Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 67553 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67553 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
If they caught me unaware, anyway.
I might not have been in the military, but I was raised in the concrete jungle.
I knew how to stay alive.
Hell, I’d had to figure out exactly how to do that at the age of twelve when my dad had taken me to New York with him on business and had been attacked in the streets of the Bronx.
When we’d been separated, I’d had eight men on my trail for two days. In those two days, I’d taken them all out one by one until there were none left, then met up with my father at our private jet to return home at our previously specified time.
“Are you not going to eat?” Brecken asked quietly.
I looked up to find her staring at me, a piece of half-eaten fish in her hands.
“Enjoying the show,” I said stupidly.
She blushed. “It’s just that I really like food, and I had a really long day today.”
“I didn’t say a word,” I said. “I just like watching a woman actually enjoy her food.”
“Food is life,” she said softly.
I picked up my fork and knife and dug into my grouper filet all the while wondering how, exactly, I was going to get this woman to step out of my life.
All of these young girls out there making sure they have the coolest water bottle. I didn’t drink any water until I was 30.
—Brecken to McCoy
BRECKEN
“Okay,” I said three days later as I stared at my sister, McCoy. “I realize that you love this place, but no one said that you had to keep doing it if you hated it.”
McCoy leaned back into her chair and groaned. “I just need to hire help. I’ve been trying to do it all myself, and I’m just going to admit it. I need a man to do the man jobs. I can’t get the tractor hooked up to the mower anymore because the thingy that you hook from the tractor to the PTO is hard as hell to use. The tractor breaks down more than it’s running. I can’t get the stupid hay bales up into the hay loft without Ryler, Bronc, Holden, or Tibbs coming down and helping. And, even worse, the house needs more repair work done…and I am just drowning.”
“Mom and Dad could sell it,” I said. “You could board your bulls at the McCall Ranch.”
McCoy acted like I’d punched her.
“What?” she gasped.
“Mickey,” I said softly. “You’ve run that place for so long that you don’t even know that there’s this whole other world out there waiting for you to reach it. Dad ran that place into the ground before you took it over. I know that you have killed yourself to keep it up and running, but I have to ask the question…why?”
Mickey’s shoulders slumped. “Can we talk about something else? I think about this all day long, every day. It’s mentally exhausting.”
Knowing when my sister was pushed to her limits, I told her about my own problems.
She listened intently, and I watched as her eyes lightened as she listened.
“You like him?” she stated.
“I do,” I confirmed.
“What do you like about him so much?” she asked. “For all intents and purposes, you’ve only looked at the man. The way you’re cheesin’ over there, though, makes me think that you like him a lot.”
I flushed as I remembered our closeness at the school that day that he was there to bring something for Roslyn.
I told her about that, too.
Then I told her about seeing him here, at the coffee shop we were sitting in. Then again at the tournament the past weekend.
I ended it with, “Truly, he’s warned me away from him multiple times now. But I just feel this pull…”
My sister leveled me with a worried glance.
“What if he is dangerous, sissy?” she asked. “What if he’s warning you off with a very good reason?”
I looked away, my gaze taking in the coffee shop around me.
Just as my gaze slid past the door, then skidded to a stop and went right back because…
“There he is,” I said softly.
“There who…whoa.” McCoy gasped.
My thoughts exactly.
I’d seen the man in a tux. I’d seen the man in jeans and a Henley. I’d seen the man somewhere in between those two.
But I’d never seen him like this.
He had on running shoes, five-inch inseam running shorts, and nothing else.
He had a fine sheen of sweat over his entire body, and his chest was heaving as he walked in the door toward the counter where his sister was teaching a new employee how to work the coffee machine.
Milena saw him and smiled, reaching for a paper cup and filling it with water.
The employee standing next to Milena, currently frothing some milk, was staring in utter shock at Shasha just like I was.
My gaze went from his shoes—a simple and boring black pair of Brooks—to his muscular thighs that were straining the fabric of his black shorts.