Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“So this is your grand plan? You’re just going to pace until someone decides to drive by?”
“Got any better ideas?”
“I mean, there’s always the old fashioned get naked and survive off each other’s body heat, but something tells me you’re too much of a prude for that.”
“Classy,” she says. “Tell me, is insulting women until they get naked for you a new personality trait, or one I was just lucky enough to never experience?”
I give her a hard stare. She knows damn well I’m not like that. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I grunt. “I was trying to have fun with you, trying to help you to remove that stick up your ass.”
She mutters something under her breath before pausing in the open doorway and fixing her stare on me. “I didn’t mean it,” she says. “It’s the cold.”
“Soooo . . . that’s a no on getting naked, then?”
“Fucking hell,” she says, picking up her pacing right where she left off. “How did my day come to this? I was supposed to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out how to make Christmas feel magical like Nana used to, and then I was going to spend the night drinking while getting the house ready for a fresh paint. But nooooooo. That’s too easy, isn’t it? Now I’m going to either freeze to death or get mauled by a polar bear.”
“A polar bear? Really?”
“Whatever. A grizzly one. I don’t think I’ll particularly care what kind of bear it is when it’s mauling me.”
“You’re not getting mauled by a bear,” I tell her, letting out a heavy sigh, almost having forgotten how ridiculous her rambling can get when she’s scared. “If anything, we’ll starve and have to fight to the death so one of us can eat the other.”
“Great. There’s nothing quite like a little cannibalism to get me in the Christmas spirit.”
“There you go,” I say with a can-do attitude, just shy of giving her the good old thumbs up. “Now you’re getting it.”
Blair huffs and pulls my coat tighter around her, and for just a split second as the chill seeps into my bones, I regret giving it up, but knowing that she’d be freezing out here has me ready to peel off the rest of my clothes and hand them over too. Hell, I’m starting to think that maybe we should get naked. I hate seeing her freeze.
Her chattering teeth are loud enough to hear across the open cab, and the sound has my hands balling into fists. Hell, keeping myself rooted to my seat is proving to be a challenge when all I want to do is grab her and pull her into me to shock her system for just a moment. I wonder if her blood would start to pump if I kissed her, but not one of those pathetic little pecks, a real fucking kiss that makes her realize exactly what she threw away. All I know is if I keep hearing her shiver, I’ll lose any semblance of control.
“What’s your plan?” I ask, both of us needing a distraction from the cold.
“Huh?”
“Your plan? For the house? For Blushing? How long are you going to be here?”
“Wow. Trying to get rid of me already?”
I scoff. “Acting as though that’s not your main goal is insulting, Blair. We both know your time here is limited. I just want to know how limited so I can gauge how much damage you’re going to cause before you jet out of here and leave me to clean up the mess again.”
“Fuck me, Nick,” she grunts. “You didn’t even pretend to save my feelings on that one.”
“Like how you’ve done for me over the past six years?” I question, arching a brow. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”
Her gaze falls away, getting straight back to her shivers when she lets out a sigh, choosing not to dwell on the bullshit. “I don’t know how long I’ll be here,” she finally says. “It really depends how soon I can bring Nana’s house into the twenty-first century.”
“You’re selling it?” I question, though I already know the answer.
“That’s the plan,” she says. “As for the timing, who knows. Considering the time of year, I’ll be lucky if I can source everything I need. Most stores are closing up for the Christmas break, but if I get in quick, I could get most of what I need from Hardin’s before John closes up. But accidents happen, and I really have no idea what I’m doing. I had to look up how to patch drywall on YouTube last night, and while it doesn’t seem too hard, there are more steps than I realized. I think this renovation is going to take a serious bite out of what little savings I have.”
“So, when are you planning on putting it on the market?” I ask, doing what I can not to drop to my knees and tell her that I’ll teach her everything she needs to know.