Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 101398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Charlie returns with a small wheelchair in no time, and Bennett stands at Summer’s side as she lowers herself into the seat and places her feet on the footrests. He doesn’t, I note with some curiosity, touch her at all.
Crouching in front of her instead, he lowers his voice, “You can’t scare me like that, Summblebee.”
Summblebee. His gentle voice and the tenderness in his eyes urge a ball of emotion to fill my throat. Tears sit just behind my eyes, but I claw against them with absolutely everything I have.
“I know it’s hard, so hard, being confined to your chair, but the doctors said the bones are too weak to handle your own weight now,” he tells her with the kind of tenderness I didn’t even know Bennett Bishop was capable of. “I don’t want you to get hurt—I don’t want you to hurt any more than you already are.”
“I know, Daddy. But Charlie was in the bathroom, and I heard someone’s voice out here, and I wanted to see who it was.” Her eyes move to me. “Norah, are you a friend of my dad’s?”
Bennett’s head turns to me, and I try not to shrivel under the glare. It’s concern for his daughter, not ire with me—at least, I think.
Am I a friend of her dad’s? I might laugh at that question if this entire situation didn’t feel so heavy.
“Actually, I think I’m going to be your dad’s new assistant.” The words just fall out of my mouth before I think them through.
“You painted the sunset?” she asks excitedly, the corners of her mouth shooting up again.
I nod. “I did.”
“Oh my gosh! I loved it! Dad wasn’t crazy about all the pink at first, but he’s a boy, you know?”
I smile conspiratorially. I can imagine that pink wouldn’t be a macho tough guy like Bennett’s favorite color. Though, I suppose he is an artist, so it’s at least got to be somewhere in his palette.
“Boys,” I say with a roll of my eyes and a little laugh that makes her giggle.
“Come on, Summer, sweetheart,” Charlie cuts in gently. “Let’s go do your bath, okay?”
Summer agrees with a nod but shoots a grimace in my direction that makes me have to swallow a laugh to avoid exposing myself. I’m more than certain Bennett is not in the mood for me to cut it up with his kid right now.
When Summer and Charlie are out of earshot, I ask what I think is the only obvious question. “So…does the job offer still stand?”
I know better than anyone that privacy is precious, and unknowingly, I just battered through his with a ram. His home, his career, his daughter—he’s obviously kept them all a secret for a reason. And by showing up here uninvited, I completely robbed him of his right to keep it that way. I don’t need to ask questions about his life—though I am obviously curious in every way. I need to ask if he can forgive me enough to still consider the offer valid.
“The salary is seventy-five thousand a year,” he replies, and his tone is surprisingly neutral.
Instantly, my stomach turns over in shock at both the offer still being on the table and the number that accompanies it. I’ve never really made any money on my own, and he’s offering me that much right out of the gate?
“Seventy-five thousand a year?”
“Fine.” He shrugs. “Make it eighty.”
Eighty thousand a year? I was just hoping for a job that paid minimum wage. I think I’m going to faint.
“And you can start tomorrow. Be here at nine a.m. sharp.”
My heart is racing. My stomach is doing gymnastics. And my nerves threaten to make all my limbs shake like leaves on a branch in the middle of a windstorm.
I don’t know when it happens or how it happens, but I know that we shake on it. A nonverbal confirmation that I have accepted the job.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I have other things to do.”
He walks me to the door and sees me out like none of the several life-changing things that just happened to me exist at all.
I got the job with Bennett Bishop.
And I start tomorrow.
Holy shit.
Norah
I don’t know how long I drive around Red Bridge, but when I loop downtown for the sixth time and Sheriff Peeler starts to look a little too interested in what I’m doing, I decide to head back to Josie’s house.
To say I’m a little shocked that my confrontation with Bennett Bishop ended in my getting a job that pays eighty grand a year would be an understatement. To say that’s the thing I’m thinking about most would be a lie.
Bennett has a daughter.
A daughter who’s obviously ailing and sick and who turns Bennett’s normally stony countenance into a puddle of goo.
As I turn onto the street that leads to Josie’s house, I try to concentrate on the pros of the situation.