Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
The next day, I was lying on the grass in Central Park, my head cradled in Nathan’s lap as he sat against a tree. The sun was shining, a string quartet was playing, and the diagnosis seemed like a bad dream. Everything’s going to be fine, I told myself. “When we get back,” I said gently, “should we start looking at apartments?”
“Mumm.” He was right there, stroking my hair. So why did his voice sound so far away? “Let’s do that.”
A week after we got back, he said we should maybe slow things down a little.
A week after that, he split up with me. That picture he had in his head of his perfect life. I no longer fit. He didn’t want a wife who was flawed.
In the kitchen of our little apartment, Baba hugged me tight while I cried my heart out. I’d had break-ups before, but I’d never been left feeling so utterly worthless. So not enough.
“I don’t know what—what I’m going to do,” I sobbed. My bookstore plan had been risky. Now it felt impossible.
Baba squeezed me harder. “I do,” she said. “Our ancestors were Welsh. Celt warrior women who lived in the forest and when the Romans invaded and tried to take their home, they fought. That’s what you’re going to do, Bronnie. You’re going to fight.”
And so, three months later, I opened All You Need Is Books (my grammar-nerd friend Luna had argued that technically it should be Are Books, but it was my store, dammit). Baba was right, I had to fight. Fuck Nathan and fuck arthritis.
The first few months went well: every store gets a boost when it’s new and people are curious. But now, six months on, the store was losing money each month. Baba’s care facility bills meant I could barely afford food. I’d almost burned through my startup money. If I didn’t figure something out soon, I’d have to shut down...and Baba would have lost the money she gave me.
I rolled onto my back, wincing as my aching joints flexed, and stared up at the cracked plaster of the apartment’s ceiling. I had no idea what I was going to do. And there was no one I could go to for help: my parents were gone, Baba was sick, the man I’d thought I was going to marry dumped me... I was twenty-seven and, suddenly, I was all alone. I had some great friends, but they had problems of their own and they weren’t the same as family. I felt like I was adrift on an endless black ocean with no one else in sight.
I could feel my mind tumbling downward, faster and faster, and I knew I had to think of something else, now, or I wasn’t going to stop until I hit bottom—
Radimir Aristov.
My mind stopped with a jolt, like a falling rock climber grabbing a handhold. Radimir Aristov. He was definitely unique enough to distract me. I wrapped the memories around me to shut out the cold dark. That accent, shaping each syllable until it was deliciously rough ice. That name, Aristov, like the whisper of a silver dagger being drawn. The swell of his pecs under his soft white shirt, just a hint of dark tattoo peeking through. The way he jerked his waistcoat to straighten it. The warmth of his hands when they’d touched mine...
And something happened. I’d only meant to distract myself but once I started thinking about him, I couldn’t stop.
It was that power that throbbed from him, like a drumbeat too low to hear, a vibration that shook my whole body. It resonated right to my core and bloomed into heat. I’ve always been built out of steel, like Baba, but the heat just melted me into taffy. He felt so utterly different to every man I’d ever met. Like he’d stepped into my bookstore from a shadow world that was colder, harder, realer than the one I knew.
After he’d stalked out of my store, I’d run over to the door: I couldn’t help it. I saw him climbing into a big, black Mercedes that whisked him away. What would have happened if he’d taken me with him?
I closed my eyes and imagined. I could feel the shocking cold of the night air as he pulled me across the street, my sneakers skidding in the snow. I felt something drop inside me, dark and deliciously hot. Like the feeling you get on a rollercoaster when you tip over the first hill and plunge.
He threw me into the car and I sprawled on my back on the back seat. He climbed on top of me, a knee pressing between my thighs, and the door whumped shut. The sound of the street dropped away instantly: we were in his world, now, hidden by tinted glass. The driver started the car and I rocked on the seat as we roared away.