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)
Back at the front of the store, Delaney dropped her last armload of items on the counter just as Lucas made his way inside with a shiver a muttered brr.
“Did you get something to drink, sweets?” he asked.
Delaney gestured at the food. “Priorities.”
His laugh matched the man behind the counter as the two shared a nod and a polite hello.
“Beer’s that way,” the guy manning the cash said.
Lucas headed in the direction of the liquor storage with a wave over his shoulder. From the high-piled boxes of beer and a wall of bottles blocking the windows, she couldn’t see what he went for, but Delaney had an idea. He proved her theory right when he exited the cold storage with a twelve-pack of beer held up for her to see.
The familiar Dalton logo, foiled and prominent on the box, glinted under the overhead lights. No question, his brand all the way.
“It’s all about the loyalty,” she said, doing her best impression of him as he placed the box of beer down to the counter.
“That it is,” Lucas returned, but his gaze stayed fixed on the man bagging and tagging items on the cash register. “You added the gas?”
“I got the gas,” the guy confirmed. “Anything else?”
Lucas hummed over the pile of items Delaney had chosen and drummed his fingers along the edge of the counter before he pushed away. “Let me do a check.”
“What do you need?” she joked as he headed down the first aisle.
“Snacks!”
“Snacks?”
“Well, I can’t only eat you.”
A surprised, but amused, chuff came from the man who didn’t miss a beat, piled the food into bags as Lucas disappeared around the aisle. Delaney, ignoring the sudden heat burning up her cheeks, pretended like nobody had heard his comment.
Their total had already crawled over two hundred dollars by the time Lucas came back with three different bags of chips—a variety of flavors—and a dill pickle dip he must have found in the rear coolers. Lastly, he lifted a pack of toilet paper high for the guy behind the cash to see before he placed it to the floor.
“Better to have too much than not enough,” Lucas explained at Delaney’s questioning stare in regard to the toilet paper.
True enough.
His gaze locked with hers. “Did you want something other than the beer? Red wine or—”
“You wouldn’t share your scotch with me?” Delaney interjected, only teasing.
Lucas grinned. “Are you a scotch kind of girl?”
“Get me a little drunk, and I can turn into a try anything kind of girl, really.”
“Tell me more.”
Delaney winked. “I just might.”
Physical intimacy changed a lot about the way two people interacted—it didn’t even have to be full on sex for that to be the case, either. Delaney had first learned that important life lesson as a teenager when she found herself in the unfortunate circumstance with a boy who she let get under her skirt.
With only his hands, of course.
Nonetheless, that boy had wrongly assumed that the moments the two of them shared meant more than it actually did and behaved toward her accordingly. Until it got to be too much, and Delaney had to let him know exactly that, too. In the end, she came out of that experience careful about who and how she shared herself—but especially her body.
It changed things.
It changed people.
Delaney would be a liar if that suggestive, knowing glint in Lucas’ eye didn’t call to something twisting viscerally inside her gut. In a good way.
For a moment, the two of them had seemed to forget that they weren’t back in the cottage deep in the quiet stillness of Birch Ridge. The man, who had finally finished tallying their total on the cash register, cleared his throat as a way to bring the two back to earth.
“Should I add a pack of these into the mix for good measure?” the man asked, producing a moderate-sized box of condoms from beneath the cash.
It made sense to keep items like that—probably a high theft item—where they couldn’t be easily seen or found.
Delaney could not meet the man’s eyes, no matter how hard she tried. Instead, she tossed the question to Lucas without saying a word, but by shifting her entire body toward him as if to ask, “Yes, should we?”
Lucas stepped forward to pay, giving the pack of condoms the man held a shake of his head to refuse the offer, and pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his dark-wash jeans with a cocky grin. “Let’s get this show on the road, eh?”
Delaney wished she could get the redness out of her cheeks, but no such luck. Her blush held strong through the time it took Lucas to pull out his debit card and stick it into the machine.
Behind the cash, once he got the paid confirmation on the debit machine, the man only replied, “Happy to do business, sir.”