Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
“Thanks, baby,” I murmured, picking up the fork she’d placed down next to the plate.
She followed up by bringing me a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice.
After squeezing her thigh, I dug in.
It wasn’t until I was pushing my plate away that I realized I was the first one served.
“Shit,” I said, looking around at the people looking at me. “Was I supposed to wait?”
Naomi’s friend, Aspen, started to snicker.
“No,” she remarked. “It’s just not every day that Naomi doesn’t feed herself first. She’s selfish like that.”
My brows rose. “That’s not selfish. She’s got that rockin’ body that has to be nurtured to continue to look as delicious as it does. How else do you expect her to keep it?”
Aspen stared at me for a few long seconds, then threw her head back and laughed.
Drew touched his hand to the top of Aspen’s head and took a seat on her opposite side. “You taking a seat, PD, or are you just going to stand there all day?”
PD, the man that’d voiced nothing since I’d entered the room, looked at Drew for a few long moments, and then came to take a seat on the other side of Drew.
The table that was in the middle of Masha’s bright yellow kitchen, decorated in sunflowers, wasn’t small, but the moment it had three very large men surrounding it, it looked tiny.
I finished off the last of my eggs, then placed my fork down on the plate and looked at the man who’d broken Naomi’s heart.
“So, you’re PD,” I drawled. “How’s the wife?”
PD’s face turned from stone to humor in three seconds. “My wife just found out she’s pregnant with our second child. She’s currently cursing me and every man with a penis between his legs.”
I snorted.
“She have morning sickness again?” Naomi asked as she started to set down plates.
“Yeah,” PD said, backing away so she could place his in front of him. “Bad. Worse than last time, according to her.”
The sad thing was that PD hadn’t been around for the last pregnancy, so all he had to go on was what she told him.
Naomi’s answering smile wasn’t one of sadness, but of happiness.
And when she sat on my lap to eat her own breakfast, I realized that she was just as over PD as I was over Ellen.
We’d healed each other.
Chapter 15
I’ve reached an age where my mind says, “I can do that.” But my body says, “Try it and die, fat girl.”
-Fact of life
Naomi
“Why don’t you like your name?” I asked the old man, two weeks after I’d visited my family in Kilgore.
He looked over at me where I was walking at his side and grinned.
I could tell, at one point, the man had been beautiful. Very handsome.
“I like my name,” he said. “But I liked it more when my wife said it.”
Sadness welled inside of me.
“Tell me how y’all met.”
His smile was radiant.
“The Korean War.”
I blinked.
“You met while fighting the Korean War?” I asked.
He smiled down at me.
“I met my Molly when I was twenty, and four days away from deployment,” his words were whimsical, and I tried hard not to stare at him.
He was making my heart hurt with all his happiness on his face at remembering his wife, and how they met.
“I was going to a bar to meet my friends,” he started. “One last hoorah before we all left.”
I stepped over a dog who was a bit too overzealous with his excitement and waved at the frazzled looking girl trying to corral him. Butterfinger growled low in her throat but didn’t make a move towards the other dog. I had started holding the dog’s leash during our walks, so he could concentrate on walking.
She waved back, and I returned my eyes to Brady.
“I walked in that tavern that night, sixty some years ago, my eyes jumped to the bar area and I froze in the doorway.”
“Why?” I smiled. “Was she sitting at the bar?”
He shook his head.
“No, she was dancing around it.” His smile was so soft and sweet that my eyes smarted. “She had on this black dress. I’ll never forget it. The skirt was big and it just spun around her knees and made her waist look so tiny. It was open at the neck and it seemed to wrap around her shoulders like it was hugging her. She looked so beautiful, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
He swallowed. “And these bright red high heels.”
I grinned.
“The high heels got you, didn’t they?” I asked.
He laughed, his voice shaky.
“Yeah, they got me.” He turned his eyes up to the sky, studying a giant buzzard that was circling over the path on long, languid sweeps of his wings. “And that smile. God, it made my chest tight to see that smile aimed in my direction.”