Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
I stretched my lips down in an eek expression while his face tightened.
“Sorry, I’ll put them away when we get home,” I said.
“Not a problem,” he grunted. “You close?” He then lifted his hand to show me his phone, and I took that as he wanted to call Beck to give them our ETA.
“Five minutes,” I said, yanking a pair of jeans off the shelf.
“Five real minutes or five Hellen minutes?”
I turned back to him, my lips beginning to curve in a smile, thinking he was being funny, but the serious look on his face did not say he was amused.
“Are there Hellen minutes?” I asked cautiously.
“Babe, when are we gonna be in the truck?” he asked in return.
“Five real minutes,” I said quietly.
He took off, head bent to his phone.
Nanook looked to me, to Core, experienced a moment of doggie indecision, then he followed Core.
I hurried in changing clothes, and to shave off time, made the very difficult decision not to switch my purse to one that matched my outfit (this was hard, but I told myself it was just two couples having dinner in a home, I wouldn’t be rated on accessorizing). Then Core and I were in his truck, heading to Beck and Janna’s.
He was quiet and it seemed a moody quiet.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked.
“Nope,” he answered.
I didn’t believe him.
“I know I’ve been getting home late. I’m sorry. I’m trying to catch up. But Xanthia’s fully in the saddle, she’s an amazing help, and it’ll calm down soon.”
He didn’t reply.
For some reason, this made me start babbling, and this babbling included being too honest in the current atmosphere.
“Though, the conference is going to be a lot of work, and we have a lot of new clients. If the take-up in new services is healthy, I may need to hire someone else. Possibly part-time. I didn’t expect Xanthia to have so many contacts and getting new clients rolling is always extra effort at first. But even though this is unplanned, it’s a good problem to have. I just can’t let our service slide in the meantime.”
“So, it’s not gonna calm down soon,” he noted.
“Um…”
I was feeling anxious, and I didn’t know why.
He’d been mad at me before, and we’d talked it out (okay, yelled it out).
Maybe it was that this was work. He knew how important that was to me. And if he was mad about work, that would not only be upsetting, it would also be troubling.
“It does get like this a lot,” I warned.
“Why are we having this conversation?” he asked.
Considering the climate in that truck, I didn’t understand the question.
Though I did my best to answer it.
“I’m trying to explain why I was running late.”
“I know why you were running late.”
“I don’t want you to get upset because I work so much, seeing as I always work so much.”
“I’m not upset you work so much.”
“You seem to be in a mood.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“So when you asked, ‘Are you mad at me,’ you didn’t hear my answer?”
All righty then.
“Is something else bothering you?” I pressed.
“Nope.”
Hmm.
I wasn’t a fan of that because it sure seemed something was bothering him, and if it was, we should talk about it.
But now was not the time to get into it.
I’d been looking forward to that evening since we’d planned it, and Beck was Core’s best friend (with Eight and Muzzle close seconds), so I knew he was looking forward to it too.
Now was the time to enjoy the evening.
Thus, I let it go.
“Would you mind if I called Li? She texted me on the way home and I haven’t had a chance to call her.”
“Why would I mind if you call your sister?”
There seemed some attitude in that when he could have just said, No.
I didn’t get into that.
I called Li.
“Hey, everything okay?” I asked when she answered.
“Are you at work?” she asked in return.
This didn’t bode well for our conversation.
“No,” I answered hesitantly.
“I didn’t want to interrupt you at work with this,” she said.
“With what? Are you okay?” I pressed.
“I got to feeling guilty,” she told me. “So I called Grandma to feel her out about Granddad. And the truth, he does have diabetes and it’s messing with him because diabetes does that. The lie, he might not be fit as a fiddle, but he isn’t reaching to death’s doorbell.”
“So…” I couldn’t finish it because I couldn’t force my mouth to say the words.
Li could. “So Dad used that as a ploy to see his daughters. On the one hand, it indicates how much he missed us that he’d go to those lengths. On the other hand, that’s super fucking shitty, and if he’d managed to reconcile with us, how would he explain he played us like that?”
I had no answer to this question.
It was Li’s turn to ask, “You okay?”