Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 122440 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 612(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122440 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 612(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 408(@300wpm)
He had met her two years earlier and had known the moment he’d laid eyes on her that she was the one. He’d never believed there would be a “one” or that a man could fall so hard so immediately. He had been shocked. Disbelieving. He tried walking away, certain he had somehow gotten to a stage in his life where he was lonely and she had just come along—that his very unfamiliar emotions couldn’t be real.
Wilder found it impossible to stop thinking about her, no matter how many missions he accepted. She was interfering with his work. To prove himself wrong, he watched her. He made it his mission in life to find every flaw. She had to have them. Everyone did. Slowly, through watching her, he became more self-aware, realizing he judged all women by his mother’s actions. Women didn’t stay. They weren’t loyal. They didn’t protect their children. They didn’t know what it was to be willing to sacrifice one’s life—one’s soul—for someone you loved. Those were his expectations of women, and he hadn’t even realized he felt that way until he’d deliberately set out to find the lack of character in Harlow.
She seemed to be the complete opposite of his expectations. She mesmerized him with her dedication to her patients, the way she treated the elderly, the unpaid time she put in with them and her consistency. That care she gave was part of who she was. Time and again he saw her volunteer to help her friends when he could see she was exhausted. Occasionally, she had pulled extra shifts, but if a friend or someone older in the town called on her for help, she didn’t hesitate.
Wilder was fascinated with her. Captivated by her. He began to study her in earnest, wanting to know everything about her in order to figure out exactly what she needed and whether he could provide those things for her. He wanted to be the man to give her everything she needed or wanted. That need had crept up on him, taken hold and become an obsession.
In the beginning, he’d misread her aloofness, the way she kept her distance from men, and he’d made his first big mistake. He’d let her know he was interested and backed off, waiting for her to give him a sign she wanted the same thing he did, but that sign never came. Not even close. She was attracted, but she shied away from him. He wasn’t into game playing, and it seemed beneath her. Totally out of character.
He saw the way other men reacted to her but realized she didn’t see it, or she ignored it. She didn’t flirt or lead men to believe they had a chance with her. She was a sparkling light of joy, brightening a room wherever she went, but she didn’t ever deliberately try to attract a man. He was thankful for that—he was gone quite often and didn’t want someone else to swoop in and take her while he was away at work.
Wilder went back to observing her, this time looking to see where he’d made his mistakes. She was far too important to him to mess things up. He made certain he looked at her through a clear lens—and he was shocked at what he found. The beautiful woman traffic literally stopped for wasn’t confident in the least. Not in herself. She was as a nurse. As a friend. As a person helping her community, but not as a woman. She didn’t seem to have self-worth as a human being.
Wilder came to know her every expression. Her various masks. Her body language. The slightest tell she had. He was excellent at reading people. Since she was the most important person in his world, he made certain he would excel at reading her needs or wants. He knew their relationship would never be a fifty-fifty split. He wasn’t an easy man, and no matter how much he wanted to change his habits for her, he knew his personality traits were set so deep he wouldn’t be able to. She had to accept him the way he was. That was a tall order he was asking of her.
He vowed he would do his best to give her everything he could in return. He respected and admired her. He set out to learn as much as he could about art because she was so passionate about it. He wanted to understand her interests and hobbies so he could support her in those things. He didn’t mind household chores. Cooking or cleaning. Just in the short time he’d lived in her home, he found he liked doing those things. She was always surprised. She noticed. Her face lit up, and she looked at him as if he were the only man on earth.