Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
“Thank you for inviting me,” I told Yuki for about the tenth time, moving my hand along my stomach.
She tilted her head to the side. “We wrote the whole album together, Ora. And you’re the best-looking date I could have brought.”
“You did most of the work; I only helped a little,” I told her. The words, the lyrics, hadn’t come back to me over time. Once or twice, I’d felt a hint of a word or two float onto the tip of my tongue… but they had disappeared instantly. I didn’t think or worry about it at all, though. No one cared, and that was pretty damn nice.
Then again, I had let Amos look through my notebooks a few years ago, and he’d stared over at me with wide eyes. “This is your bad stuff?” he’d demanded like he couldn’t believe me. So maybe they weren’t that bad. The only notebooks I still opened on my own from time to time were my mom’s, so we could squeeze in one of her favorite hikes. We did that pretty often on the days my heart hurt and I missed her the most.
Yuki, though, gave me a look that reminded me of how many times I’d found her passed out on the couch that Rhodes had eventually put in the garage apartment for guests. Of which she was one of them. My family in Florida, her sister, and his brothers being our other main visitors.
A knock at the door had her manager standing up from where she had taken a seat on one of the couches. The woman opened it, said a few words, and stepped back, gesturing the person on the other side in.
It was only my favorite man in the entire world.
Part of my heart in another person’s body.
I grinned and instantly went toward the silver-haired man. It had been all of two hours since I’d left them in the suite that Yuki had gotten for us—she’d ignored me when I insisted I could pay for it—but it felt like a whole day instead. It was different when we weren’t separated by work. Even then, he’d drop by during lunch if he was close or on his way home if he had an early day after protecting Colorado’s wildlife.
Rhodes’s gray eyes moved up and down the length of me as he came forward too. His mouth formed an O. “Wow,” he whispered.
“Too much makeup though, huh?”
He shrugged as his hands went to my shoulders for possibly the ten-thousandth time. “Way too much, but only you are even more beautiful without makeup on than with it.” His hands squeezed me. “Nice dress though, Buddy.”
“It’s ‘borrowed,’ and I don’t know how I’m going to pee in it.” The dress I’d been loaned was emerald green, heavy with embroidery, and weighed close to fifteen pounds—or at least that’s what it felt like.
“Pee yourself so you don’t rip it,” he said with a straight face.
I laughed and stepped in close to wrap my arms around his middle. I still hadn’t gotten used to having unlimited access to him. To his rock-solid body that I still perved on every night and every morning, even if I was half asleep when he got home or left.
He’d told me once he worried that I’d get fed up with him working such long hours, and I’d taken my time explaining that was the absolute last thing he had to worry about. In some ways, I’d waited my whole life for him. I could wait a few hours. It wasn’t like he was gone because he enjoyed being away. That was the thing about being confident with what you had. I’d never doubted him, not even for a second.
“I wasn’t sure if I could hug you,” he said, squeezing me back.
“You can always hug me.”
His mouth drifted across my hair, and I knew he was just trying not to kiss my face because of the insane amount of makeup I had on.
“Yuki’s dad invited us to go get dinner. He wants to talk fishing,” he said quietly.
“Is Am going?”
Pulling back, he nodded, his gaze raking down me again.
Yuki cleared her throat way too loud from across the room. “Ora, it’s time to go. Rhodes, do you want to walk her down?”
With his hand settling on my lower back, he ducked his chin in agreement.
We smiled at each other before heading out the door, followed by Yuki’s bodyguard and manager. Security was tight at the hotel as we made our way through the lobby, trailing behind Yuki who was whispering about something to her manager the whole time. This whole experience was just a little surreal, and I didn’t miss it at all.
Rhodes ducked in close, his voice basically a whisper. “Are you okay? You’re not too tired?”
I shook my head. “Not yet, but hopefully I won’t fall asleep because that would be real embarrassing.”