Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 95311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
"What... no wa..."
"Oh stop. Tall dark and handsome was always your thing. Maybe that's what happened with us," he joked, pointing at his much lighter hair. "Anyway. You feel yourself getting close to someone, or heaven forbid, them getting close to you and you shut them down."
"Oh, for God's sake. Not everything is about sex," she said, defensive. While he had been understanding after they had fumbled at each other's bodies that one time and she told him she didn't want to have sex again, she had always created this idea that he had been harboring a resentment about it, despite all evidence otherwise.
"I wasn't talking about sex," he said, his brows pulling together. "Han..." he said, his voice lower, "was there no one else after me?"
A deep red flooded into Hannah's face. "Not until..."
A look of genuine surprise crossed Sam's face for a second. "Ah. Okay. Well look. I get it. It's a bad situation. He's your boss and all. But the man obviously cares about you if he traveled all the way here to see you."
"Elliott Michaels does not care about me," she enunciated carefully.
"Keep telling yourself that. Look," he said, grabbing her hand to stop her frantic packing, "get out of your head a little bit, okay? Just enjoy it. So what if it turns out to be a bad idea? Bad ideas make great stories one day. And you owe it to yourself to let loose a little bit."
"Sam I just agreed to be the mistress to a married man who also happens to be my boss. Things are about as loose as they can get."
He laughed, letting her go and helping her bring her bags down the stairs. She thanked him, really, genuinely thanked him. He was one of the best men she had ever met. Far too good for her, certainly. She wondered as she said goodbye if the pretty pixie Annabelle was deserving of his attentions. She hoped she was. For Sam, who deserved only the best.
She drove her car silently to her parents' house, approaching the door and having it swing open before she could even knock.
Her mother stood there, paint all over her overalls. Her mother the talented hippie painter who refused to sell her work. She smiled a strange little smile, tapping a wet paintbrush against her palm. "So your boyfriend was here earlier..."
"He's not by boyfriend, Mom," she objected, her voice taking on the teenage whine she remembered from years ago, the kind of voice that begged a parent to leave you alone.
"Sure, sure," Moira said, nodding, a wicked glint in her eyes. "Come in for some lemonade. Just a few minutes," she said as they walked through the cluttered living room- her father's books strewn over every surface, her mother's canvases stacked three deep against the walls. "I know you have... places to be. People to do."
"Mom," Hannah choked, her eyes widening comically.
"Oh, please," Moira waved her paintbrush in the air, walking in front of her toward the bright yellow kitchen, "we're both adults now, honey. We can talk about sex." At her daughter's dumbstruck face, Moira smiled. Was there anything more amusing than still being able to make an adult child uncomfortable when you crossed over the parent boundary? "He's one good looking man, Hannah. I wouldn't get out of bed for weeks."
"Oh, my God. Stop," Hannah said, grimacing at the lemonade. Her mother squeezed it fresh and didn't much believe in sugar.
"Seriously. The week you were conceived... I couldn't even walk."
Hannah covered her ears, her face a complete mortified mess. "No no no no. I don't want to hear this."
Moira laughed, reaching across the kitchen counter, covering her daughter's hand with hers, paint dried under her fingernails. "Sex is a great part about life. Don't stress so much about it. I know after Sam..."
"Mom..."
"I know you just shut it off from even being an option. It really says something that this man was able to get you to let down your barriers, you know. Just sleep on that. You are so good at finding the flaws in a situation. Find the good, Hannah."
Find the good, Hannah.
It was something she heard at least a million times growing up. Moira, and people like Moira- more naturally inclined by nature to be more easy, to be comfortable in life's ebbs
and flows, people who leaned enviably toward happiness, were an enigma to Hannah. She had inherited her father's mind, critical and never resting, rather severe in character in general. John Clary and Moira Callihan were the ridiculous, cliché perfect example of opposites attracting. Hannah often wondered how she managed to grow up and never adopt any of her mother's natural ease. Why she had leaned toward anxiousness and insecurity when her mother was perpetually worry free, the kind of woman so solidly settled in her own body that it wouldn't even occur to her to be self conscious?