Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Rory thought she’d found an ideal situation. Her apartment was fairly new, in a building three stories high, and she was able to choose from several apartments. There was a waiting list for the first floor, but no one had requested the third-floor apartments. Each had a stairway to the roof, where they had their own little section, railed off from the neighbors for privacy. She was told she could put in a garden if she wanted. What she wanted most was to sit outside on her rooftop sanctuary and breathe in the ocean after the stale air of the bar.
Her apartment building was on the opposite side of the street as the bar but down two and half blocks toward the harbor. She was fortunate that across the street from her apartment, the building facing hers was only a couple of stories versus three or four. That meant she had a fantastic view of the harbor and, farther out, the ocean from her rooftop patio.
The building had a keypad to put in a code to access it, making it a safer place to live. Rory thought it was a good idea, but the manager didn’t seem to have a very good sense of safe people to rent to. She’d used the gym nearly every day since she’d signed her lease. Ordinarily, because she worked nights, she could count on any gym she used being fairly empty during the time she chose for her workout.
Unfortunately for Rory and the other women choosing to work out in the early afternoon, a few of the apartments had recently been rented to four single males who didn’t appear to work. They had money, but they hung around and leered at the women as they used the various machines. They also tended to be in the laundry room at inconvenient times.
There was no doubt in Rory’s mind that the four men who pretended to be no more than casual acquaintances were not only working together but running drugs and possibly other illegal things she didn’t want to know about. She did her best to avoid them, just as the other women in the building did. She’d learned early that there was always a fly in the ointment with any place she lived or worked. Nothing was ever perfect, and she accepted that. It was simply life.
Rory let herself into her apartment and tossed her bag onto the nearest chair as she hurried through the open living room and dining room to the door leading to her bedroom. She kicked off her shoes and unbuttoned her white shirt until she could whip it over her head with one hand, dragging in a lungful of air as she did so. Both hands dropped to the black trousers, the standard uniform the owner preferred his bartenders to wear while they were working. She peeled them down her hips and legs to kick them off. She did what she always did the moment she got home: she stepped into the shower as quickly as possible.
One of the apartment’s best features, other than her rooftop patio, was the shower with hot water. She scrubbed her skin and rinsed out her hair. Next was moisturizing her face, throwing on flannel pajamas to stay warm, wrapping her hair in a towel and rushing up the stairs to her rooftop. Her breathing machine was inside a weatherproof cabinet, and she set it up on the little table beside her favorite chair. She liked that lounge chair. No, she loved it. It was the most comfortable outdoor chair she’d ever come across, and she carted it around with her wherever she went.
Rory tucked her feet under her and tipped back her head to look at the stars as she gave her laboring lungs a treatment. She could normally last an entire shift with just her inhaler as long as she went straight home afterward and used her machine. She wouldn’t get rashes from an allergic reaction to the cleaning chemicals she used when she closed if she got home fast and made it into the shower. The key was to shower with cool water first and make her way to hot. She had it down to a science after all the times she’d been bartending when things had gone wrong fast.
She had sensitive skin and weak lungs. There was no getting around those two things. She’d been born that way. It hardly mattered to anyone but her. She really detested using an inhaler in front of anyone, as if that made her weak; not her lungs—her. She’d been taking care of herself for years now, and doing a pretty good job too, but she had so many problems. Not just her health. She had issues.
Rory made a face around the mouthpiece she was using to get the medicine into her lungs. Early on, she’d realized she wasn’t going to be that girl that men raced to make a life with. They didn’t want someone with her precarious health and neuroses to be the mother of their children. She wanted a home, children, a family, but once she allowed herself to be realistic, and her lungs didn’t get better no matter how much time she put into exercise to strengthen them, she accepted that she was always going to be alone. Hence her decision to see as much of the world as possible. She couldn’t be a wife and mother, so she chose the next best thing—she was a traveler. She was a darn good traveler, and for the most part, she was happy.