Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
His indigo eyes met my brown ones without a shred of remorse in them. “Probably not.” He shrugged and jammed his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans. “Then again, I’m known for my bad ideas.” Grabbing the dusty blue pickup’s keys off the counter, he stalked to the door. But he wasn’t done. Nope. Right before he stepped over the threshold, he made sure to give me one last swift kick in the teeth. “Don’t wait up.”
As the door shut behind him, I wondered if clowns were common in this neck of the woods.
Sydney
He’d told me not to wait up and I hadn’t. Not the first night, not the second, not the third, and so on and so on. Once again, sandwiched between his big hairy beasts, I’d slept like the dead and awoke early, ready to hold my daily video meetings with New York. The dogs stank to high heaven––a condition that was going to be remedied as soon as Amazon shipped the dry dog shampoo I’d ordered. The inflatable mattress was lopsided. The sheets scratchy. And yet I couldn’t remember getting a better night’s sleep. Despite the odors, particularly their feet which strangely smelled like Doritos, I even adored Romeo and Juliet. Partly because they were the only company I had, and partly because they were the sweetest goofballs.
All in all, I was beginning to enjoy the quiet. The stillness. It wasn’t the forced kind I’d learned to use as a safeguard against the beatings, but rather the type the soul craves. Somehow, Jackson Hole had readjusted my axis. Here, I was an alternate version of myself, an unscripted one who could relax for more than sixty seconds.
“Don’t let him get to you. He’s just a surly kinda guy.” Laurel’s tone was genuinely sympathetic. “He don’t mean nothin’ by it.”
It was the day of our lunch date and I’d gotten a super early start that morning. Which was followed by yet another cold shower. The furnace hadn’t been fixed either. And as always, Scott was already gone when I woke up so I couldn’t ask him about it. And to add insult to injury, my texts usually went unanswered.
Whatever good Wyoming had done me: slowed me down. It had done the exact opposite to Scott: it had lit a fire under his ass. His work ethic had improved tenfold. Secretly, this fascinated me. There was hardly a trace of the old Scott left…well, with the exception of his whoring around at night.
I glanced over at the woman sitting in the driver’s seat of the fully loaded cherry red pickup. Her perfectly manicured, short mint green fingernails drummed on the steering wheel keeping beat with Lennon Stella’s Bitch. Laurel was a petite woman with a big bust and short spiky blonde hair. Her small sharp features were covered in distinct strawberry blonde freckles that gave her a girlish appearance even though I assumed she was in her early fifties, the fine web of lines near her eyes the only evidence of her age.
My thoughts ran back to Scott, to what had happened the night before. What Laurel claimed wasn’t entirely true. First, he certainly did mean something by it. Second, Scott was not a “surly kinda guy.” He never had been. Not until he’d moved to Jackson Hole apparently.
“He never used to be.”
“He’s got his panties in a bunch over his father. You know male ego––” Looking over at me, she smirked. “It’s a delicate creature, meant to be handled with care. Look at it the wrong way and it goes soft.”
“Are we talking about ego?”
“Mostly.”
An image of Scott walking into his parents wedding anniversary black-tie party at the Rainbow Room wearing a shit-eating grin and his arms dangling around the necks of two razor-thin models, his tuxedo shirt pulled out of his pants, and red lipstick smeared on the bottom of it flashed before my eyes. Laurel didn’t know her boss as well as she thought she did. His ego was more than healthy. Which naturally prompted me to wonder if Laurel knew about the orgies. Unlikely, judging by her expression.
“How long have you two known each other?” she asked with a super sleuth twinkle in her round gray eyes. My ability to read even the smallest change in demeanor or facial expression was fine tuned in a house where you either learned and evolved or face the consequences at the end of a stick. So yeah, Laurel didn’t stand a chance.
“Over ten years. I’ve been working for Frank––Mr. Blackstone––since I graduated from law school. Before that, I interned for him.”
“And he wasn’t like this when you met him?” Laurel’s skepticism was all over her pixie face.
“Nope. He used to be the life of the party.”
This seemed to be news to Laurel. A foreign sense of loyalty kept my mouth from spilling any more secrets. If Scott wanted to keep his past in the past, who was I to upset his plans. I certainly wouldn’t take kindly to someone doing it to me.