortable in his own skin and with who he is.
He laughs. “You have no idea. I grew up before I grew out, so I was a tall, skinny string bean with arms and legs that were always too long for my clothes.” He holds his arms out in a T, and the only word I can think of is wingspan. When he lets them fall back to his sides, he continues, “Every girl I liked, Sean would hype me up to talk to her, and then, when I finally got up the nerve, they’d inevitably ask me to introduce them to him.”
“Sean?” I ask. The fog of confusion is gone and I remember all of last night, but Ben hasn’t mentioned anyone by that name.
There’s a flicker in his dark eyes I don’t understand, but he doesn’t explain it when he tells me, “My best friend. More like a brother, even though we’re not blood related. Fuck knows we’ve bled each other like brothers, though. Lately, we cuss each other out more than we talk.” Given the tic in his jaw, that seems to bother him. A lot.
“Maybe you can introduce me to him sometime,” I say casually, and then grin as I wait. Ben’s shoulders droop, but when he realizes I’m fucking with him, he snatches a muffin from the counter and throws it at me, although it’s more of an underhanded toss than a sizzling fastball. After seizing it out of the air, I take a bite. “Thanks. I am hungry.”
His laugh is deep and rumbly, riling up the nest of June bugs in my belly in an entirely new way.
Chapter 6
BEN
Getting out of the trailer and into my rental car is harder than it should be. Hope’s perched by the front window, staring through the blinds like there’s a herd of hungry wolves outside ready to eat her alive. Or like we’re Bonnie and Clyde on the lam from the po-po.
Both scenarios, plus the completely serious way her blue eyes cut left and right every couple of seconds, have me fighting back a grin.
I get that she’s worried she’ll be spotted, but the only people outside are a family unloading their car—a car with out-of-state plates. Well, the mom and dad are unloading bags and coolers. The kids are wrestling in the grass and hollering at each other in a way that says they’ve been cooped up for at least a couple of hours too long.
“You ready to make a run for it?” she asks.
I guess she does have a slight point. She swears it would take only one person to recognize her and she’d be found—at another man’s place, on her supposed-to-be wedding night.
Which, I admit, is drama neither of us wants or needs.
I can imagine the call now . . .
“Hey, Sean—”
“Hey, asswipe, unless you’re calling to apologize, you can fuck off.”
“I got arrested. Need bail money.”
“Or I could let you rot in there. What’d you do, anyway?”