Total pages in book: 33
Estimated words: 31616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 158(@200wpm)___ 126(@250wpm)___ 105(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 31616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 158(@200wpm)___ 126(@250wpm)___ 105(@300wpm)
“Hopefully, these will do the trick.” I turn toward the register.
Movement at the end of the aisle catches my eye. Must be the other customer.
“Owen?” Claire tugs my sleeve.
“Hm?” I step away from her, and she grudgingly releases my shirt.
“You come in here a lot lately.” She moves closer.
I back away. “Sure.”
Her brows draw together as she steps closer again.
My back is against the snake repellant, an aisle display of shovels hemming me in.
“I was just wondering if maybe there was some other reason you’re coming by so often?” She bats her lashes.
“Other than the squirrels and the chickens?” I cock my head to the side.
“Yes.” She licks her lips. “You know. Maybe you like coming in because you’re interested in more than just farm supplies?”
“You mean the time I special ordered those big battery chargers? Those were for the farm, too.”
“No,” she says sharply, then tempers her tone. “What I’m saying is, maybe you come to the store so much because you’re interested in me?”
“In you?” I think my eyebrows hit my hairline.
“Yes. You want to go out for–” A huge, calamitous crash sounds at the rear of the store.
Claire jumps and spins toward the sound. The back wall is covered in tools–spades, hole diggers, all manner of saws and pruners–that reach all the way to the ceiling. But the wall is failing, the tools falling in heaps as an entire row of hoes drops out of sight and crashes to the floor. It’s as if someone yanked the backer board free from the wall, which dislodged the hanging hooks and sent it all careening down.
“What the–” Claire runs toward the cacophony.
I think about helping out, but I want to get back to the farm and check on the loaf of sourdough I started in case Maggie stops by tonight.
I hesitate for only a moment as Claire groans, “Oh my God, how am I going to fix this?” Then I throw a twenty on the counter and head out the door.
As I get in, I see a shadow standing at the end of one of the aisles, hidden from me for the most part.
“I’m glad the other customer didn’t get hurt. That was a dangerous situation,” I tell Alfie, who stretches again and continues his nap.
When I look up again, the shadow is gone.
17
MAGGIE
“Told you.” Ocean is smug.
I’m not. “It was a safety hazard anyways. They shouldn’t have so much weight on one wall without making it more stable. One little hacker girl shouldn’t be able to take it down so easily.”
“Right.”
I snort. It was she who told me how easy it would be to make a distraction. I thought about using fire, but that can be chaotic, which Ocean pointed out quickly before she gave me her suggestion.
I think that idea had only popped into my head because I was burning with jealousy. But I knew I needed to take a step back. I couldn’t burn an entire business down because someone flirted with Owen.
I mean I really, really wanted to, but that’s beside the point. It was only the girl I wanted to teach a lesson and maybe Owen too. I left him for a few hours, and some other girl was trying to take him from me. If he wasn’t so handsome and charming, this kind of stuff wouldn’t be happening.
I’ve been busy! I can’t keep my eyes on him every second. I have work to do to protect him. And while I’m hard at work, he’s getting flirted with. I poked around to see if I could shake anything from Duffy on my own but that was a bust. It was me that ended up being questioned until I killed our call. Then I was nose deep into the art of seduction when I got an alert that Owen had left his home.
“He wasn’t flirting back,” Ocean says, trying to make me feel better.
“How can you be sure?” I missed part of their conversation. I was so busy trying to go unnoticed that I didn’t realize what was happening until it was almost too late. I’ll never make that mistake again.
“I’m watching the hardware store's surveillance back before I delete it.” I can hear her clicking away. “Look at us doing things backwards.” We really are. Since when am I out in the world while Ocean sits behind a computer?
“I’m over it,” I growl. My eye goes to the small sledgehammer I kept from the store.
“Really?” Ocean lets out a loud breath. “That’s good. I was worried when you came up with the getting pregnant idea.”
“That wasn’t a terrible idea. I read about it. Science has proven that males often–”
“So you’re not over it.” She cuts me off.
“I’m over the secrets.”
“Oh.” Her voice grows gleeful. “Are we going to destroy something else? Can I go in?” I know she doesn’t mean personally. I’ve been making her keep her drone back. At a glance, I couldn’t see any security around Owen’s place, but there has to be some. Problem is I’m pretty sure some of it is basic. Old-school military; nonetheless, it would alert him, I’m sure.