Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
All of this because I made it my personal goal to leave the office no later than six (drop dead, six twenty) so I could get home to Core.
Sometimes I snuck in some work when Core was off doing things with the club. Or when we were hanging in front of the TV, Core with a joint and chilled mood, watching something he dug that I had no interest in, so I’d grab my laptop.
Sometimes he went to bed without me so I could spend an hour or so on my computer getting a jumpstart on the next day.
I was doing this for him, but things for me were rough.
The conference was more work than I expected. Christmas was approaching and I had at least a dozen new people to buy for. I’d called an all hands on deck with my girls to do a fast pack and clean of my old apartment, they’d pitched in and we’d gotten it done. But I hadn’t yet had the time to work with Core to decide what stuff of mine we could use in our kitchen and what could be stored.
This meant those boxes, as well as other detritus from my apartment, were stacked at the front of where I parked my Mini in the garage. This was annoying to face every day, those boxes taunting me that they needed to be gone through. But also, they were in my way.
We couldn’t put them in front of Core’s huge-ass truck. That barely fit in the garage as it was.
They needed to be sorted, and stuff we weren’t going to use put up in his attic to get those boxes out of the way.
So yes, I was exhausted and there seemed to be a mile-long work and life to-do list I faced every day.
And okay, maybe I was a little crotchety because of all of this when it all kicked off.
But who wouldn’t be?
It began before we left the house.
We were going Christmas shopping, something I usually loved to do.
What was more, Core had no decorations at all, and mine were meagre, so we were off to augment that and Christmas-ify the house.
I should be in a great mood. I loved Christmas, and the little decorating we’d already done—putting up my tree—had been awesome (because we’d had sex under it after it was up but only halfway through adding the decorations).
I was in the closet again, finishing up getting ready.
Core was in the bathroom.
I heard him curse and Nanook gave a muted howl.
I was about to go see what was happening when Core walked into the closet holding up my tube of mascara.
“Is this important?” he asked.
“It’s my mascara,” I answered.
“Should I take that as a yes?”
I walked to him. “Yes, it’s a yes.” I reached and took the mascara from him. “Why do you have it?”
“Because I stepped on it and nearly broke my neck in the bathroom.”
Oh shit.
“Maybe I didn’t put it away,” I stated the obvious.
“Yeah,” he said, then, before I could apologize, he turned and prowled out.
However, it must be noted he glanced along the floor, all the way to the corner where our hamper was before he prowled out.
I glanced at the floor too. And yes, it was true, my shoes were everywhere. So were a couple of pairs of my jeans, a few sweaters, a skirt, a bra and the laundry hamper was overflowing because I hadn’t had time to do the laundry in a few weeks.
This was when I started to get annoyed.
Because, okay, if he didn’t realize I was burning the candle at both ends, doing this so I could have time to be with him, then he really wasn’t paying attention.
And it wasn’t like he didn’t have five hundred pairs of faded jeans and eight hundred tees/Henleys/thermals, not to mention his thousand pairs of underwear (okay, exaggeration, but he had a lot of those things).
He was a bachelor before me, and as such, he packed the closet so he’d have to do laundry as little as possible.
He wasn’t hurting for things to wear.
And if he was, he could do a couple of loads of the laundry his own damned self.
I mean, they had staff for the dispensaries, so outside of the brothers keeping an eye on them, it wasn’t like Core’s day job was super taxing. And his pro bono vigilante work happened night or day, but it was his choice to put that time in.
If this was House Dad material for when that time came, it was for the birds.
I walked into the bathroom to grab the lip gloss I wanted, and to put my mascara back, and…
Right.
I had to admit, the dry shampoo can was out, so was my brush, and I hadn’t put away my blush, highlighter, foundation or any of the brushes or sponges I used to apply them.