Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 73311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Maybe not in a criminal sort of way, but definitely in a trouble for my poor heart sort of way.
I’d sworn to myself that I would never fall back into a woman’s clutches, and I could tell by just one look that, although she may be small, she was fierce.
She was hot. She was well-spoken. And my downfall: she liked the same books as me.
Not to mention that I’d never once seen her flinch when she took me in.
Not like Tawny was doing.
Tawny who hadn’t even managed to look me in the eyes.
Tawny who’d seen my face for the first time six months ago and blanched the moment she saw it and me.
“Well, I’ll send some blackberry pie with you since you’re not counting calories. I’ll also bring you the blueberry pie when it’s done,” Mom continued.
“I can bring it if you want,” Imogen offered. “He does live across the hallway from me.”
Mom’s mouth tilted up in a small smile.
“That would be perfect.”
“You can’t eat it though,” I informed her. “If a single piece is missing, I’ll hunt you down.”
Imogen burst out laughing, and I found the corner of my mouth tipping up in reaction to her laugh.
Which then caused my mother to gasp.
“Was that a smile?”
My ‘smile’ quickly fell off my face, and I turned my glare on my mother.
“Shut it.”
My mother snorted.
“I changed your diapers, you know. Cleaned shit out of the creases of your balls,” my mother started.
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“That’s exactly what all of your diners want to hear, Mom,” I mumbled, standing up.
Mom snickered and walked away, quiet laughter following her all the way back into the kitchen.
My eyes met Imogen’s, who were shimmering with laughter of her own, and I sighed.
“Don’t forget to bring me my pie,” I ordered.
“Never,” she promised.
“Bye, Aaron.” Tawny waved.
My eyes slid past her as I nodded to the man at Imogen’s back.
Grabbing my still full glass of sweet tea, I walked to the counter, waited for only a few short seconds for my mom to hand me my food, and walked out to my bike.
I pulled my bike over halfway home and ate my food next to a small pond, contemplating the feelings that were warring away inside of me.
“Damn you, Lynn,” I grumbled as I tried to work through the feelings—feelings that I shouldn’t even be having after the way I’d been screwed over by my wife—for Imogen.
But after ten minutes of circling, I realized that these feelings—especially the one that I could feel deep in my chest every time I saw the woman—weren’t going to go away. Not any time soon, and certainly not if I was going to continue to see her.
It’d been unintentional on both of our parts, but now that I was living across the hall from her and had my car at her shop, I knew I’d be seeing her quite a bit in the next coming months.
Since I wasn’t willing to move right now, and I wanted to get my car fixed up, it looked like I was either going to have to give in or live with the feeling.
And living with the feelings didn’t seem like something I could handle for the long haul.
Surely, I could scare her off.
If she was the one to put the wall up between us, then I wouldn’t have to try so hard from my end.
I was all set to push her away, too, but then she showed up with my pie after I arrived at my apartment, and I forgot what I was supposed to be doing.
“Your mom said to tell you that she stocked your freezer with ice cream last week,” Imogen informed me the moment I answered the door.
She extended her arms, the pie resting in her outstretched hands, and stared at me with a wide smile.
“Thanks.” I took the pie—which was still warm—from her hands and placed it on the entrance table just inside my apartment door.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” she asked.
I blinked, then shrugged. “Sure.”
“Why did you go with your father and not stay with your mother?” Imogen asked.
I leaned against the doorjamb and stared down the hallway.
“When I was younger, I had a fairly bad health scare. Leukemia,” I murmured. “Which was inevitably the reason that my mother and father split up.”
She waited patiently for me to continue, and I offered her a wink.
“Dad met my stepmother a year or so after they split up. By that point I was recovered, but I had this weird separation anxiety. Any time my dad tried to leave, I’d have these panic attacks. As long as I knew he was close, I was okay. School. Camps. They were okay. But the minute I realized I wouldn’t see him every night, I started having the attacks. My mother…” I shook my head. “My mother did what any good mother would do, and insisted I go live with my father.”