Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
I felt my lip snarl. “Gross. Too much information.”
Bree laughed. “I think I need to buy a little place of my own for when I come back home. I can’t really bring a guy back home to my folks’ B-and-B.”
“Do you plan on coming back to Boggy Creek more often?” I asked. The law firm she worked for was in Boston, and although it was only an hour-and-a-half drive—sometimes two if the traffic was bad—it was still a haul to drive back and forth.
She shrugged. “Now that your ball and chain is gone, I have a reason to come back home on the weekends. And the last time I saw Hunter, he was looking mighty fine. Plus, I heard he broke up with that teenager.”
“She wasn’t a teenager. He’s a cop, you know he wouldn’t do anything like that.”
Bree rolled her eyes. “Well, she certainly looked like one. I have no idea what he saw in her. She could barely carry on a conversation.”
“I know what he saw in her. Big boobs and the willingness to lie on her back,” I grumbled. My brother wasn’t a manwhore, but for some reason he couldn’t seem to find anyone to settle down with. The only woman I’d ever seen him pay attention to was Arabella Adams. She had graduated the same year as Hunter, and they had even gone to prom together. I wasn’t sure what had happened between them, but whatever it was, Arabella avoided my brother like the plague.
“Hell, I’ll give him that, if he would only ask,” Bree said.
I made a fake gagging sound but smiled as I looked out the passenger window. Bree had always had a crush on my brother. He was three years older than both of us, and he hardly gave her a second look when we were younger. Even throughout college.
Bree and I both ended up going to the Boston University. She went in the direction of law, while I went the business route, knowing someday I would be taking over the orchard. Bree never had any intentions of staying in Boggy Creek. She’d wanted the city life and nothing to do with her parents’ bed and breakfast. They’d even named Bree after the inn that had been in her mother’s family for years. Well, her middle name, anyway. Brighton Willow Rogers. The bed and breakfast was called the Willow Tree Inn. The best and only bed and breakfast in Boggy Creek.
“You need Hunter to see you as a beautiful woman, not that nerdy girl he remembers you as,” I suggested as I focused back on Bree.
She sighed and nodded. Hunter hadn’t seen Bree in a few years, so in my brother’s mind, she was still the skinny girl who wore glasses, her hair up in a tight bun. After I married Brian, her trips home ceased, and Bree and I mainly talked via phone or text. I hadn’t actually seen her myself until a year ago, when I called and told her I needed a lawyer. Every time she’d made it to Boggy Creek, she never crossed paths with Hunter.
A part of me couldn’t wait until Hunter saw her tonight. He was going to shit his pants. The nerdy girl had grown into a stunning woman with long, toned legs and a body that proved she was a health freak and an exercise fiend.
“I take it you brought something to wear tonight?” I asked.
Bree stopped at a stop sign and looked at me. “I didn’t just bring something…I brought the dress.”
“The dress?” I asked with a slight chuckle.
“Yes. That one dress that every woman puts on and smiles at herself because she knows she looks damn good in it, and that every single guy is going to come in his pants when she walks by.”
I let out a roar of laughter as I shook my head. “Goodbye lawyer, hello hot stuff!”
Bree stared at me for a moment too long, and I motioned with my hand for her to go.
“Wait. Do you have the dress?” she asked.
I shrugged. “No. I don’t even own any dresses that I didn’t buy pre-Brian.”
A horrified expression moved over Bree’s face before she cupped her hand under the steering wheel and made a U-turn.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
Giving me a smirk that said I was going to regret everything that happened from this point on, Bree replied, “We’re going to go buy you…the dress.”
Willa
Less than an hour later, I stood before a sea of mirrors with Bree to my back left and Annie to my back right. Annie owned Annie James Boutique on the main square in Boggy Creek. After owning a boutique in Boston for almost twenty years, Annie decided she wanted to live a simpler life. She’d stumbled upon Boggy Creek on a drive she’d taken with her husband, Ray. It was love at first sight, she claimed. There was an empty storefront with a “For Sale” sign in the window, and she’d promptly bought it.