Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 101501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
I wonder if someone would put me out of my misery?
“Call the bastard and try to change his mind,” my best friend, Jamie Webb, advised.
I closed my eyes and chuckled. I could almost hear Chance’s amused laughter if I made that call. It would, no doubt, make his year to hear me begging him to do the right thing.
Reaching out, I snagged another Kleenex and put it to my nose, blowing. I’d made it two steps inside the bar before tears of frustration and hopelessness had broken free with so much volume, I had to be dehydrated. That’s where Jamie found me thirty minutes ago. Knees to the floor while my body convulsed with silent sobs. Thank God, neither of my brothers had followed me. I’d made it a point to never cry in front of them since our father died. Until today in the street, I’d held fast to the rule since his funeral.
“There’s no way I’m calling him. I know Chance, Jamie. Nothing I say will ever change his mind, and I won’t give him the satisfaction of hearing me beg.”
Her brown eyes softened at the vehemence in my voice. “Does the term pride goeth before the fall, mean anything to you?”
I squinted at her. “I’m not prideful. Chance hates us for being born, and you know it. Do you honestly think he’d change his mind if I asked him to? If I got down on my knees and begged?”
She turned her head and looked at the surface of the bar, running a finger across the glossy wood. “Not really,” she finally admitted.
Jamie had been my best friend since first grade. We’d hit puberty together. Discovered boys together. Cried together when her mother died of a stroke, and my father died of cancer. We were the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler of our graduating class—except not as funny. And completely opposite. Jamie was larger than life. Her gleaming black hair flowed around her face in ringlets of curls like a curtain on a stage, silhouetting her amber eyes and Cupid lips. Her mother had been half Flathead, her father white, and the combination was stunning. If she liked you, you were friends for life. If she hated you, her warm eyes would turn deadly, and she’d spit out a curse that left you feeling like you should turn tail and run for your life.
“What am I going to—” I stopped mid-sentence and swallowed to keep from crying again, but my eyes began to fill. A tightness in my chest had grown with each passing second since Chance’s phone call, so I jumped up from the stool and rushed around the bar to grab a bottle of Jack. I needed something to calm down so I could think.
Grabbing a shot glass, I filled it and threw it back, hoping the burn would loosen the stranglehold anxiety had on my chest.
“Better?” Jamie asked.
I raised a finger and dropped my head back, drawing air deep into my lungs. I let it out slowly, hoping with the exhale I could breathe easier, but nothing happened. My chest still hurt.
“How about now?”
I opened one eye and looked at her. “Not really.”
“Maybe you need more?”
I shook my head. The last thing I needed was to get drunk. I would drown in the damn stuff if I didn’t find the money in thirty days. Until then, I had to keep my wits about me.
“Okay. Then tell me who the guy was that stopped the fight between Jake and Josh. When Jordan called me, she said she thought you knew him but said she’d never seen him before.”
I immediately flashed to the moment Logan Storm had walked up to our truck on the side of the road. And the way his Henley had stretched tight across his broad shoulders. Even in my dazed condition, I’d noticed his corded arms and the way his biceps seemed to flex under the material as he strode with purpose, like an apex predator on the hunt for prey. Every molecule in my body had come alive at the mere sight of him, at the way his dark hair looked unruly; unkempt but sexy. At the way his stubble should have looked scraggly, but his chiseled jaw made it work. He was arrestingly rough. Almost uncivilized. But there’d been something hauntingly familiar working behind his brilliant blue eyes, as well. He’d seen pain. Probably death, if the tattoo on his arm was military as Josh had said. And it had marked him. I’d seen all of this as he walked up and I’d felt ashamed for the instant attraction when our lives were falling down around our heads. So much so I could barely look at him, as his piercing eyes seemed to study me. I’d always had a weakness for big men. A part of me felt like prey because of my small stature, so I had always gravitated toward men who could protect me physically. And Logan Storm looked like he could stop a Mack truck.