Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“I agree. But only with some sort of paperwork in place.”
“I’m not going to the city to see a lawyer.”
“I have to go and get my stuff out of the car! You didn’t think to do that. Maybe they have a lawyer in that town.” My brain and hormones are still battling it out, and I’m not sure half the things I’m about to say are going to make sense, but I don’t want to stand here thinking them over forever before I put them out there.
Thaddius shakes his head. “You’re crazy. You know that?”
“Why? Because I want definitive legal proof? I don’t think that’s crazy. I think that’s smart.”
“Coming all this way.”
“Yeah, you’ve said as much.” I scratch my head again, a long, satisfying amount of nail-rubbing against my scalp, then drop my hands and arch my back into a long stretch. “I’m starved. Do you have anything to eat around here?”
Thaddius’ eyes go from dark to stormy in an instant, like asking for food is a major crime. I take him in, a tarnished sort of knight expelled from his kingdom of the city—self-expulsion— wearing dung and mud-covered rubber boots, faded jeans, and a T-shirt that puts the holy sweet Jesus into him. Thaddius has the kind of body that is a lot of holy sweet Jesus. It makes my ovaries sit up and pant. I don’t think they’ve ever done that before, and I lean hard into the porch railing, hoping to keep the butterflies exactly where they should be—non-existent. I have to remind myself that while this man might have wowed me in my regular life, nothing about my life is regular anymore.
“There’s err…sheep cheese.” His smile turns devilish.
He has to be having me on. Isn’t he?
“Are you for real? Sheep cheese? Do people really eat that? I’m going to look it up.” Right, I left my phone in the car. How is this all going from really bad to seriously worse?
A sudden burst of pink above Thaddius’ sculpted jawline shocks me. What was he thinking that just made him blush? Maybe it’s his knee-jerk reaction to telling lies. I don’t like thinking it somehow softens him and makes him almost adorable. I don’t like the twinge in my lady bits, either. My hoo-ha is noticing things she shouldn’t be.
“They eat it,” he says. “Sheep’s milk is way richer than cow’s milk, so it’s not often sold in stores. It’s great for digestion and easy to make into the most delicious cheeses.”
“Ahh, I see.” This is all about playing super extra nice until I get my way, and darn it, I’m going to get it if it’s the last thing I do. Though it would be really nice if it weren’t, and I got to live a long, fulfilled life after coming all the way out here.
Thaddius notices my perky, happy attitude. I can tell he does because his jaw locks up and ticks. “Nothing gets you down, does it? I’m going to start calling you Miss Farting Rainbows.”
“Ha, what an excellent name. So creative. Technically, you’re engaged to Miss Farting Rainbows. You should write that on the lawyer form. They’d probably get a kick out of it, but we’d also have to specify my real name just to avoid confusion.”
His eyes narrow. “So, would you like to try some? Some delicious homemade sheep cheese?”
The way he says it, it sounds more like the kind of thing that would give a person some serious troubles in the bathroom later, to the tune of explosive this or that. I’m not even sure if he’s serious or just trying to scare me off. Well, challenge accepted, Mr. Hottie Rubber Boots Pants. Challenge freaking accepted.
“I’d love to try it. In the house that you said I couldn’t set foot in? Or are you going to bring it out here, and we can have a nice picnic to end the day?” I glance around. The yard is absolutely perfect for it. I don’t know how he found this place, and I’m not going to ask, but it’s like a little piece of heaven. I don’t know when to stop, so I keep on going by adding, “The grass is so lush and nice. What kind of water are you using here?”
“Fertilizer. I compost.”
“Are you serious?”
“Not on the grass. Mostly just in the garden. I grow all my vegetables in some sort of composted dung. That’s the secret to a long, healthy life. A good dose of shite.”
If he thinks he can get the better of me by playing off my city girliness and what he probably thinks is a phobia of poo and getting dirt under my nails, he’s wrong. “Ha. Well, I do love me a good poo emoji. Glad it works for you.”
I spin a slow three-sixty around on the deck, taking in everything in the area. I finally point out a huge maple that has probably been at the edge of the yard for centuries, just past all the fencing that keeps the animals in. I don’t know much about trees, but I think some of them can live to be three or four hundred years old. I did a report on maple trees when I was in elementary school. I still remember some of it. I’m pretty sure that one is a bigleaf maple. It’s massive. I know after around fifty or sixty years, or something like that, the height of that kind of tree doesn’t change very much, so I’m not really sure how a person could tell how old it is.