Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Since she didn’t get an answer to her comment on my sheep, she tried again, saying, “Sheep. That’s so exciting. My mom always called me Moo for short. She still does. It’s wonderful, never being too old and grown up to use a nickname you adore.”
“Moo? Isn’t that a little bovine?”
Her nose doesn’t scrunch up in the least. Nope. Her eyes just get even more sparkly. How can one woman be so dirty and yet so freaking glittery all over?
“Rude much?” She tosses her hair over her shoulder and smiles at me. She’s not the least bit offended. It’s hard to understand that smile, and I probably shouldn’t try.
Brain strain and all that. I came out here to avoid things like that.
“You know what would be amazing right now? A shower. And a glass of water. Probably in that order. Also, maybe a change of clothes.”
“Duh! Where are you going to get all of that?”
She gives me a squinty look that says I’m being purposely obtuse, and we both know it. Then, she gestures at the house. Her eyes roll back to me, and she lifts both brows.
“No! No way!” I exclaim.
But it’s like she doesn’t even hear my protests because she says, “You have a perfectly good house, glasses, water, and likely a change of clothes you could lend me. That’s what anyone would do. I’m hardly a stranger.”
Ugh, I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to give in. I don’t want to start thinking about how much trouble this is going to get me into with my family and the ruckus it’s going to cause with my granny and mom. If they ever found out that Nina came all this way and I turned her away and back onto the street to deal with her broken down car without a phone or money or even a glass of water…well, I don’t want to know what kind of hot water that would get me in. I can’t even imagine it.
Look at me. I’m getting drawn in. She’s drawing me in, and I’m going like an infidiot, which is my favorite word mashup for infinite idiot. I have some other great ones I’ve invented and some that I’ve inherited along the way from the wonder and curse that is the internet and modern culture.
Just because I live out here in the middle of nowhere, hiding away from a world that has done some pretty messed up shit to me, doesn’t mean I’m not funny. I only pretend for the rest of the world like I’m the ass end of an asshole. I have to amuse myself somehow. Laughing at the chickens all day because they’re hilarious, talking to the sheep, and having one-sided arguments I’m always destined to lose with the cats and my donkey…well, it makes a guy feel like he could crack up a little out here, and I don’t mean in the funny ha-ha sense.
“Anyway, sheep aren’t cows.” Nina slaps her hands on her hips, which only highlights her narrow waist and hot-as-hell curves. “They don’t moo, so nope. I don’t find it bovine.”
“Excuse me?” I’m so lost. Are we still talking about a shower and borrowing clothes I don’t want to lend because I prefer not to think about my not-so-betrothed betrothed getting naked in my house?
“You said my nickname was bovine.”
“Yes, because it’s Moo, and cows moo. It doesn’t have anything to do with sheep.”
I can see her face changing as she thinks that through, and her cheeks color just a little behind her lovely pale skin. Not sure if she has a few freckles on the bridge of her nose or not, but if those are freckles, they might be adorable. “Oh, well, I guess there’s that. They do bleat, though, and that’s close enough.”
“What? Cows?”
“The sheep.”
I’m going to lose this argument. Right along with my mind.
“Or is it that they go naaaa?” At this, she throws her head back and does the best, loudest, most shameless sheep call I’ve ever heard.
I swear every single sheep on the farm, the chickens, the cats walking around the place, strutting their cat stuff, my dog who was sunning himself on the porch, and Herman Merman in his spare pasture at the back of the barn, all whip around at once and give us incredulously startled looks. Ever seen a sheep with an incredulously startled look on its face? It’s beyond describable.
Despite myself, I nearly crack a smile. At the startled expression on the sheep’s faces, I mean, not at Miss Moo Grimy Pants Sparkly Nina over here.
It looks like she’s going to get that shower whether I like it or not. And I don’t like that I don’t completely hate it. All of it. All of her, I mean.
I always saw her as this kind of ogre, a spoiled muck of a sucky party pooper. And by party, I mean life.