Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
He pasted on the brightest smile I’d ever seen. All teeth. “What manners are you speaking of?”
She grunted at him in playful disappointment. “The ones your momma would have wanted you to have.”
“Well, excuse me,” he mumbled.
“Don’t give me that excuse me bit until you get over there and help this poor little thing who is bleeding to death in your kitchen.”
She waved an exaggerated hand my direction.
Logan rolled his eyes. “Bleeding to death? Hardly.”
Still, he took a step my way and murmured, “Don’t move.”
It stole air. Stole reason.
I pressed myself deeper into the counter like it might protect me from the power of it.
Gretchen clucked her tongue as she started sweeping up my mess. “My, my, some gentleman you are.”
Low laughter tumbled from his chest, and he didn’t even glance at her when the words filled the air, his gaze locked on me. “Gentleman? I thought you knew me better than that?”
She pushed by, whisking the broom over the broken fragments on the floor. “I do…which makes me wonder why this beautiful, nice girl would bother herself with the likes of you.”
“Nice?” He said it like insinuating it was obscene. “I’m not so sure about that.”
Dark amusement played through his features, and his gaze was taking me in again, slower this time, so painfully intense I felt it like an undulating wave.
He edged forward. “Hmm…we wouldn’t want a beautiful girl to bleed to death in my kitchen, now, would we? It might make me look bad.”
I was in his arms faster than I could prepare for it. Shock raked up my throat when he tightened his hold around me, the smell of him overwhelming as he pulled me against his hard, packed chest.
Clove and cinnamon and corruption.
“Logan, put me down.”
“No.” He turned and started in the direction of the double doors to the left of the kitchen.
“You take good care of her…if you don’t, I’ll be using this broom here for different purposes. Don’t think just because I’m old I’m not creative.” Gretchen shouted her threat from behind us.
“It’s becoming clearer each day that my housekeeper is a psychopath,” he grumbled below his breath.
Logan carried me into the wispy dimness of his room. The blinds were pulled, and the light from the main room whispered in behind us.
My eyes tracked the space.
There was a monstrous bed on the far left, and a TV nearly the size of the wall hung on the opposite side.
A fireplace was in the corner next to a sitting area with two chairs and a couch facing each other under the window.
It was cozy but somehow…hollow. As if a vacancy echoed back.
He headed into the bathroom and flicked on the light.
I blinked against the intrusiveness then squeaked when he plunked me down onto the counter.
“You’ve been here for less than three hours, and you’re already making trouble.”
“I think we’re in plenty of trouble, Logan,” I whispered.
I let a little of our truth seep in.
On a grunt, he rummaged through a cabinet next to the sink. He returned with tweezers, a cotton ball, antibiotic cream, and a bandage. He eyed me as he set everything on the counter. “I always told you that you were worth it.”
My heart fluttered.
The man so different.
So much the same.
I pushed out some of the strain, trying not to look at him, but unable to tear my attention away.
Unable to resist the energy that crackled in the atmosphere.
An old connection that searched for its union.
I had to be careful. So careful. But still I was whispering, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For doing this for me.”
A scowl scrunched his brow. “Who said I was doing it for you?”
My throat was tight. “Whatever the reason…thank you.”
He didn’t respond, he only hooked me with those eyes as he slowly knelt.
I heaved a sharp breath when he grabbed onto me by both knees. Fire raced my veins, that connection finding a place to take root.
“You cut yourself.” It was a soft accusation.
A frown pulled tight, and the words whimpered free, barely audible with him touching me the way he was. “It really wasn’t that big of a deal.”
He eased back on his haunches, and his left hand glided down the back of my calf to draw my leg out so he could inspect the bottom of my foot.
He dragged his finger down my heel. “It is a big deal. I already told you I take good care of what’s mine.”
My stomach bottomed out, and I tried to ignore what he insinuated. The way it felt for this man to touch me. The way I ached.
He inclined his head low enough that it concealed his face, but I could feel the intensity that blazed from his being, the way I used to feel him. A lifetime ago when life had belonged to us.
He twisted my foot then used the tweezers to pull the glass from the cut. I hissed at the sting, then I couldn’t breathe at all when he leaned in and blew over the flesh.