Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
The mysterious neighbor didn’t say anything, just continued to look at Adam with a keen, curious gaze.
“I don’t think I’m hypnotized,” Adam muttered. Would you know if you were hypnotized, or was that part of hypnosis?
“Excuse me?” Westley Mobray said.
“Uh, nothing. Thanks for bringing her home. I’m Adam Mills, by the way.” He stuck out his hand. “We just moved here. That’s Gus. August. But she likes Gus.”
Mobray didn’t shake Adam’s hand—so Adam wouldn’t feel his preternatural chill?—so he shoved it in his pocket. But at least there was no chance he’d turn to stone.
“Wes,” said the man who was probably not a vampire or a witch or a Medusa. Freak? Well, the jury was out. But Adam tended to like freaks.
Then he turned and walked away, broad shoulders blocking the last of the day’s light.
Inside, Gus had helped herself to a glass of apple juice and she held up the bottle to Adam angelically, to ask if he wanted some.
He nodded and she poured him some juice. He rummaged around in the disordered cabinets, looking for something to fix for dinner.
“Gus,” he began, assuming the lecture would flow naturally once he opened his mouth.
“Daddy, he has the best basement,” Gus gushed. “Four lizards. One has orange and black on its back and one is red and the other two are brown and he has a snake—I don’t know what kind—and he showed me a huge, hairy spider!”
Adam choked on his juice.
He did not, historically, care for spiders.
“A, um, spider?” he squeaked.
“A turanyulla,” she confirmed.
“Tarantula,” he corrected automatically. “You saw this when you climbed in the window?”
“He showed me the tarantula.” She said the word slowly and carefully. “He put it right in my face!”
Said face was lit with joy. Adam’s stomach dropped.
“He what?”
“I’m sorry I climbed in. It was just so interesting.”
Interesting was Gus’ buzzword. She had discovered, rightfully, that Adam liked when she was interested in things. Now she used it like a shovel to dig herself out of every mess she got in.
“So the, er, tarantula was placed near your, um, face?” His voice broke at the end.
“He thought it would scare me.” She grinned hugely. “But it was so cool.”
“Come,” he wheezed. He grabbed her hand, burst through the door and stalked to the last house on the street. Damn, it was cold.
Wes Mobray’s house certainly did nothing to discourage rumors of his supernatural being. It was a two-story Craftsman cottage, like the one he and Gus were renting. But unlike theirs, which was painted in cheery white and blue, it wore a peeling coat of brown, and every window but two—one that must have been Gus’ basement ingress, and one small upstairs window—was covered from the inside with brown paper.
The whole thing gave the house the look of a crumpled paper bag. A crumpled gothic paper bag.
Adam felt a momentary pang of pity for Wes Mobray. Maligned and gossiped about by neighbors, living in this depressing paper bag of a house... But then he remembered what had brought him over here and he steeled himself to ring the doorbell.
It took ages, but after several more rings and some angry knocking, the door creaked open and Wes Mobray peered out, looking very confused.
“You!” Adam accused with a practiced pointer finger to Wes’ face. “Put a tarantula in my daughter’s face?!”
“She broke into my house,” he said simply.
“I don’t care. You do not shove poisonous, terrifying—” Adam shuddered “—creepy spiders in children’s faces!”
“You’re scared of spiders.”
The man’s infuriatingly handsome face quirked with the hint of a smile. Adam felt parts of himself turn just the tiniest bit to stone. He squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full (admittedly not terribly imposing) height.
He looked Westley Mobray dead in his rather beautiful eyes and said firmly and with utter conviction: “Yes. I am terrified of them.”
Chapter Two
Adam
Adam’s younger sibling, River, was a literal angel.
“You,” Adam told them, “are a literal angel.”
They rolled their eyes but looked pleased.
Adam had grown up in Garnet Run, but left for Boulder, Colorado as soon as he turned eighteen. He left partly to escape his parents and partly because Garnet Run felt small and isolated and conservative, and yeah, okay, partly because he met the new boy in town and followed him, thinking they’d be together forever, like in the swoony old Hollywood romances that his grandmother favored.
And they were together, for a while.
But when he and Mason divorced, there was no way Adam could stay in Boulder. No way he could take care of Gus by himself on a freelance photographer’s salary, and no way he could work a full-time job without childcare, which, of course, he couldn’t afford.
River was the main reason he’d decided to move back. They loved Gus and when Adam called them to tell them it was over with Mason, the first thing they said—even before Sorry—was I’m here to help.