Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 121735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“Lydia … I wish so much was different.”
With her forefinger, she smoothed his brows. “At least we have right now. Or … had it.” As her sadness returned, she cradled his face in her hands. “Let’s lock up, and go home?”
“All right.”
He kissed her again. And again.
And after that, she tilted her head one way and he tilted his another, and then they were moving in a wave, softer, slower, but no less intensely. This time, the pleasure was like a flame, instead of a bomb burst, but it burned with just as much heat even though there was no urgency.
Holding on to him, she looked at the ceiling above her desk. With every thrust, her head moved back, and with every withdrawal, it righted itself, her visual point shifting to the same rhythm that he made love to her.
Oh, God, was she really doing this in her office? she wondered. Was this actually happening … or was it some erotic dream where she’d wake up with her thighs clenched and her breath tight as she pushed her face into her pillow on a groan of frustration—
“Daniel … ,” she moaned.
Her orgasm was more gentle now, but longer in duration, and his mouth was on hers again as she rode it out.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she felt like crying. Instead, she just held him tighter.
As if he were liable to disappear at any moment. Like a dream.
DANIEL PUT THE plate down in front of Lydia and stepped back. “My cooking isn’t as good as yours.”
When she looked up at him, her sad smile broke his heart. “Come on now, this is a gourmet meal to me.”
Not even close, he thought. Goddamn, he wished he could make her some BBQ on a grill, out in the fading August sun, with tinfoil-wrapped corn, and a big-ass salad from a garden he took care of. Then homemade strawberry ice cream with hot chocolate sauce he cooked up in the old-school way with corn syrup and semisweet morsels. Oh, and he wanted to do all this in a kitchen they shared, and eat it on the porch they enjoyed their lazy Sundays on.
“Spaghetti out of a box,” he said, “sauce from a jar.”
But made with lov—
No, he stopped himself.
“Aren’t you eating?” She looked to the sink and the strainer. “I’ll wait while you get your plate.”
“I had a big lunch out on the trail.”
“A picnic?”
He sat down across from her with one of his Cokes from the vending machine in the WSP’s break room. With the amount he was drinking at work, he was going to empty the thing of all its red cans.
“Yup, a picnic. Made up of picnic things.” He sat back and stretched. “Anyway, the last of the bridges is fixed. Equipment shed roof is solid. That doctored toilet is good for a little longer. ATV is fixed.”
“Your checklist.” Lydia twirled her fork around. “Everything done.”
As she let the sentence drift, he wondered if she hadn’t guessed he was leaving.
Fucking Eastwind. But that sheriff wasn’t the reason behind the departure. Bottom line, the most important thing he could do for Lydia was get the fuck out of her life. In the short term, he might be able to keep her safe-ish, but he would have to go sooner rather than later—and he had his own enemies.
“Where is the rest of your family,” he asked. “Cousins, uncles, aunts?”
Anybody.
Lydia shrugged. “It was just my grandfather and I. Only children of only children kind of narrow the family tree.”
“What happened to your parents?” In response to his question, she just kept looking at her plate, teasing the spaghetti with the tines of her fork. “I’m really not prying.”
Bullshit.
“It’s okay,” she said with a haunted smile. “I just … it feels like a different life and it was so long ago. And I guess … well, I’ve always lived in two different worlds, neither one nor the other. Talking about my mother and father feels like trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.”
“Tell me,” he whispered.
Lydia’s smile was lost as she kept poking at her pasta. “Well, my mom left me right after I was born and my dad was never around. If my grandfather hadn’t stepped up, I honestly wouldn’t be here.”
“Wait, what—your mother left you?”
“When I was born.” Her eyes flipped to his as if she were checking to see how he was reacting. “I wasn’t expected, either. You and I have that in common. And both our mothers left us, didn’t they.”
“Yeah, they did.” Daniel shook his head. “So she just abandoned you at the hospital?”
“It was a home birth. At my grandfather’s house. She tried to end the pregnancy … so many times.” As he cursed softly, she kept going, her words coming faster as if she just wanted to get through the story. “She tried to give herself a home abortion with a coat hanger. Then there were two suicide attempts with pills. The last one … she threw herself in front of a car. But I stuck.”