Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 132649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
“My help with what?” Iris asked, matching his glare with one of her own.
“Laying sandbags in front of the garage doors to mitigate the effects of the flooding.”
“What flooding?” she asked, alarmed. “Are we safe here?”
He sighed, the sound short and irritated and really bloody condescending.
“The house itself is pretty high, so the possibility of it flooding is minimal. The garage, however, is underground.”
“Seems shortsighted,” she couldn’t help but retort, and he gave her another annoyed glower.
“Stop fucking mouthing off and get a move on.”
“Maybe if you were less rude to me, I’d consider helping you save your millions of pounds worth of cars. Until then, I’m quite content to stay in my prison cell.”
Only she wasn’t. Iris was dying to get out, but she figured she had some bargaining power here, which she ought to take advantage of.
He eyed her for a speculative moment, then shrugged in unconcern and dropped her hand.
“Fine, you’ll probably slow me down anyway.”
Shit, didn’t the guy understand the fine art of negotiation?
“You’re supposed to offer me something to sweeten the deal,” she informed him, folding her arms over her chest.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t need your help that desperately.”
“Sure you do,” she negated. “You came pounding in here reeking of panic and desperation. You’re worried about your precious cars, aren’t you?”
“Thought you’d jump at the opportunity to make yourself useful and get out of this room for a while. That prospect should have been enough of a deal sweetener.”
Ugh… he was right about the latter. Why was she risking the possibility of him changing his mind?
Nonetheless, she needed to use the little leverage she had. “I’d help for the Wi-Fi password.”
He crossed his beefy arms over his massive chest and his unkempt beard twitched as his top lip curled.
“Sure.”
His easy acquiescence threw her, and she blinked up at him, her mouth slightly agape.
“What?”
“I said ‘sure’,” he repeated.
Iris’s stomach sank and she gave him a dejected frown.
“You were going to give it to me anyway, weren’t you?”
The wicked gleam in his eyes told her she was right, but he didn’t admit as much out loud. Damn it, she should have asked for something else, like visitation rights with Luna… or leaving the door unlocked.
What a letdown. She’d been so certain she had the upper hand, but no, he held all the cards. She was so damned frantic to get out of this room that even if he’d refused to give her the password, she would still have conceded. And he knew it.
“Put on some shoes,” he said, after a glance down at her socks.
He made no acknowledgment of, or apology for, the fact that he’d been about to drag her out into the wet and cold without shoes.
Iris grumbled under her breath as she went to the closet to drag out her hiking boots, which she’d nearly not brought because of how heavy they are. But she’d had some romantic notion of joining Trystan Abbott on long hikes, while they amicably chatted about his life, loves, and losses.
Such foolish, optimistic whimsy.
He eyed her boots when she rejoined him at the front door.
“Those are surprisingly practical,” he acknowledged, almost begrudgingly, and Iris did her best to disguise her rolling eyes from him.
Unsuccessfully.
“What’s with that expression?” he demanded to know, and she huffed an impatient sigh.
“I’m not sure why you’re surprised by my choice of practical shoes when you know nothing about me.” She used air quotes around the word practical just because she figured it would annoy him. Sure enough, his eyes flashed at the gesture.
“You don’t strike me as a very practical person. You trekked across unknown terrain, in the dark and the rain, armed with nothing but a phone flashlight… thinking that your intrusion would be welcomed by someone who’d clearly sought the most isolated place he could find in order to avoid human contact. Not very practical or—y’know—clever.”
“My decision to trek here through the dark, and wind—it only started raining after you tossed me out into the storm—was validated if what you said about the car being crushed is true.”
He didn’t respond, merely leveled a malevolent look at her before turning abruptly. “Do you have anything waterproof? A rain slicker? Jacket?”
Her lips thinned and her silence spoke for her. Same as his insufferable, smug, know-it-all snort spoke for him.
“Now, packing some kind of waterproof gear when traveling to an area infamous for its winter storms would definitely have been considered a practical, clever move.”
Arrogant prick.
“I don’t have anything that’ll fit you,” he said, running an assessing glance over her frame.
“I’ll be fine. I can bear a little rain.” Only it wasn’t a little rain. There was a seriously scary amount of water falling from the sky right now.
“If you say so,” he said with a disinterested shrug. “Follow me.”
He led the way through the hallway back toward the kitchen. It was interesting to see the house in the gloomy light of a rainy day. Last night everything had been dark and a little terrifying but today she found herself astonished by how lovely this house was. The colors were bright and fresh—cream, sage, and the palest of pinks as an accent hue. It was unexpected and not at all what she would have pictured for Trystan Abbott’s home.