Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 154890 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154890 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
“Oh, my gosh!” I say with a laugh, partly at her storytelling and partly at her wiggling eyebrows.
“But I do like the bold ones. That’s why I decided I would like to see what they looked like. Those slippers. Under my bed. Or at least, to see if he was all mouth and no trousers. Maybe you’d call that all hat and no cattle.
“All talk and no action? And he wasn’t?” Or else he wouldn’t be a fixture on her rotation.
“Well, there is a lot going on in the trouser department, if you know what I mean.”
I roll my lips inward to prevent something careless from falling out. Something like, ew, no, Aunt Doreen, I do not need to hear about elderly man penis and how it performs!
Thankfully, she’s not looking at me as she concentrates on her flower arrangement. But coy isn’t in her wheelhouse. “The wonders of modern medicine,” she murmurs with a secretive kind of smile.
I don’t think she’s talking about her hip replacement.
“Don’t these gentleman callers of yours mind that they have competition?”
“If they do, they know to keep it to themselves, or they can sling their hook elsewhere. I was married once before. I’m not doing that again. This keeps them on their toes, and it doesn’t land me dirty socks and underpants to wash.”
“Well, it’s clearly working for you.” Because a more vibrant senior citizen I’ve yet to meet. Maybe I should be sad that Aunt Doreen has a more active social life than I do, but I’m not. I love that she’s squeezing out every drop of this crazy journey. Not that my life has been crazy so far, but I have high hopes. Very high hopes.
“Variety, dear Mimi, is the spice of life. Maybe you can find that out for yourself when you make a couple of new friends. That’s all it’ll take before your social life becomes a whirl. A gorgeous girl like you will have the boys trotting after her like tom cats.”
“We’ll see.” I’m not planning on settling for a boy. I have my sights set on a man. A whole lot of man with eyes like a tiger and a bite I want to experience.
We fall quiet for a moment, lost in our own thoughts. Doreen continues to arrange her modest bouquet as my mind returns to musing about Whit. I’m beginning to wonder how he fits women into his schedule—never mind who.
The days Whit is in the office, he arrives before I do and leaves after I’m gone. According to his expense reports, he orders a lot of dinners to his desk. His calendar is jam-packed with meetings, in-house and remote, and one afternoon a week is blocked out for some NGO he’s on the board of. When he’s not in the building, he’s jetting between the European operations in Paris, Brussels, and Zurich. And then there are the requests for interviews from financial publications and the more tabloid ones. I’ve gone months ahead and back in his calendar driven by my curiosity and can see the vacations he occasionally takes are still of an extreme nature. Snowboarding in Verbier winter past. Free climbing in Greece coming up in the fall.
I’m beginning to wonder when I’ll get to seduce him, given the pace of his life.
“This was my mother’s vase,” Doreen murmurs absently, bringing me out of my dissatisfied musings.
“Varse,” I mouth the word silently, exaggerating the movement by dropping my chin when she looks up and catches me.
“I hope you’re not pulling faces like that at work.”
“Only when his door is closed.” Which isn’t very often, as it seems Whit likes me to be within bellowing distance.
“Your boss still being a pain?” she asks, not without sympathy.
“Eh.” I shrug. “Nothing I can’t handle.” I’ve had terrible bosses before, and a terrible boss he is not. He’s a little cranky, but who knows whether it’s because he’s stuck with me or because he thinks he needs to resist me? All I know is, one minute, I feel like he’s looking at me like he said he would, like he’s replaying my interview, and the next, he’s stomping around the place looking madder than a wet hen. I can’t stop thinking about the daddy version of him. Daddy Whit makes me feel all… ooh-hoo-hoo. Hot and kind of shivery and I know there’s no one on this earth I’d be more comfortable exploring this side of me.
“Are you cold? Do you need a cardi?”
I jolt back to myself and give a quick shake of my head.
“I have some of that cannabis oil if you want to slip some into his tea.”
“No!” Gosh, Aunt Doreen is a trip.
“It might mellow him out,” she reasons.
“He’s really not that bad.” And I’m not sure I want him mellow. Whit has been the object of my fantasies since before I knew what a fantasy was. Twelve-year-old me just knew he was the best man on earth. I’d assumed that when I grew up, we’d get married. After all, he treated me much better than my brother did. Of course, Connor was just trying to get me out of the house so they could have their wicked way with their harem of women.