Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Plus, my mom was a beach person.
If we did have the money to go on a vacation, her choice was always the beach.
Mom was a lounger.
She loved sitting on the beach, drinking a beer, and enjoying the sun and water.
Dad loved my mom and gave her what she wanted.
Truthfully, I loved the beach also.
I sure as shit liked it more than the mountains, but I had a feeling that was only because of how shitty Joseph’s family was.
They were avid hikers.
They’d been hiking trails since they were old enough to walk on their own.
Plus, they had a mountain house in Colorado that they went to a couple of times a month via jet or helicopter.
Hiking during the summer, and skiing—definitely not snowboarding because that was a heathen sport—during the winter.
Honestly, I wanted none of it.
If I could never see another mountain with them in my life, I’d be happy.
“I’m not sure,” I hedged.
“Please,” he begged.
I sighed.
I knew this was going to happen.
He was going to talk me into it, and I was going to give in because I had no backbone.
“I need an hour, Joseph,” I gave in. “I have continuing education that I have to get done today. No matter what. You know that. When I’m done, I’ll eat, and then we can go.”
“You know my parents like to get out on the trail early, before all the douchebags that go to take photos,” he grumbled. “But I can probably convince them to wait until this evening after they’ve all left.”
I nearly rolled my eyes, but I knew it wouldn’t go over well with him.
He hated when I rolled my eyes.
Honestly, I was beginning to hate him, so it was okay.
“I just cooked. Eat, then go get your workout in. When I’m done, I’ll eat really fast, and then we can go. I’ll be done by seven at the latest,” I grumbled.
In order to be done by seven, I’d had to get up at four to get started on the laundry. All of my uniforms were dirty from the week I’d had, and he wanted to spend my two days off driving to freakin’ Colorado where his parents lived, hiking for the day, and then coming home.
In order to do that, I had to get this done first. So after I’d done my laundry, I went ahead and started breakfast so we wouldn’t have to do that, either. While I was doing that, I’d also started my continuing education.
Being a paramedic, you had to have sixty hours of continuing education.
Normally, I would’ve had it done well before now.
But that was before I’d met Joseph Adolph Harris, first born son of Arnold and Margaret Harris.
Joseph didn’t understand my desire to keep working in such a “common” field.
He thought that as a language expert, I should find a more prestigious job, one that made him look better when he was introducing me to prospective clients.
Joseph worked for his parents’ company, Black Harris. It was an investment firm that specialized in high-end clients who were more on the sketchy side.
Arnold and Margaret hated me upon first meeting.
Hell, at this point, I knew they still hated me.
I was not who they expected their son to want to live the rest of his life with.
I was the daughter of a blue-collar working man—Dad was a welder—and a mom who stayed at home with me.
There were times that we barely had enough money to make ends meet. At the age of fourteen and a half, I was already working almost full time to help pay for my own expenses.
Arnold and Margaret had expected their son to want a purebred girl that was a society princess. One who lived off her inheritance and had enough free time to do the duties expected of her.
I wasn’t that, and they hated it.
“Fine,” Joseph grumbled. “Hurry up, though, Jesus.”
I did, doing the work as fast as possible. But when it was a timed unit, it was what it was.
By the time I was finished, I hurried to the kitchen to eat my breakfast.
I didn’t like eating early.
In fact, I despised it.
A lot of the time, I wasn’t hungry when I first woke up, so saving my breakfast was something that I did often.
Hence, why I sectioned out my portion and hid it in the back of the fridge in a box labeled “Tofu.”
When I pulled it out and started reheating it, the noise practically called Joseph out of the gym.
“Mmm.” He smiled, his eyes lighting up.
And since I knew his game, I said, “Hey.”
Joseph was addicted to food.
There was no other word for it.
He wasn’t overweight or anything—in fact, he was a gym rat who was overly focused on how he looked—but he had an obsession with food.
The man could eat anything and everything and not gain a single ounce of weight.