Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
I stop and lean over to watch her for a moment.
“Whatcha working on?” I ask.
“Book report,” she chirps without stopping her aggressive scribbling. “It’s about how The Velveteen Rabbit is really a book of philosophy. Like how Skin Horse says you can find your real self if you suffer enough for love.”
Yikes.
That’s pretty freaking deep for an almost ten-year-old.
I arch both brows. “Now where did you learn about philosophy? Last I checked, that’s usually a subject for college.”
“Miss Lilah!” she answers brightly, her eyes going starry. “She’s the best teacher ever. She says when life gets tough, that’s when you find out what you’re really made of. A lot of ancient people thought so too and wrote long books about it. Don’t much like Aristotle, though. Aristotle sucks.”
I burst out laughing at her enthusiasm.
Honestly, it was all Greek to me—pun intended—in the Great Thinkers extracurricular I took, too.
“You have an interesting teacher,” I tease wryly, tweaking one of her curls. Then I glance up as I catch a muscular shoulder passing by through the kitchen door.
“Be right back. I’ll let you focus.”
I follow that glimpse a minute later and the sudden heavenly smell of cooking meat into the kitchen.
Sure enough, Grant changed out of his uniform, slipping into a pair of battered jeans and a plain grey Redhaven PD t-shirt that strains across his chest.
I think I’m in awe.
Seeing him like this, casual and barefoot and so huge, breaks something inside me.
This powerful ache of homesickness that doesn’t make sense when I’m already here with good people.
But it’s not a place I’m missing.
It’s a time when things were simpler.
Before we were missing so many pieces of ourselves.
“Need a hand?” I ask.
Grant glances up from flipping homemade hamburgers on the stove.
“Sure,” he says. “Fries are just about ready to come out of the oven, if you wanna season ’em.”
“On it.” I scrounge up a pair of oven mitts as he steps aside so I can retrieve a tray crowded with thick wedge steak fries coated with some aromatic oil. “Spice rack?”
“Cabinet overhead.”
“Ah.”
I stretch up on my toes to reach in and dig out the salt and pepper, plus the paprika. I know how Grant eats and I know he likes his spicy.
“Only salt on a third of the pan,” he grunts. “No pepper or anything. Nell’s particular.”
I giggle.
“Only because you let her be.” I keep myself from pointing out that it’s adorable how much he indulges the little girl.
The dirty look he throws me as he pushes the sizzling burger patties around says he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
I watch him sidelong while I season the fries, trying to work up how to ask, before I decide to be direct.
“So,” I say. “You want to tell me what’s up with Ros? How long has she been this weird?”
He pauses, gathering his words.
“If you’d asked me a few days ago, I’d have said not long at all. Then again, that’s mostly ’cause I hardly ever saw her the last year or two with the murder drama and all. Guess that in itself was a little weird, considering she was always around town before. She’d always wave or stop by for a quick conversation.”
I frown and pick up one of the steak fries for a taste test.
“Where has she been going? Why can’t I get her to come home?”
“No damned clue,” he growls. “But I’m thinking it’s got an awful lot to do with Aleksander Arrendell.”
I’d bitten down on the piping hot fry—and now I choke on it, coughing and coming close to spitting it out.
“Aleksander who?” I force swallow and pound a fist against my chest.
“You heard me.” Grant watches me in stark silence, then turns the burner off, sets the spatula down, and rips a paper towel off the dispenser roll before offering it to me.
I eye him intently as he sighs.
“Look, I don’t think you’re gonna like what I’m about to tell you, Butterfly.”
“If it’s what I think you’re saying, I know I won’t like it.” I wipe my mouth roughly with the paper towel. “Thanks. But what the hell do the Arrendells have to do with Ros?”
Grant grits his teeth, looking away from me and back again.
Oh, Jesus.
It must be bad if he’s steeling himself like this. I brace myself, but I’m so not ready for the moment he says it.
“Ophelia, they’re engaged.”
“They’re—they’re—what?” I think I’m about to commit a homicide, Aleksander Arrendell primary victim. Rage boils up inside me. I stare at him in disbelief, waiting for him to tell me he’s joking or just misspoke. “My baby sister is... is engaged to that creep? What the hell? Since when? How do you know?”
“I saw them together the day you came back,” he bites off. “Up at the big house when I was responding to that suicide call. They were hanging all over each other. She showed me the ring and told me to stop worrying, said they were engaged. She begged me not to tell you.”