Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Takuro translated the rapid-fire exchange for Daichi and Haru, everyone laughed, and it felt good. Comfortable.
But he was still glad to get up to his apartment. Tired or not, he wouldn’t sleep now; he was too hyped. What he needed was a shower and to get into fresh clothes—and then to go for a run. He hated being confined in an airplane.
Takuro had made it a point to drive past the team’s training field; it was close enough that Danny could run to it along the narrow streets in this part of the city. There weren’t any major parks or other open areas nearby, so the best place for a run without obstacles was on the training field itself; Takuro had already given him his access pass so he could scan himself through the gates.
But Danny wanted to explore the streets, and this residential neighborhood was quiet enough for him to get away with it. He’d get a few looks, no doubt, but he’d wear one of the team jerseys that Takuro had told him he’d find in his closet, and that should do the trick of reassuring people as to why this unknown man was pounding the night-dark pavement.
The first thing he did when he got to his room, however, was check his phone. No return message from Catie, but she might already be in bed. He still couldn’t help the little dip in his heart. There was one from his parents. He’d messaged them from the car and knew they’d pass on the word to his brothers that he’d arrived safely.
Leaving the phone on the small table beside the large and comfortable futon-style bed in his room, he wandered into the shower and got clean. He heard a message come in as he was drying off and quickly wrapped a towel around himself before he walked out to pick up his phone. His mood lifted.
Princess: Is it nice inside?
Instead of messaging back, he hit the button to make a face-to-face call.
She answered within seconds, the face that looked back at him familiar and pretty and oh, he was fucking homesick.
“You’re all dressed up,” he managed to get out.
“Just got home,” she said. “Dad.”
That was all the explanation he needed. “With a woman?”
* * *
“Always.” Catie was having trouble keeping a silly, happy smile off her face. Danny looked so good with his wet hair and his bare chest and the way he was smiling at her. She wished she could reach through the screen and touch him, kiss him. “How’s your apartment?”
“Here, I’ll give you a tour. I haven’t looked properly myself yet.” Holding out his phone, he began to show her around the space, which was small by Kiwi standards but spacious by Tokyo ones.
“I have everything I need to live independently,” he said, showing her the tiny kitchenette. “But there’s a larger kitchen downstairs. I might take that over now and then if the other guys don’t care.”
“They will once they taste your cooking,” she said, already missing the way he’d make her breakfast when he stayed over and how he’d lure her to talk with cookies. “They’ll be pushing you in there at every opportunity.”
His laugh came from off-camera, the phone still pointed outward as he showed her the small balcony from which he could look down at the beautifully maintained garden. “Takuro said our landlord is the gardener. And also a huge rugby fan, so I’m sure I’ll be meeting him soon.” A yawn cracked his voice. “Shit. Must stay awake. Must stay awake.”
Heading back into the room, his face back on camera, he sat down on something. “Your job is to keep me awake as I get dressed for my run.”
“Oooh, do I get a sex show?”
“Perv.” A wicked grin. “I don’t give out on the first date.”
Laughing, she chatted with him as he put down the phone and began to get changed.
“So,” she said, “Dad won this hundred-thousand-dollar jackpot in Brisbane and he’s currently king of the world. He bought me a diamond bracelet as a gift.” She looked down at the sparkle and glitter of it. “I tried to tell him he should’ve saved the money, but I knew I was wasting my breath.”
“Did his newest fling give you dagger eyes like the redhead that time?”
She gasped. “Oh man, I forgot about that!” Danny had been with her for some reason back when she’d been eighteen and packing to move into her first flat during her university days. “That’s right! You were helping me move my stuff.”
“I got voluntold to do it,” Danny grumbled. “You’ve always been my mother’s favorite.”
Catie grinned at the mock complaint. “That redhead was something, wasn’t she?” The woman had been a simperer when Clive was around and a total bitch when he wasn’t. And she hadn’t liked it at all when Catie’s father slipped Catie a few hundred dollars to “help her out.”