Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 20927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 105(@200wpm)___ 84(@250wpm)___ 70(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 20927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 105(@200wpm)___ 84(@250wpm)___ 70(@300wpm)
“I’ll give you a tour of the town,” he answers. “That’s part of the reason you’re here. Research or something for a book, right?”
I nod too enthusiastically then I keep nodding and now I look like I’m a bobblehead on a dashboard. Why can’t I just be normal around hot guys?
“Unless you’d like to scout some more black bears,” he says and the only thing that gives away his teasing is the slight lift to one side of his mouth. He gestures toward the door. “Goodnight, Piper. Have sexy dreams. I know I will.”
“You didn’t tell me he was cute,” I hiss into the phone as soon as Zoey picks up my call. There are like a million things she didn’t tell me including that she sent me to a wedding lodge for my vacation. How pathetic do I look right about now?
She laughs. “I’ve never noticed.”
“How could you not? He’s all big and burly and yummy.” I flop back onto the bed and wonder how she couldn’t have seen him. The cord connecting my phone to the wall pulls taut and I scowl at it. “And he touched my vibrator.”
“Wait, back up. How did that happen?”
I blow out a breath and tell her the story. The whole humiliating truth and the entire time Zoey is laughing so hard she’s breathless.
“I’m glad you could get some amusement from the worst moment of my life.” It’s almost as bad as how she met Brock while she was trying to relieve herself in the snow. He saw her entire rear and everything.
“And the worst part is he’s going to be showing me the sights tomorrow, so I have to pretend to be normal and not a drooling mess.”
“Maybe if you’re lucky, he’ll show you his sights,” she says in a tone that indicates it would be a very different kind of tour.
I snort. He had to have been teasing me earlier. That’s the only reason he’d make such an offer. He doesn’t want to sleep with a twenty-two-year-old virgin that knows more about writing romance than actually living it.
He probably thinks I’m an annoying tourist he has to babysit. I figure I’ll go along on his little tour for an hour or two then feign tiredness. After that, he’ll feel like he’s done his duty and I can enjoy the rest of my vacation in peace.
“Am I at risk of seeing more black bears?” I ask when Gray stops the truck in the parking lot for the local arboretum. When I came downstairs this morning, he said he had a full day of activities planned, but he wouldn’t give me any hints. I think he likes surprising me.
“Yes.” He gives me a solemn look as he turns off the truck’s ignition. He already repaired my key fob for the Fiat. He had the battery changed for me when I came downstairs. “They’re known to frequent the greenhouses that we’ll be exploring today.”
I laugh at his silliness.
“There could be a risk of an encounter if we were on the hiking trails, but we won’t be using those today,” he reassures me.
He leaves the truck and opens my door for me. He’s done this since the moment we met, and the gesture makes me think of my dad. He always insisted I should hold out for a man that would open the doors for me, the way he did for my mom.
“Not about you being weak, pumpkin,” he’d tell me in that smoker’s rasp he had. “It’s about treating you like the queen you are. You don’t deserve nothing less.”
Maybe that’s why I’ve never dated. My dad filled my head with all these grand ideas of love, and he didn’t do it by draping my mom in diamonds or giving her a fancy house. He did it by showing up in the little things, the everyday moments.
From opening her door to kissing her forehead before he left for work each morning, he cherished the woman he called his wife. He looked at my mom the same way that Brock looks at Zoey. The same way I want a man to look at me one day.
Gray guides me around the visitor’s center, a cheerful blue building that has Chrysanthemums blooming in stunning hues of red, orange, and yellow. I pause to take a photo on my phone. My mom and Zoey want me to text them pictures of the sights I see. I add Brock to the chat too, so he can see that I’m on vacation.
He holds open the door to a non-descript looking greenhouse. The moment I step inside, my breath leaves my lungs in a whoosh. Behind me, I hear the door click closed as Gray stands close to me. I can feel the heat from his body but I’m too obsessed with the explosion of color in front of me. It’s not just the beautiful, fragrant flowers. There are dozens of butterflies circling around them.