Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
God, he was totally and completely such a man.
But I liked it.
Trevor had been a man too (not as much as Riggs, but he had). And I definitely liked him.
I was about to move away from the window when something caught my eye. A flash in the woods some ways down from my cabin, close to the southern end of the lake.
I didn’t see it directly, but it seemed like the sun struck something and caused a reflection.
I kept my eyes aimed that way, but it didn’t happen again.
In normal circumstances, I wouldn’t think about it.
In these circumstances, I made a note to tell Riggs. It was probably nothing, but it might be hunters or someone on his land who shouldn’t be, and he should know.
I rejoined Abigail in the kitchen. We were making her menu of roast rosemary chicken, mashed potatoes with roasted garlic, gravy, green beans and dinner rolls. Not to be outdone by my stout cake both Riggs boys kept raving about, she’d brought over a homemade carrot cake that looked dreamy.
I didn’t have a competitive bone in my body.
But a cake competition I could get into.
“The potatoes ready to whip up?” I asked.
She stopped testing them with the tip of a knife and turned to me.
“I’m going to apologize in advance to you. Some of my friends say I can be too direct. But I’m afraid it’s something I can’t rein in when it comes to one of my children.”
Here we go.
She didn’t delay.
“I thought you were returning home after Doc completed his work on your house,” she noted.
“I was. But he’s not comfortable with me going back until I get Gia. And Hutch says I can bring her home on Monday.”
“Gia?”
“The guard-dog-slash-pet I’m getting. She’s a trained guard dog. But she’s also very cute and slobbery and cuddly, so I sometimes forget that, thus, I’m kind of a bad influence on her.”
Abigail’s lips quirked.
“You should know,” I started. “My name is Nadia Williams, but I’m an Antonov, as in an Antonov Vodka Antonov. My grandfather sold the company, but he did it for a lot of money.”
“I see,” she said softly.
“Which means I’m loaded, and that means Riggs is worried about me being alone in that cabin, especially after the break-in. Even though we’re assured as much as we can be that they got what they came for, Riggs is a lot less assured than me.”
“You use the word ‘we’ a lot with regard to my son.”
Well, one could say I blew that.
“Um…”
“Let me guess, Doc wants to get into that at dinner,” she deduced.
“Got it in one,” I mumbled.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I went in and had a few words with Harry,” she stated. “And I can assure you, he did his best to guide me to discovering what I wanted him to tell me from the source. Though, I’m the kind of woman who doesn’t take no for an answer when something is important. So I knew you’re an Antonov.”
“Okay,” I said slowly.
Her face changed, and I braced against the change.
“I also know what happened recently, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” she said gently.
“Thanks, but no offense, I’m not really good at talking about it,” I said in a rush.
“No offense in return, darlin’, but you better get good at talking about it, or it’ll eat you up.”
“Abigail—”
“My friends call me Gail.”
That was nice.
“Gail, I’m not good at talking about it because I haven’t fully processed it.”
“It’s a lot to process.”
It sure was.
“I will share that Riggs is all in to help me when I’m ready,” I admitted.
“That’s my son. From a young age, he was so determined to prove to everyone he wasn’t his father, he learned to be helpful. Did it so much, and he was so good at it, it became a part of him. It’s now just as much of what makes Doc as that brain he has, which works in miraculous ways, and the dark hair on his head.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“He’s told me he’s told you about his father.”
I nodded.
“Okay, then we have to get to mashing potatoes to feed our boys.”
Our boys?
She carried on. “But the first thing I’d like to say is, if I’d realized the man John was in time to do something about it, and I had the resources to cut him out of my life, I would have done that without a second thought. I further would have done everything in my power to keep him away from them. I would also have made up some fanciful story so my children would think the second half of the whole that created them was an amazing man they could be proud of.”
Apparently, Harry had told her quite a bit, and I fleetingly wondered how he knew.
I looked away.
“I see your mother did that,” she remarked.