Total pages in book: 34
Estimated words: 33887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 169(@200wpm)___ 136(@250wpm)___ 113(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 169(@200wpm)___ 136(@250wpm)___ 113(@300wpm)
“Drink?” Hale asked as he let me go.
I was about to answer by saying he should refresh his and we needed to have a chat, but since he’d started moving away, my sightline opened up, and I saw our twelve-seater dining room table.
It was covered in shopping bags.
Chloe and Judge were at Jamie’s house that night, having dinner with Jamie and Judge’s sister Dru. Hale and I were set to meet Duncan and Genny for a drink later, after Sasha and Matt, the last to hit the city due to their schedules, arrived. Hale and I were going to pick them up.
But, when it came to Chloe, even though she wasn’t there, her essence remained.
“Whoa,” I said, moving into the space, dumping my stuff and shrugging off my coat. That accomplished, Frosty was at my ankles, and therefore it was a moral imperative to pick him up for a cuddle. This, I did before I remarked, “You weren’t wrong about Chloe shopping.”
“That isn’t Chloe’s. Her bags are up in their room,” Hale said. “That’s all for you.”
I blinked at the bags.
Then I blinked at my man where he was in the kitchen holding a bottle of wine up and tilting it side to side in question.
I didn’t answer his question.
I asked my own.
“Chloe bought all that for me?”
“No,” Hale answered, putting the bottle of wine down on the counter in front of him. “Chloe shook down every designer she knows in order for them to give you shit you can wear on your shows, or when we’re out, so when someone shoves a microphone in your face, you can say, ‘I’m wearing Joe Shmoe.’ That’s what all that shit is.”
I started laughing as Frosty and I walked to the kitchen and stopped on the other side of the island from Hale.
“I’m pretty sure there’s no designer named Joe Shmoe,” I noted.
Since I was still smiling, Hale smiled back.
I kept speaking.
“And as a stylist, what Chloe does isn’t referred to as ‘shaking down” designers. She’s convincing them of the merits of the marketing opportunities she’s offering them.”
“Right,” he said, still smiling.
“However, she isn’t my stylist. I’ve been meaning to talk to her about that, because I could use—”
“Sweetheart,” he cut me off. “She is now. Chloe doesn’t wait for opportunities to arise, she doesn’t wait to be asked, she also doesn’t pitch. She bulldozes. This morning, you woke up without a stylist. You came home having one. But just so you know, that”—he jerked his chin to the coffee table—“wasn’t all in a day’s work. You didn’t know it, but it’s obvious she’s been your stylist for months now.”
I burst out laughing.
Seriously, I was totally falling in love with Chloe.
Frosty wriggled to get down (he loved his Mommy, but when he was done, he was done) just as Cheddar jumped up on the island.
I set Frosty on his feet while Hale stretched a hand out and Cheddar came right to him.
Watching this, my smile turned upside down.
At this juncture, Hale opened a drawer, and all humor fled as he pulled out Cheddar’s treats and started feeding them to him, Cheddar taking them direct from Hale’s fingers.
Yes…
While the cat was on the counter.
“Um…love of my life,” I began.
Hale looked to me as he gave Cheddar another treat.
I could see his eyes dancing, and I knew he knew, but he played dumb and asked, “What?”
“Have we not had this conversation…” I inserted a meaningful and dramatic pause before I finished, “…about three dozen times?”
“Elz, as I’ve told you, and you’ve seen me do it repeatedly, I wipe down the counters before I cook.”
“I don’t care,” I retorted. “Cats shouldn’t be on counters. He has thousands of square feet to roam, on two coasts, and only one small area that isn’t his domain. He can hack it. Frosty does.”
“Frosty has a strict mom, Cheddar has a chill dad,” Hale noted, giving another treat to our cat.
“Hale,” I warned.
“Baby,” he replied, setting aside the treats and now stroking our cat, again…on the counter.
“Hale!” I snapped.
“Sweetheart,” he returned.
I glared.
Then I froze solid when he said, “Don’t worry, beautiful. When you have my baby, the one you’re carrying right now, I won’t make you be the bitchy mom so I can be the kickass dad. We’ll share the boss duties when the time comes. Though, fair warning, I’m still gonna go out of my way to be the kickass dad. Even so, or especially because of that, I need to get my chill on with our fur babies.”
I couldn’t move, however, by some miracle I forced my lips to.
“You know?”
He was watching me, and doing it closely, but I couldn’t read what he was thinking.
“I kinda keep close tabs on your periods,” he stated. “I’d like to say it’s because I’m fine-tuned to you, which I am, but on that particular front, mostly it’s about the fact you don’t like to fuck when you’re bleeding, and I love to fuck you, so that’s not either of our favorite times of the month. And you haven’t had a cycle in a while.”