Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 64880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
The boots had to go. Stat.
Tulsi dropped the truck’s tailgate and hopped up to sit on top, moaning with relief as she tugged off her boots and socks and let her bare toes wiggle in the breeze. The desert wind was warm, but it was cooler under the shade trees than anywhere else she’d been today. For the first time in hours, she felt the sweat beading around her hairline begin to dry. With a sigh, she lay back in the truck bed with her hands laced behind her head, watching the green leaves sway against the pink and purple sky.
It had been so long since she’d taken a moment to watch the world go by. She couldn’t help being reminded of those evenings in Springfield, when she and Pike would take a quilt out to the hay field behind Aunt Willa’s house and lie staring up at the sky for hours. They did their share of making out, but there were times when they simply held hands and watched the clouds drift by. Times when they stared up at the stars while they whispered about the things they were hopeful for, the things they feared, and the dreams they were certain were about to come true.
Fast forward seven years and all of Pike Sherman’s dreams had come true, and then some. He was the star pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, making more money than God, and had a rich, fulfilling life far from Lonesome Point. He dated models and movie stars, vacationed in Bora Bora, and had bought his mother a BMW convertible for her fiftieth birthday. He rarely saw his father and avoided pressure to come home for Christmas by flying his family to his ranch in Montana for the holidays. Mia said he had a mansion, a stable full of horses he paid people to ride during baseball season, and a tree house with heat and running water, where their much younger cousins camped out on Christmas Eve.
And soon, in a fancy tent not far from here, that man who had everything would be schmoozing with people who had paid two hundred dollars a ticket for the pleasure of shaking his hand.
Pike was living big, but Tulsi wouldn’t exchange places with him for a million dollars. She might not have fame or wealth, but she had things that were more precious. She had an amazing little girl, wonderful friends, good work, and a hometown where she felt safe. Life…was perfect.
It didn’t matter that her two best friends were getting married and moving on with their lives while Tulsi was still alone. It didn’t matter that Bubba had left Lonesome Point and she would only see him on special occasions or that she was about to lose the job that had given her more satisfaction than anything she’d ever done, with the exception of raising Clem.
Everything was going to be fine. Better than fine.
The leaves blurred before her eyes, but Tulsi sucked her lips between her teeth and bit down. She wasn’t going to cry. She and Clem had their health and each other, and at least Mia and Sawyer were going to stay in Lonesome Point after they were married. Things were still good. Or at least they could be a whole lot worse.
The thought was barely through her head when she heard Mia’s voice calling from the road.
“Hey, Tulsi? What’s up? You okay?”
Tulsi sniffed away her tears and sat up, her lips parting to tell Mia she was fine, but then she saw the man in Mia’s passenger seat and all her words fell away.
There, not fifty feet from the truck, wearing a black cowboy hat and a denim button-down that made his hazel eyes look a dreamy greenish-blue, sat Pike Sherman. His sandy brown hair was shorter than the last time she’d seen him and the skin at the edges of his eyes was lightly wrinkled, but otherwise he looked exactly the same—except more impossibly handsome. The years had banished the last of the adolescent softness from his cheeks, transforming his strong jaw into a thing of angular beauty. The rest of his face was equally chiseled, gentled only by his full lips. Those soft, generous lips that had once kissed hers with enough passion to make the world stop turning.
Even before she met his eyes, Tulsi was having a hard time catching her breath. When her gaze connected with his, the wind rushed out of her like she’d taken a hoof to the gut.
Suddenly, she felt like she was naked in a polar ice storm, not fully clothed in the middle of a sweltering southwest Texas summer evening. The look in Pike’s eyes was that chilling and so ripe with contempt Tulsi had to fight the urge to flinch.
At that moment—as her heart lurched and her throat locked with panic—she was forced to rethink everything she’d assumed for the past seven years. Because, at that moment, she understood that Pike Sherman hated her. He hated her with a passion as hot and intense as the passion they’d shared when they were kids.