Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 75240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
His muscles bulged as he lifted his arm to feed Elise another bite, and it took everything I had to get my food and sit down next to him without drooling.
“This is good,” I told him the moment my ass hit the seat and I got my first bite.
“Chicken Cacciatore,” he said, looking down at my plate. “You didn’t get too much.”
“I’m trying to be on a diet,” I told him.
And really, I was.
With the way he’d been cooking for me lately, I’d gained ten pounds.
“Why?” he asked, his undivided attention on me.
“Because your cooking is fattening as hell,” I told him. “But I’m eating it, see? Just not as much.”
His mouth kicked up at the corner.
“We can start running together,” he offered. “Then you can eat as much as you want.”
I grimaced.
“I’m too tired to do it consistently,” I told him. “I have no energy to run on top of my jobs, Elise and school.”
He nodded his head in understanding.
“I run—or used to—while I was at work. Just like you did.” He rubbed his head where the incision had been made almost absentmindedly. “I feel fat. But I know I’m in halfway decent shape since I’ve been walking, I still think I’m likely going to die tomorrow.”
I sighed long and loud. “They say working out makes you feel better, but I haven’t yet seen any benefit like that. Exhaustion, yes. Energy, fuck no.”
He grinned and fed Elise the last drop of food from the jar, then spooned Elise the food. “Okay, Chickadee. I’m going to eat my food, too. Then we’re going to let Mommy take a shower while I hose you off in the pool.”
I gave him a droll look. “That’s a bathtub, Bowe. Not a pool.”
“Whatever,” he said as he walked away, giving me another clear view of his sexy behind.
I looked over at my daughter to see her staring at Bowe, too.
“I’m not sure he can help it,” I whispered to her.
She turned those warm honey eyes to me, and drooled as she tried to talk.
“What was that?” Bowe asked as he set a heaping plate of food down on the table next to me.
“Nothing, Bowe,” I lied.
“Bo-we!” Elise babbled.
I glared at Bowe.
“What?” he asked, not doing anything to try to hide his smile.
“I’m with her for entire life, and you show up for the last few months of it and suddenly you get to have her first clear word? A word that I know she’s saying because she wants you to pick her up?” I replied. “It’s not fair.”
“Hasn’t anyone told you life isn’t fair, silly girl?” he teased, reaching up to tuck a stray lock of hair that’d fallen free of my messy bun.
My face sobered.
“No,” I told him. “But I know it’s not.”
He looked at me with raised eyebrows, clearly asking me to elaborate.
I knew better than most that it wasn’t.
I’d been experiencing life’s unfairness since I was a young kid.
My father was deployed nearly half of my life. Though, now, I realized that he wanted to be deployed.
Then when he wasn’t deployed anymore, he had a new family.
When I graduated at eighteen, I couldn’t afford college, not even community college.
“When I’d tried to get loans right out high school for my college, I found that my credit was shit. I haven’t a clue why, either. It said that I had loans taken out for a car that I didn’t have, and a few petty loans for a grand here, or two grand there.” I licked my lips. “Unpaid medical bills that I racked up at seventeen from needing an emergency appendectomy. Something in which my mother wasn’t able to pay, so they got tacked onto my credit report as well.” I sighed, “Needless to say, I couldn’t get any loans. Someone had stolen my identity, and I was unable to fix it because I didn’t have any money.”
He looked at me with concern.
“That doesn’t sound right,” he told me. “Someone would have to have all of your information to get stuff like that taken out.”
I nodded my head.
“I know.”
“It might be someone you know,” he continued.
I nodded my head again.
“I know.”
“Do you have any ideas?” he persisted.
I shrugged.
“Then I met Troy, and I thought my life was complete. I was happy for the first time in years. He was helping me with my bills. Buying me expensive dinners. Treating me like a freakin’ queen.” I looked away from his knowing eyes.
“And all the time he had Jade on the side,” he guessed.
I looked back at him, pain now clearly in my eyes.
“Yes.”
He looked at me, truly studied me, and I knew he saw through my mask.
“You think I’m going to do that.”
I shrugged helplessly.
“Every other man in my life has done it to me when it comes to her. Why should you be any different?”