Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
I wonder if my office has been cleaned out. Has someone been hired to replace me at work? When I do eventually make it back home, will I still have a job?
Even with a hangover, questions still fly through my mind at a rapid-fire pace. I want to go back home—very much. But I don’t hate it here. Not at all. There are no alarm clocks or schedules. I’ve never spent so much time just being, reading books and listening to music.
Life can’t be like this all the time, but the break from sixty-hour workweeks has been nice.
I start making the oatmeal we eat for breakfast every day, fantasizing about having a plate of hot, crispy bacon to go with it. And oh my god, fresh-squeezed orange juice. Just thinking about the sweet juice and the salty bacon makes my mouth water.
It’ll be nice to get back to the land of grocery stores and restaurants, but for now, I’m grateful for what we do have. This cabin and its food store saved our lives.
Lincoln opens the front door, a gust of icy air sending snowflakes in with him.
“Hey, morning.” He takes off his coat and hangs it up.
“Morning.”
Why does it feel like we slept together last night? I focus on my oatmeal prep, knowing I’m going to blush the first time our eyes meet. Our kiss and all the secrets we shared left me with a floaty, dreamy feeling that only gets stronger now that he’s back in the cabin with me.
“Want some oatmeal?” I ask lightly.
“Yeah, that sounds great.”
“How much snow did we get?”
“Uh...a foot, maybe?” He groans with satisfaction after pulling off a snow boot. “I made snowshoes. That’s a fucking workout, walking through thirty inches of snow in those things.”
“Well, you’re a man, so it’s probably more like eighteen inches.”
“You’ve got the jokes!” I smile as his deep voice gets closer to me. “Will you be here all week?”
I shrug. “Depends how good the audience is.”
I feel him standing behind me and I’m about to turn around and get the uncomfortable eye-contact blush out of the way when he wraps his arms around me from behind.
My lips part. It feels amazing, having his big, carved body against my back. I set down the oatmeal spoon and lean back against him. His arms are banded around me beneath my breasts and the cold seeps from him to me, but it doesn’t bother me at all.
“I’m sweaty,” he says apologetically.
“It’s okay.”
It really, really feels like we slept together last night. This is the morning-after cuddle session.
“How you feeling?” he asks, his warm breath near my ear giving me goose bumps.
“Like death.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, I’m hurting too. It was fun, though.”
“You want a rematch later?”
“You might want to check in with your liver and see if you’re still up for it.”
I laugh. “Maybe we’ll need to modify the rules.”
“I’m down. I’ll have to move around a few things on my schedule, of course.”
“Of course. My day is packed, too.”
“Could you pencil in a little time after we eat for some dancing?”
My heart races with excitement. “Dancing?”
He steps back and I immediately miss his closeness. Leaning a hip on the kitchen counter, he looks down at me. “I know you want to grind all over me while we dance to some Sinatra.”
I laugh hard at that. “So much.”
His expression turns serious. “You’re beautiful.”
My heart stutters as I lock eyes with him. “I bet you say that to all the women you’ve survived plane crashes with.”
The corners of his lips turn up in a soft smile. “Don’t deflect, Trin. You’re beautiful. You make me wish I could be...different.”
“Different?”
He looks away and clears his throat. “Better.”
I wonder if he’s talking about his hang-up about sex. Because if there’s something I understand very well, it’s feeling like you’re not right for most people. Too much. I know exactly how it feels to look like you have it all together on the outside when, inside, you’re falling apart.
“I wouldn’t change a thing about you,” I say softly.
I stir the oatmeal, which is close to boiling over, and he pushes away from the counter, the moment over.
Hopefully he’ll think about what I said. My attraction to him has grown so much deeper over the past day now that I know more about him.
I understand him in a way I can’t even put into words.
An hour later, we’ve finished breakfast and filled our empty five-gallon job with snow. Lincoln tended the fire and put an Etta James album on a few minutes ago, and he’s standing in the open floor space by the record player waiting for me.
I used a washcloth to clean myself up and changed into a clean flannel, but I’m missing my toiletries pretty hard right now. I want makeup and perfume. My many flat irons and curling irons. My deliciously scented coconut lotion.