Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 76347 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76347 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
His beautiful lips twitch, so red and full but not feminine in the least. My mouth practically waters, and I seriously hope I’m not going to embarrass myself by drooling. It’s bad enough that I’m standing here ogling him hardness. I mean hard. Holy sweet potatoes.
“Don’t worry about it. We have some money set aside for pro-bono work. As I said, this is going to bring in a ton of business, so it’s going to pay for itself on short order.”
My jaw drops. “No! You can’t…you can’t be serious!” Duh, of course, he’s serious. He’s literally been saying it the whole time.
“I’m serious.” His smile is approximately ten million megawatts. Or more. I’m not really sure how wattage works.
His gaze flicks back to the house, and mine does too, landing on the lovely white trim and matching shutters. When we glance back at each other, I’m so shy that I want to study the grass, but I feel like making eye contact is important, even if looking into those sun-kissed stormy depths makes all sorts of things bloom in my chest like I’m one of those freshly built flower gardens just waiting for planting.
“Would you ever think about selling it? Flipping it now that you actually can?”
His question takes me off guard, such that my breath clenches in my lungs. “Uh, I…I don’t know. If you want me to sell it so I can pay for all the work that went into it, I can. I…I will.”
“No!” His handsome face is immediately transformed as horror sets in. “No, I didn’t mean it that way. I was just wondering. It seemed like you didn’t have a choice before.”
All the knots inside my chest slowly undo, and I feel bad about reading into it more than I should. I just…who…seriously. Who does something like this? “Oh, yeah. You’re right. I really didn’t. It would never have sold. Now that it’s all nice and functional, I don’t know. I’ve been wondering, this whole time, what it looked like new. I know my great-aunt bought the house when she got sick of living in Bloomington. She was always a spinster, and I guess she was happy to stay that way, but she wanted to up her level of isolation out here. My parents said she wasn’t handy and didn’t give two farges about maintaining the place. There aren’t any photos of it. I know because my parents were looking for some when they had it listed. I guess they wanted to give an idea of what it looked like in its former glory.”
Atlas sweeps one huge hand over the house now. We’re standing so far back that he can practically fit it in his palm. I notice how his muscles bulge beneath his T-shirt and how they bulge outside of it too. His biceps could probably detach from his body and take up residence in the field behind the house; they’re that big.
“Anyway, not going to lien your house or make you sell. I was just wondering. She’s a beauty now.”
“You’re sure that I can’t pay you? Anything? Please, I have to do something. I can’t just accept a gift like this, even if it’s going to make your company money.”
“I am.” His eyes, more blue than gray again today, take on a lovely shine that warms me straight through to my shocked and tingly toes. “You can save your money to get some furniture. Although, there are some pieces that would be great if recovered. The electrician was snooping—not hardcore snooping, just curious snooping—and he found the old record player in the living room. He tuned it up, and it worked fine. There’s a huge stack of records in there. They might smell like mildew, but I’m sure they’ll play.”
“I’ve never listened to a record before.” Admitting that makes me feel incredibly young and uncultured.
“I could show you how it works before I leave if you want.”
“What about photos? The after stuff?”
A strange and sudden surge of heat seems to envelop me as Atlas turns, an indecipherable expression on his face. “If I could come back tomorrow, maybe mid-morning when the light is good, I’d really appreciate it. I wanted to bring a better camera too.”
“Sure. Yeah. After doing all this work, you don’t really need to book a time.”
“It’s your house. Your property. I want to respect that.”
His voice is dark and deep, and my head swims like I’ve drunk half a bottle of rich red wine. I’ve never had half a bottle of wine in one sitting, to be clear, but if I did, I imagine I’d practically float away with it.
We stand there, the silence fraught with some kind of tension—tension thick as a ball of yarn that I can’t begin to unspool.
“My furniture,” I mumble. “It’s ugly. I was thinking about renting a truck and looking at thrift or antique stores or online to find other stuff. A lot of what’s in there needs to be thrown out. I never thought about having some of it recovered, but that’s a good idea. I could have that done. If you wanted to wait until I find better things for the pictures so they come out better and people aren’t staring at all that beautiful work but thinking how ugly my couch is…I don’t know. Could that work?”