Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Perhaps, he’d been prepping like her. Careful about his reaction; ready for her rejection. Except his responding laugh boomed hard enough to echo over the back property, and the way he sat up on the chair with a huge smile eased Gracen’s rising anxiety. If he was looking out for his friend, she could give him one pass.
Not another, though.
Chip reached over and slapped the leg of her chair. “That’s what I was looking for, girlie.”
“Ew, don’t call me that,” Gracen replied, face crinkling in disgust as she shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“I can’t exactly call you what he does every time you answer the phone, huh?” Jesus. He knew about that, too? The man across from her on the veranda settled back into his seat with chuckles still on the tip of his tongue. “Sorry, hate to fuck with you, but ... who knows if you’re gonna stick around? If so, get used to it.”
He shrugged, his expression challenging her with a silent: yeah, I said it.
Gracen only sighed.
The stillness between the two on the veranda allowed the forest and river to take over again, but it was comfortable. For the most part. Chip seemed like an okay guy.
Sort of.
Gracen had other—more pressing—questions about a man she knew was good and beautiful to his core, and owed him some truth in return, but Malachi had found another way to spend his morning. Unfortunately.
“By the time they get back, we might as well just skip breakfast,” she pointed out.
“We’ll figure out something,” Chip replied, unbothered. “Time doesn’t matter out here, chickie. I go days without seeing another human being. Just how I like it.”
Gracen gave Chip a long side eye.
“What? I thought you’d like chickie instead, no?” he asked.
“Let’s hope it’s another one that doesn’t stick,” she told him.
Less seriously. Chickie was a bar lower than girlie on the annoyance scale. On the other hand, Gracen knew better than to open her mouth and speak it into existence. Boys, even when they grew up into men, never changed.
Chapter 21
Malachi grabbed the carton of eighteen eggs from the middle shelf, and two packs of bacon from the bottom. Adjusting the items already in the shopping cart he’d grabbed at the front of Freddie’s Grocery, he played Tetris with the loaves of bread and eggs in the basket to keep the fragile items together.
See.
He wasn’t totally helpless.
A lack of decent raising had never felt like a good enough excuse for him to use when it came to being a capable adult. Even if it was just groceries in a shopping cart. Small hills had once been huge mountains to him all the same.
“Are these what Chip meant?” Charlotte asked from the end of the aisle.
The various packs of cookies she held out for him to see all looked like a sure-fire path to eventual diabetes to Malachi, so he shrugged in return. “I guess.”
She proceeded to walk forward and unceremoniously dump the packs of sweets into the cart. Right on top of the milk, bacon, cheese and bagged fruit and veggies Malachi had organized oh, so carefully.
Charlotte didn’t appear to notice his unimpressed stare as she headed back down the grocery aisle chattering on about something else Chip asked her to pick up that had entirely too much sugar. Someday, his friend’s high metabolism would level out.
He heard the forties could hit hard in that regard. Thank fuck Malachi had a few yet to go before he was also there. He wasn’t quite ready to give up his twelve-pack of beer a week.
In the rear aisle of the smalltown grocer, Malachi found the fresh cuts of meat that would make up the better part of their evening meals. Steak, hamburger—he wasn’t looking for any white meat. He’d save that kind of food for a different weekend.
By the time Malachi made it back to the front of the store where two cash registers waited without employees at the ready to help him check out, Charlotte came back around. He’d gotten everything from the cart piled onto the rolling canal—including the armful of packaged tarts, donuts, and mini cakes Charlotte found in the far side bakery section—before the woman with the red shirt and black pants stocking a display made her way around the register. A nametag with the store’s name and red swirl logo hung from a lanyard around her neck.
“All ready?” she asked.
Malachi nodded. “Yeah, that’s about—”
“Oh, pop,” Charlotte said suddenly.
As high pitch as ever.
Even the employee flinched.
Charlotte never acted aware of her voice, probably because she’d been living with it her whole life. Chip managed to bring the woman around more than twice so Malachi made a real effort to be respectful even if she did squeak like a dog’s toy when she got excited.
It was what it was.
Malachi saved the quietly blinking employee further awkwardness by telling Charlotte, “No, what Chip needs is to eat real food. I think he’s got enough junk, huh?”