Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 22400 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22400 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
I’m a hard-working man with big plans.
Plans to marry Annie Rowdy.
She doesn’t know it yet.
After one date I know she is mine.
I crave her in ways I shouldn’t, dream about her every night, but then a flash flood threatens to ruin my plans. But I won’t let anything get in my way.
I am a Rough mountain man, with forever on my mind.
It’s time I prove that to the woman I need.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
RED
Another long day of construction work completed, leaving me exhausted but fulfilled. It’s hard work, but it's man's work, and I’m proud to do it alongside my dad and brother.
“Food tastes better the hungrier you are and the harder you work,” the old man says as we enter and take our place in our favorite booth. Home Cookin’ is the local diner and a favorite of the family. For my father and brother, it’s all about the food, but for me?
It’s her.
Sauntering up to us with those luscious brunette curls of hers bouncing along, and a smile that lights up the entire room, is the woman of my goddamn dreams. Annie Rowdy has long been my crush and I’m driven to one day make her mine.
“The Rough boys are back again, huh?” she asks in her usual cheery tone. “What can I get you folks? We have fresh cherry pie right out of the oven.”
Annie knows us well. Everyone around here does, really. Home isn’t a very big town, maybe a thousand people on a high estimate, and Annie is from an even smaller town a little bit away called Burly. The two towns are as close as bickering brothers, out to fight one another but always first to help one another if something goes wrong.
“Usual, Annie,” my father says.
She winks at my dad. “Bacon cheeseburger with jalapeno slices, with a side of waffle fries? Can do. What about you, Fil?” she asks my brother.
“I’d love some fried chicken and mashed potatoes tonight, miss.”
“No problem,” she says before turning toward me with that oh so seductive smile on her face. “What about you, Red?”
She leans over enough that I get a bit more of a view of cleavage than my brother and father got. It inspires some sinful thoughts within me and makes my jeans get a little tighter.
My eyes have been on her for a long time. Ever since my high school football games a few years ago. Her brother played for Burly, I played for Home, and he gave me death stares back then, so I never made a move, but I figure people moved on and things have changed. I don’t even see her asshole brother around anymore.
I’m a working man now. The Rough House is the construction company my father runs that my brother Filson and I work at. We build custom houses for people and business has been pretty damn good. I got money coming in and it’s looking like I got a bright future ahead of me at only the age of twenty-one. I can think of what I want, and it ain’t all that exotic. I want a family, I want kids, and a wife and all that comes with her, and I got my eyes on who I want that woman to be.
“Pot roast, please, and give me a slice of that cherry pie of yours too,” I say, shuffling my eyebrows.
She giggles. “I’ll get you just that. But you know, as good as the diner’s cherry pie is, it’s not as good as the one I can make at home.”
She looks at me in a way that suggests she knows what she wants too. She treats me like a king whenever I come in here. She’s been eighteen for a few months now, both of us legally adults. I wonder if now’s the time to ask her out. There’s a big bonfire being held soon, and it might be the perfect place to have a talk with Annie and see if we’re as good for one another as I suspect.
“Ain’t this place supposed to be Home Cookin’, though?” my father asks. “Shouldn’t it be as good as actual home cookin’?”
My brother shakes his head in amusement and I join him, my father kind of out of it when it comes to innuendo and the like.
“I’ll be out with your orders as soon as they're ready, gentlemen.”
As she steps away, I decide to go for it. It’s not the perfect time but the perfect time will never come. I stand, walking toward her.
“Hey,” I say, tapping her on the shoulder as soon as she’s out of earshot of my father and brother.
“Yes, Red?” She looks up at me hopefully with those sterling blue eyes of hers. It always gives me pause, knowing she’s too gorgeous for me, and I usually don’t have these sorts of crises of confidence.