Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Swindling my life savings and pretending to be an only child aren’t exactly “a little bit of something,” but I digress.
I can’t stop thinking about the photo albums and how Donovan must have painstakingly edited and removed every trace of his brother.
“Maybe he was trying to protect you?” Florence lifts a brow.
“Couldn’t he have just said, Hey, I have a brother, and he’s not a nice guy, so we don’t talk anymore, and if you ever see him, just stay away?”
“Million-dollar question, my dear.” Her lips mold into a sympathetic slight curl.
Our waitress grabs our check.
“No change, lovely,” Florence tells her. “Thank you.”
I grab my bag. She grabs her clutch. We slide out of the booth.
“Any plans tonight?” I ask.
“Why, yes, actually,” she says. “I have a date with my television set. You know I never miss an episode of The Manor in the Mountains.”
“That’s right. It’s Tuesday night.” I walk her to the door. “We shouldn’t keep your lumberjack and his society girl waiting.”
“Guinevere and Johnny.”
“Yes, Guinevere and Johnny,” I echo as I walk her to her parked Buick. A burst of carefree laughter trails from down the street, where a group of women dressed in business casual sashay into a local bar.
I’d always assumed I’d find a friend group once Donovan and I were more settled in here. But the second we arrived, we poured all our time into that house, and any spare moments we had we poured into each other. I’m kicking myself now for not trying to get out of my bubble, but hindsight is twenty-twenty.
At least I have Florence. But it wouldn’t hurt to put myself out more and try to meet a few new friendly faces. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be here. Before Lachlan waltzed into my life, I thought maybe a year at the most—assuming everything went smoothly with the reno and legal side of things. Now it’s anyone’s guess.
Flo sends me off with a hug and an air-kiss, and I eye the bar once more.
It’s only eight o’clock. If I go home now, I’ll waste away the rest of the evening doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that until I wear myself out enough to fall asleep. For someone as busy as I am, there are days and nights I feel like I do a whole lot of nothing. It’s a strange paradox.
Thunder rumbles through the dark sky, and lightning crackles above the trees. Donovan always loved stormy weather. In fact, it inspired him so much he’d stand on the front porch and watch it roll through, ignoring the chilly raindrops that pelted his skin and the warning flashes of lightning illuminating the sky. But having grown up in the Midwest, I’ve only ever associated it with tornado season. I’d take cover in the basement while he was delighting in nature’s visual performance outside, earbuds in his ears playing some melodramatic playlist, lost in his own world.
Looking back, it was almost as if he were challenging Mother Nature to a duel.
What I mistook for a charming quirk of his was nothing more than arrogance in disguise.
A sprinkle of rain pats softly and rustles through the leaves overhead before beading along cars and making its way to the sidewalk.
Trotting ahead, I duck inside the bar to get a drink and wait for the weather to pass.
I make it inside without getting terribly soaked, snag an empty spot, and order a four-dollar cocktail off the Tuesday-night-specials menu—a bottom-shelf whiskey-apple-cranberry concoction.
One sip later, I’m transported back to the night I first met Donovan in Minneapolis. It was a Tuesday afternoon in late June, and the skies were a sickly shade of blue green. Weather sirens wailed in nearly every suburb surrounding Minneapolis thanks to torrential winds. All flights at MSP were grounded, and the airline put me up in the Marriott across the street. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, I decided to kill my time in the lobby bar.
I was on my second drink of the evening—another whiskey-apple-cranberry invention—when a striking auburn-haired gentleman in a navy three-piece suit took the empty seat beside me. He placed his cell phone and hotel key on the bar, ordered an old-fashioned, and made a comment to the bartender that it looked like he wouldn’t be getting into Chicago anytime soon.
“Flight 324? Into O’Hare?” I interjected out of boredom.
He angled himself toward me as I took a sip, and I almost choked when I caught myself lost in his imperious gaze. In that moment, I couldn’t tell if the skies were green, blue, pink, or purple, because all the color was in his eyes.
We spent the hours that followed glued to our barstools, flirting and drinking and small-talking our way into one another’s world. He was a social media manager for a Fortune 500 corporation—but his dream was to be a writer. He was in the midst of querying agents in New York with the hopes that one of his passion projects might one day take flight. He loved classical music and Rat Pack jazz, was currently restoring a vintage Aston Martin DB6 Volante. His guilty pleasures were Cameron Crowe films, Mexican chocolate, and sleeping in. And his five-year plan included restoring his childhood home and getting a dog.