Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Delaney blinked, imagining her best friend and fiancé—now— in their kitchen with the phone between them on the counter. She could picture it perfectly and that left her with a hollow ache in her chest that she couldn’t explain. Maybe because she wanted to be there with them; the laughter didn’t quite feel as warm and real over the phone.
All made up nonsense in her own head, sure.
On the other hand, it had been a long time since Delaney could honestly say she missed home. Especially in a way that left her longing to be there. Usually, those thoughts, or the lack of them, left her sad and ashamed.
Or worse, numb.
“Should I just do it, or send the picture?” she heard Gracen ask in the background.
“Oh, my God. Woman, make a choice,” Malachi returned.
“I’m trying!”
His laughter rumbled on the other end of the call. “Do you want me to do it for you?”
“No!”
Gracen’s sharp response slammed Delaney back into reality and out of her spiraling thoughts.
“Tell me what?” Delaney asked.
All of the sudden, Gracen’s voice was far clearer and closer to the phone. “You’re off speaker.”
“Great, so will you tell me what’s going on?”
“Yes and no,” her friend returned.
“Gracen—”
“I know you’re almost on a lunch break, so my plan is to send you a picture shortly and then you can call me back. I’ve hyped myself up way too much to just tell you over the phone when I did this whole thing with a picture yesterday at the hospital—okay? It’s cute. Let me have this.”
Wait, what?
“Why were you at the hospital yester—”
“Delaney.” Gracen’s impatient sigh crackled over the speakers in Delaney’s ear. “I’m sorry—I should have just waited until noon and sent you the picture but you know how I am. I get ahead of myself. I know you’re still at work, but I let Malachi get in my head when I started waffling about things because you didn’t text me back.”
“None of this makes sense,” Delaney laughed into the phone.
Finally gaining the attention of a couple of her coworkers. The woman in the station next to hers grinned her way, but quickly went back to fluffing the blowout of the blonde in her chair. Across the salon, Linda peeked in Delaney’s direction from behind the desk where she was currently filing off the remnants of a lady’s gel nails.
“It will,” Gracen promised. “Shortly.”
Delaney spun her chair around so that the back faced the rest of the salon. “Nothing bad, right?” she asked, quieting her voice more than before.
“Something great, Delaney.”
“Something you’ve known for a while and wanted to tell me?” she prodded.
Just to see how far she could get.
Gracen scoffed. “Nice try, but also yes.”
Her friend might as well have put them both back at square one of their current conversation with that comment. Which might have been the point.
“Since just before the holidays, anyway,” Gracen added. “I really wanted to tell you then, but—”
“I didn’t come home.”
“But that’s okay,” her friend rushed to say. “That’s a work in progress, right?”
Delaney grinned even though Gracen couldn’t see it. “Yeah, that’s my work in progress.”
She had just got Gracen off the phone, with a promise to call her back when she finally took her lunch, as the bell over the salon’s front door chimed with a jingle. Her intention had been to pick Bexley up over noon and take her out to eat, which she still planned to do, but she froze in the chair once she swung it around and saw who had come in.
He wore the same black tweed jacket as last time, but the matching cap he pulled from his head to slap the snow off against his palm was a new accessory. Lucas caught her staring across the floor, and winked her way before turning to shrug off his jacket and hang it up with his cap on the coat rack near the door.
By the time he scuffed the soles of his ankle-high boots against the entrance mat, Linda had already excused herself from her client. Except the boss didn’t make a beeline for Lucas Dalton—instead, she came for Delaney.
With a big smile on her face.
“Thank me for this later, okay?” the woman asked, her grin turning conspiratorial.
Delaney couldn’t help but look between Linda and the man finishing his business at the door as to not dirty the salon’s floor more than necessary. “What did you do?”
“You know, he was very concerned about you,” her boss explained. “Unintentionally kind, I think. I thought it was sweet. He might have called a week or so ago to check in. Maybe I mentioned I could fit him in to see you whenever he was in town if he just gave me a call ahead. Looks like things worked out, huh?”
Things worked out?
Her boss had lost the fucking plot.