Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 130255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
“No, not the book itself. I mean the story. The characters.”
Grandma picked it up and turned it over a few times, looking at both the front and the back cover before she turned back to me. “I suppose it is when I’m reading it. Why?”
“Why? It’s just a book.”
“Wash your mouth out with soap, young man.”
“Why does everyone have that reaction? It’s not real. It’s just a book.”
She peered at me over the top of her glasses, and disapproval radiated from her in waves. “Get out of my library.”
“Technically, it’s my library.”
“Not with your attitude it’s not. I’m taking it back. I’ll move my bed in here, child. Don’t test me.”
I took a deep breath and sighed it out. “Help me out here. I upset Ellie last night when I told her that her characters aren’t real and it cut dinner short, and she just about chewed my arse out about it.”
“Good. She should have done. What did you say?”
I told her everything I’d said and everything Ellie had said back—about the widow, the woman with cancer, the student, the man whose father had heart surgery, and the siblings who read to escape the horrors of dementia as it gripped their mother.
“I guess I just don’t understand,” I said after I’d explained. “I’ve read some of Ellie’s work and she’s an incredible writer, but I simply don’t understand how something can be so real when it isn’t.”
Grandma shuffled to the edge of the sofa, picking up her book. She walked around the table, and when she reached me, she thumped me on the back of the head with her paperback.
“Ouch!” I rubbed that spot. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I did not raise an ignorant, obtuse little git!”
“Bloody hell, it’s like there’s a conspiracy against me.”
She waved her book in my face. “Are you or are you not the man who shouts at the television every week during the football season?”
I didn’t answer.
“They can’t bloody hear you, but you sit there directing them as though they can!” Grandma looked pointedly at me.
“Yes, but they’re actually playing football, Grandma.”
“And you are not Barry Southgate!”
I rubbed my hand over my mouth. “Gareth. His name is Gareth.”
“I couldn’t give a hoot what his name is. You’re a thirty-year-old man and you play football manager for some thirty-something weeks a year, and you think books aren’t realistic?”
I pressed my lips together. “You shout at your books all the time.”
“That’s precisely my point, Maximillian. If you shouting at a bunch of overpaid pricks kicking a bag of air around a giant field is real, then so are my books.”
Oh, dear.
This might have gone a little far.
“You know what you need? To read, you uneducated little swine.”
I spun around and leant over the back of the sofa. “I have a bachelor’s degree!”
“I didn’t know they gave those out for idiocy.”
“Grandma!”
She scanned a bookshelf, running her finger along the edge. “This needs dusting. Do you not dust?”
Good grief. “I’m not sure I’ve ever dusted. Not sure I’ve ever seen you do it, either, for that matter.”
Grandma huffed. “Sylvia is slacking. I think we need a new cleaning team. Why can’t we have them full-time like we used to?”
“Because I’m the only one who lives in the house and they deep clean once a month anyway,” I said slowly. “I don’t need a staff of twenty like you and Grandpa had back in the day.”
“Your parents had it,” she muttered, still scanning the shelves, occasionally pausing to brush the dust off her fingertips. “I’m just saying that a deep clean could stand to be done more than once a month.”
“I’ll talk to Sylvia about it this week,” I acquiesced. There was no use arguing with her—besides, she was right. I’d never say that out loud as I wasn’t about to set such a dangerous precedent.
She already knew she was right, anyway.
She didn’t need me to tell her.
She huffed again, but that was the end of that conversation as she pulled a bright blue book from the shelf. “Here. Read this.”
I took the book from her and grimaced when I saw the title.
The Rules for Dating an Earl.
And the author.
Ellie Aarons.
“You cannot be serious.” I looked at Grandma. “Of all the books, this is the one you give me?”
“This is my favourite book by her.” She tapped two fingers against the front cover. “And no, it’s not the signed one. I don’t trust you to touch my signed books. They’re in my safe.”
I… wasn’t even going to ask, honestly.
“Yes, but I wasn’t expecting a romance.”
“Are you really in a position to question this? Isn’t you being a judgemental little shit the reason she’s not talking to you?”
It was hard to believe I was thirty sometimes.
And a duke, for that matter.
She’d have been beheaded for that four hundred years ago.
“If you want to understand why her characters are so real to her and her readers, this is surely the best place to start.”