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)
Maybe. What had happened in the middle of the night a week ago might have made Mr. Rhodes change his mind about how long he’d let me stay. I didn’t know him, but I knew there was no way he was over that shit yet.
The bat, though, hadn’t come back. My brain, on the other hand, was in denial because I still couldn’t sleep throughout the night without waking up, paranoid.
That’s why I was awake when the sounds outside started up.
Resigned that I wasn’t going back to sleep, I rolled up and got out of bed once another glance at my phone confirmed it was seven thirty and instantly peeked out the window.
There was a dull, repetitive sound coming from out there.
It was Mr. Rhodes.
Chopping wood.
Shirtless.
And I mean shirtless.
I’d expected something nice beneath his clothes from the way he filled them out, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight of… him. Reality.
If I wasn’t already pretty sure that there was dry drool on my face, there would have been five minutes after seeing all…. That through the window.
A pile of foot-long logs were tossed around his feet, with another small pile that he’d obviously already chopped, just to the side. But it was the rest of him that really drew my attention. Dark chest hair was sprinkled high over his pectorals. The body hair did nothing to take away from the hard slabs of abdominal muscles he’d been hiding; he was broad up top, narrow at the waist, and covering all that was firm, beautiful skin.
His biceps were big and supple. Shoulders rounded. His forearms were incredible.
And even though his shorts grazed his knees, I could tell the rest of his downtown area was nice and muscular.
He was the DILF to end all DILFs.
My ex had been fit. He’d worked out several times a week at our home gym with a trainer. Being attractive had been part of his job.
Kaden’s physique had nothing on Mr. Rhodes though.
My mouth watered a little more.
I whistled.
And I must have done it a lot louder than I’d thought because his head instantly went up and his gaze landed on me through the window almost immediately.
Busted.
I waved.
And inside… inside, I died.
He lifted his chin.
I backed away, trying to play it off.
Maybe he wouldn’t think anything of it. Maybe he’d think I’d whistled… to say hi. Sure, yeah.
A girl could dream.
I backed up some more and felt my soul shriveling as I made my breakfast, making sure to stay away from the window the rest of the time. I tried to focus on other stuff. You know, so I wouldn’t want to have to move out from shame.
Was I tired? Absolutely. But there were things I wanted to do. Needed to do. Including but not limited to getting away from Mr. Rhodes so my soul could come back to life.
So an hour later, with a plan in mind, a sandwich, a couple bottles of water, and my whistle in my backpack, I headed down the stairs, hoping and praying that Mr. Rhodes was back in his house.
I wasn’t that lucky.
He had a shirt on, but that was the only difference.
Darn.
In a faded blue T-shirt with a logo I couldn’t place, he was standing off to the side of the pile of wood that he’d stacked at some point under a blue tarp. Beside him was Amos in a bright red T-shirt and jeans, looking an awful lot like he was either begging or arguing with him.
At the sound of the door closing, they both turned.
He’d caught me checking him out. Act cool.
“Morning!” I called out.
I didn’t miss the funny face that Amos made or the way he glanced from my backpack to his dad and back. I’d seen that expression before on my nephews’ faces. I wasn’t sure anything good ever came from those faces either.
But the teenager seemed to make a quick decision because he jumped right into it. “Hi.”
“Morning, Amos. How are you?”
“Fine.” He pressed his lips together. “Are you going hiking?”
“Yeah.” I smiled at him, realizing just how tired I was. “Why? Do you want to go?” I teased, mostly. Hadn’t his dad said he wasn’t an outdoorsy person?
The quiet boy perked up in a subtle way. “Can I?”
“Go?”
He nodded.
Oh. “If your dad is fine with it and you want to,” I told him with a laugh, surprised.
Amos peeked at his dad, smiled this super sneaky smile, and nodded. “Two minutes!” the teenager yelled ten times the volume he normally spoke at, surprising me even more, before turning on his heel and disappearing up the deck and into his house.
Leaving me standing there blinking.
And his dad standing there blinking too.
“Did he say he’s coming with me?” I asked, in almost a daze from pure surprise.
The older man shook his head in disbelief. “I didn’t see that coming,” he muttered more to himself than to me from the way he was still staring after the door. “I told him he couldn’t hang out with his friends since he’s still grounded, but if he wanted to be around an adult it was okay.”