Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 90266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 451(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 451(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
It should feel like home, but it doesn’t. My body might be here in the city, but I left my heart behind in that small town in Montana.
I run my fingers over the couple of photographs I’ve got on display from my time there.
One of us as a family before everything went to hell. Another of me and Spencer playing in the snow one winter.
My heart aches as I think of him. My oldest friend. My best friend. Right up until the day I left, I thought he was it for me. I could practically see our future in my mind. Our perfect winter wedding, our house, the one I’d always loved on Snowflake Lane, with a couple of kids running around.
A noise from outside the window drags me from my memory. Things were so easy in Snow Valley. It was probably because I was just a kid without the stresses of real life, but I’d give anything to go back there.
I shower as I said I would, but instead of pulling out the job description, I pull up Google on my cell phone and do a search just like my customer suggested.
I scroll down the page a little until one catches my eye.
Mail-Order Brides for Christmas.
Intrigued, I open up the webpage and before I know it, I’ve filled out the application signing me up to be a bride.
I hate my life here. What’s the worst that could happen?
I look down at the red rose in my trembling hand and wonder what the hell I’m doing.
When I woke the morning after filling out the application, I’d mostly forgotten all about my impulsive decision to apply. The last thing I was expecting a few weeks later was a phone call from a Holly Huckleberry telling me that she’d found me a match.
I thought it was a spam call to start with and was about to hang up on her until she said six words that had me on full alert.
“He lives in Snow Valley, Montana.”
I damn near dropped the phone.
She refused to tell me any more than to explain that I was to get on an airplane this morning and to be holding a red rose when I walked out into arrivals.
So that’s what I’m doing.
I walk alongside the other passengers from the plane we just disembarked toward my future husband.
My heart races, my skin feels like ice, yet inside I’m burning up.
This could be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
Or it could be the best.
Blowing out a slow breath in the hope it calms me even just a little, I continue forward, my eyes darting everywhere, waiting for him to spot me, to get my first look at my future.
As I step out, everything around me starts to blur, the lights becoming brighter than they really are, and I’m forced to stop in order to get myself together.
I focus on the tiles beneath my feet for a few seconds as I slow my breathing, and when I look up, I lock on to one pair of eyes.
A pair of eyes I remember so well. They’re almost as familiar as my own.
But they’re different.
I don’t see the happy-go-lucky boy from my past within them.
All I see is anger. Hate. Dark shadows that never used to be there.
I stumble back in shock. On one hand, I feel like I’ve just come home, and seeing his face only makes it seem that much more real, but at the same time, I feel like he’s a stranger when not so long ago he was the person who knew me better than anyone.
“S-Spencer?” I stutter, almost thinking that I’m seeing things and that it’s not him before me.
His eyes bore into mine. Not so long ago, I’d have been able to read all his thoughts. But his walls are up too high for me even to attempt to scale them right now.
“Let’s go.” His rough voice slams into me like a freaking truck. It’s so deep, so gravelly, so… sexy.
Spencer was always hot, but we were just kids back then. His frame was thinner, his face less defined. But the man he’s turned into… whoa.
His hand wraps around my upper arm, his fingers digging into my skin painfully and he pulls me from my frozen position in the middle of the arrivals area.
“Uh… I… uh… can’t. I’m meeting some…” He looks back at me, his knowing eyes narrowing as they hold mine for a second before dropping to the rose in my hand. “No,” I gasp. “You?”
“Let’s. Go,” he repeats.
I stumble along behind him, my brain too busy trying to figure out what the hell just happened.
Part of coming back here was so I could see him again. But I never expected him to be the one waiting for me. To be my future husband.
Despite his attitude toward me, I can’t help the butterflies taking flight in my belly.