Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 26164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 131(@200wpm)___ 105(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 131(@200wpm)___ 105(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
It wasn’t natural. No one could be that happy. Even when he was being a dick, she chatted away to him as though they were friends.
Well, they weren’t. And she’d soon understand that he wasn’t interested in being friends. He wanted to be alone.
Yeah, he’d gone to look at her truck. But only to get her to leave.
And that truck of hers . . . he clenched his hands into fists. She had no business driving it around. How such a tiny thing could even see over the dashboard, he had no idea. Although he guessed that the two pillows stacked on the driver’s seat were to raise her up. What if the pillows slipped while she was driving and she couldn’t see? What if she stepped on that hole in the footwell of her truck and fell through it? What if the truck broke down on a road in the dark?
She had no damn right to be driving around in that death trap. What if she hurt someone else? He’d bet that had never occurred to her.
He watched out the window as a red truck pulled into the driveway that led to her small cabin. A guy wearing a beanie got out. Lucie threw herself at him and he hugged her, kissing the top of her head. She was wearing another ridiculous headband. This one had a unicorn horn on the top of it.
Boyfriend? If so, why the hell was he letting his girl drive around in that rust bucket?
If she were his, he wouldn’t allow it. He’d insist on something safer, or better yet, drive her anywhere she needed to go. And if she still drove it, then she’d be needing those pillows to sit on for an entirely different reason.
Atticus let out a deep breath, easing the tension in his shoulders as Lucie jumped up and down in excitement, her truck letting out a puff of black smoke from the exhaust.
Christ.
Yeah, he’d known it could have been a dead battery. And sure, he could have used his jumper cables to give the battery a shock to life.
But he didn’t want to be responsible for her driving that truck and possibly hurting herself or someone else.
What he wanted to do was storm over there and talk some sense into her.
Or spank some into her.
Why her? She talked too much. She kept bringing him food she’d baked. She was interrupting the solitude he wanted.
Or thought he did.
She was nothing like Gemma. She was too young, too flighty, too happy.
Yet, the idea of her getting hurt didn’t sit right with him. It had to be because she was his neighbor. That was all. He felt some sort of weird responsibility towards her.
Well, he needed to stop.
After the red truck left, followed by her rust bucket, he stepped outside. No, he hadn’t been hiding. He just couldn’t be bothered with her trying to engage him in a conversation. He had shit to do.
As he walked out onto the porch, he nearly tripped on a white fluff ball, which meowed up at him grumpily. He scowled down at the cat, who he swore scowled right back at him before prancing into his house.
“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” he called after the cat. “You can’t go in there.”
He stomped into the house and looked around, trying to search for the feline. Where the hell was it?
Then he found it clawing at his bedspread.
“Get off there.”
When he reached for it, the cat danced away, moving under the bed.
Hell. Fine. Whatever. He’d chase it out later. He was guessing the damn thing belonged to his chatty neighbor.
He wasn’t sure he bought her explanation about her phone and internet being down. Maybe she was just starved for attention and had made that up as an excuse to come over. Like how she kept leaving him food. So far, it had been snickerdoodles, banana bread, and now chocolate chip cookies.
Made sense. He couldn’t understand why she would live all the way out here. She seemed like she would prefer to live around people.
None of your business.
Pushing her from his mind, he got on with his chores.
Lucie was exhausted by the time she pulled back up to her cabin.
After dropping off the jewelry she’d made to Steph, she’d taken the chocolate chip cookies to her friend Jess, who was running the baking table at the school fair tomorrow. Lucie had somehow gotten roped into helping Jess bake and decorate several dozen cupcakes. Then she’d stopped by to help another friend who was moving house.
Now it was close to six, getting dark, and her back, shoulders, and arms were killing her.
She really needed to look at some weight training.
Stumbling out of Queenie, she patted the old truck and grabbed a bag of groceries from the backseat. Steph had sold some of her pieces, giving her enough money to pay her bills and get a few groceries.