Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 143842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 719(@200wpm)___ 575(@250wpm)___ 479(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 143842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 719(@200wpm)___ 575(@250wpm)___ 479(@300wpm)
Hailey sent me a playful scowl. “What, you think I’m going to feed you, too?”
“If you have a problem with it, I’ll be happy to cook for you.”
Her brows arched, mischief playing on her face. How she managed it after dealing with that prick last night and whatever bullshit her father had clearly been spewing at her this morning, I didn’t know.
But I somehow got that she’d spent enough time being dejected and she wasn’t going to allow it any longer. She was going to rise above her circumstances, enjoy the good of each day.
“You cook?” Her question rang with speculation.
“I am a bachelor. How else do you think I survive?”
“Pizza?”
“That’s a little cliché, isn’t it?”
“Is it? Who doesn’t love pizza?” She leaned over and started to inspect the broccoli spears, the ones she approved of going into the bag as she bent over the display.
I salivated at the real display, that ass pert and so tempting it rendered a man stupid.
I edged up so I was standing right behind her, drawn by that gravity. Unable to stay away.
When she turned around, I was right there. Invading her space. Wading closer.
A frown pulled across her pretty, pretty face, and she whispered around the surprise and need emanating from her sweet soul. “Cody.”
Unable to stop myself, I pulled her against me, an arm around her waist, bringing us chest to chest.
“What are you doing?” she asked with tremulous words.
God, I loved the way she smelled, like strawberries and cream and the most delicious thing.
I wanted to bury my nose in her hair.
Put my mouth to her flesh.
Drink her up.
Devour every inch.
“Just double checking that you’re real because it should be impossible for someone like you to exist.”
Her fingers twisted in the fabric of my tee like she was searching for support, the girl swaying as she peered up at me, knocking me off my damned feet with those icy eyes that slicked through me on a fiery chill.
“Cody,” she warned, though my name fell from her softly, hitting me like a caress that would be so easy to lean into.
“Hailey,” I razzed back, letting the words go as a ravenous tease, doing my best to keep my head above the sea thrashed waters that kept threatening to drag me under, like it was completely normal for me to be holding her like this when we were just supposed to be friends.
“You are nothing but a heap of trouble, Cody Cooper.” Redness splashed those cheeks, and she couldn’t contain this timid, affected smile when she pulled away.
That’s the way I wanted her.
Smiling.
Unafraid.
“You have no idea,” I told her, and I took her hand and threaded our fingers together before I lifted them to brush a kiss across her knuckles. “Honestly, Hailey, I needed to check that you’re real and whole and safe. Touch you to make sure you’re right here with me.”
Hailey got stuck there, staring up at me, before she seemed to gather herself, clearing her throat as she unwound her fingers from mine.
“Come on, let’s get what we came for. I want to get home. I miss my daughter and I’m starving and want to change out of these clothes. It’s been a long day.”
A grin pulled to my mouth as I thought of that little Button who’d be waiting for us to return. “Yeah. We’d better get back. I still have an important job to do.”
Hailey moved to the onions, going through the pile in search of one that suited her. The whole time, I watched her itch. Disquiet spinning her into unease, reservations vying for a way to be released.
“It looks to me like you have something to say, darlin’.”
She inhaled as she put the onion into the cart before she turned her attention to me.
“I need you to be careful with her, Cody. She’s…” She paused as she considered her words. “Her heart is wide open, but it’s fragile, too, and I’m worried she’s going to get attached to you. I don’t want her to get confused by you being around so much.”
She hesitated, teeth clamping on that plush bottom lip, before she looked up at me from beneath those lashes with those bottomless eyes. “Just…don’t make her promises you can’t keep.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“But it’s easy to get caught up in something, to start to believe it’s going to end one way when there’s no chance that it really could.”
I wondered which of us she was really warning.
“And sometimes we end up exactly where we’re supposed to even when we never believed for a second it could be a part of our destination,” I told her.
She looked away. Without a doubt, she was terrified of believing what I was saying.
Fuck, guess I was, too, but I was having a harder and harder time envisioning walking away from her in the end.