Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 145574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 728(@200wpm)___ 582(@250wpm)___ 485(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 728(@200wpm)___ 582(@250wpm)___ 485(@300wpm)
“He’s purchasing them now, in good faith…as an engagement gift. It was all settled this weekend. I know you’re disappointed in me—”
“No, never that. I’m frightened for you. I’m terrified that you’re throwing away your life instead of—”
“Instead of what?” Constance cried. “I will never love again. My chance for happiness is gone, so what does it matter?” She opened the front door and stormed out, leaving Scarlett to scramble after her.
“You don’t know that!” Scarlett yelled from the pavement, stopping her sister before she reached the street. “You do know what he’ll do to you. We’ve seen it. Can you honestly give yourself to a man like that? You are worth so much more!”
“I do know!” Constance’s face crumpled. “I know it in the same way you do. I saw your face last night. Had it been Howie at your door, telling you it was Jameson who’d been lost, you would have been decimated. Can you look me in the eye and tell me you’ll ever love again if he dies?”
Bile rose in Scarlett’s throat. “Please don’t do this.”
“I have the power to save our family, to keep our land, to perhaps teach my children to swim in that very pond. We are not the same, you and I. You had a reason to fight the match. I have a reason to accept it.”
Scarlett’s mouth watered, and her stomach convulsed. She hit her knees and lost her breakfast into one of the bushes that framed their doorway. She felt Jameson’s hand at the nape of her neck, gathering her unpinned hair as she heaved, emptying her belly.
“Honey,” he murmured, rubbing circles on her back.
The nausea subsided, gone as quickly as it had come.
Oh God. Her mind scurried, trying to trace an invisible calendar. She hadn’t had a moment’s peace since March. They’d moved in April…and it was May.
Scarlett stood slowly, her gaze meeting Constance’s wide, compassionate one.
“Oh, Scarlett,” she whispered. “Neither of us will be Section Leader by the end of the year, will we?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Jameson asked, his hand steady when Scarlett felt like the slightest breeze might send her back to the ground.
Scarlett looked up at him, taking in those beautiful green eyes, the strong set of his chin, and the worried lines of his mouth. He was about to worry a lot more.
“I’m pregnant.”
Chapter Nineteen
Noah
Scarlett,
Here we are again, separated by miles that feel too long at night, waiting for our chance to be together again. You’ve given up so much for me, and here I am, asking for more, asking you to follow me once again. I promise you, once this war is over, I’ll never let you regret choosing me. Not for one minute. I’ll fill your days with joy and your nights with love. There is so much that waits for us if we can just hold on…
“I brought lunch,” I called out to Georgia as I walked in the front door of her house. Had to admit, it was still a little weird to walk into Scarlett Stanton’s house without knocking, but Georgia had insisted, since we’d started spending our afternoons together last week in what she called Stanton University.
“Thank God, because I’m famished,” she called out from the office.
I walked through the open side of the French doors and stopped short. Georgia sat on the floor in front of her great-grandmother’s desk, surrounded by photo albums and boxes. She’d even moved the large wingback chairs out of the way to make room.
“Wow.”
She looked up at me and offered an enthusiastic smile. Damn. Just like that, my mind wasn’t on her great-grandmother or the book I’d staked my career on. It was on Georgia, plain and simple.
Something had changed between us the day we’d gone rock-climbing. Not only did it feel like we were actually on the same team, but there was now a heightened awareness, as if someone had started a countdown. I couldn’t have written the sexual tension any better. Every simple touch between us since then was measured, careful, as if we were matches in the middle of a fireworks cache, knowing too much friction would set the whole place ablaze.
“Want to picnic?” she asked, gesturing to a vaguely open bit of floor at her side.
“I’m game if you are.” I picked my way across the spread of memories to claim the spot at her side.
“Sorry,” she said with a sheepish cringe, her wide-neck sweatshirt slipping off her shoulder to reveal a lilac bra strap. “I was looking for that one picture I told you about from Middle Wallop and got kind of lost in this.”
“Don’t apologize.” Not only did she look better than our lunches, she’d unlocked a veritable treasure trove of family history and laid it bare for me.
If that didn’t say opening up, I wasn’t sure what else could. We’d come a long way from her hanging up on me. Everything about the woman next to me was soft, from the sweep of her hair into that knot on her head, to her bare, shorts-clad, mile-long legs crossed beneath her. There was nothing icy about her.