Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
Awesome.
And strange.
Not many guys got into my darkness.
Not many chicks did either.
But it seemed Eric did.
“So, what are your thoughts about the door?” I asked.
“The door?” he asked back.
“The door,” I repeated. “Do you think Jack could fit on it with Rose?”
His brow furrowed. “Is that a thing?”
“Hotly debated,” I verified.
“Why?”
This was a good question.
“I take it from your question, in the spirit of the day, you have no fucks to give about whether Jack could have fit on the door with Rose,” I noted.
“I can confirm I have no fucks to give about whether a fictional character could fit on a fictional door in a movie about a fictional story even if it’s based on a nonfictional event.”
I started laughing.
“Do you care?” he asked.
“Well, perhaps the production team should have made a smaller door so people wouldn’t obsess about it for decades after the movie was released. But for the most part, I think there are much larger things in this world to give a shit about. So…no.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, and I felt that word, and the softness he used, flit over my skin.
To combat the feeling, I remarked, “That said, Jack did try to get on the door. I suppose they could have kept trying, but then Rose might’ve fallen off. And the impending hypothermia could have taken them both. So, if forced to have an opinion, I think people should just get over it.”
“Yeah,” he repeated.
“So…Titanic?” I prompted.
“Works for me.” He tossed the remote my way. “Queue it up. I’m getting more crumble.”
He was doing what?
“Are you serious?”
He’d put his feet to the ground in order to get up, but my question stopped him, and his head turned my way. “Yeah, why?”
“How do you maintain that body with extra portions of stuffing and crumble?”
“How do you maintain your body while obviously eating out all the time?”
Did this mean he liked my body?
I didn’t ask.
I answered, “I have a job where I’m on my feet nine hours of the day.”
“And I have a job where, if I don’t keep fit, my ass could be in a sling.”
“Are you saying your job is dangerous?”
“I’m saying, if it turned that way and I was out of shape, I’d be shit out of luck. So I prefer to take luck out of the equation.”
“So you’re saying you don’t feel the need to unbutton your pants.”
His expression changed, I felt it in my nipples, and his voice flowed over me like velvet when he replied, “Not yet.”
Wait.
Was he…
Flirting?
“I take it this discussion means you’re a no for more crumble,” he noted.
Okay.
Freakout averted.
He wasn’t flirting.
Just hopeful thinking.
“Is me switching into lounge pants also a compliment to the chef?”
His black eyes twinkled. “Yeah.”
“Spoon it up, big man. I’m gonna go change.”
I went to my bedroom and switched out my black jeans for black joggers that had a satiny grosgrain ribbon pinstripe down the side. They were perfect. Warm. Comfy. Cute. And expandable.
I hit the kitchen when Eric was scooping out ice cream.
“Want another cocktail? Or I can make coffee or chai,” I offered.
“Coffee,” he picked.
I went to my big bowl of Nespresso pods. “Intenso, odacio or stormio? Or are you feeling festive and want pumpkin spice or rich chocolate?”
“Intenso,” he ordered.
Seriously, this dude was the man of my dreams.
I started the machine warming and reached for mugs.
This was part of what I did for a living, so when Eric came to the sink in order to lean his hips against it and watch me, I wasn’t a huge fan of how unnerved he made me.
I should note, I wasn’t surprised.
But I wasn’t a fan.
He was offering friendship.
I had good friends. However, I curated them carefully, so they were few.
That said, anyone could use a new friend.
“I got two questions, but you didn’t ask any,” he said.
I looked to him. “Sorry?”
“At dinner. I asked two personal questions. You didn’t ask any.”
“Just now I asked about Rose and Jack and the door.”
“Does that give you insight into the man I am?”
“Yes.”
And it wasn’t a lie.
His lips tipped up before he said, “So you get one more.”
I felt my brows dip down. “This feels like a test.”
“It isn’t. We’re getting to know each other.”
We sure were.
And for the first time since he showed, I wondered why.
“You didn’t answer me fully,” he pointed out he saw right through my earlier answers. “If I’m not down with what you ask, I’ll return the favor.”
This was starting to feel like a game.
He wanted to play?
I wanted to know more about him.
So I was in.
The light turned green on the Nespresso machine, so I hit go, turned back to him and asked, “Why’d you leave the FBI?”
“Because we had a mole. Someone who thought money was more important than fighting crime, and worse, keeping his fellow agents alive. I know this, since, due to his shit, one of them died. I made it my mission to ferret out who that fucker was, and I found out it was my partner. My partner, who was also my closest friend. I nailed his ass. He went to prison. He’s still in prison. And I got out of the Bureau.”