Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Affectionally known as the falls to most, to call the tiny bilingual community a good drive away from the valley a city was laughable when one looked at the small five-kilometer circle that enclosed its residents inside town limits. It was the population’s slow growth—and subsequent development—of Grand Falls over the past decade or so that gained the hub its city status to all the rural communities that surrounded the outside of it. Not that there was much to see. Homes upon homes tightly packed, and a zip line across the falls for the few daring tourists the town saw drive through in the summer.
Nothing made the town feel city-like. No cement buildings and busy traffic—unless it was dinner or closing time. Only a handful of fast-food joints lined the two main streets, Broadway, and Madawaska. The standard grocery stores, larger than the ones in the rural communities, had better, more cost-effective options if someone cared to make the drive.
It was twenty-five or more minutes from Gracen’s valley town, so she didn’t make the trip often but maybe once or twice a month. If her car didn’t need maintenance, then she didn’t have any other reason to travel back and forth to the falls except if she just wanted to go.
The drive was nice.
“We’re not really dressed to go in and eat somewhere, huh?” Malachi asked after he’d taken the last exit off the highway into the falls.
Gracen peeked over at him, after just having finished her iced coffee and placed it into the cup holder until she had a trashcan nearby, and replied, “Speak for yourself, Mr. Leather Jacket.”
Malachi grinned but kept his eyes on the road. “That’s all you’ve got? Fine, I’ll play.”
“Oh?”
“I was trying to be nice, but I didn’t want to point out how you basically painted your jeans on this morning, and maybe that isn’t Chateaux appropriate,” he offered, still as smug as ever while he navigated the vehicle down Madawaska drive. “And no offense, because I can pack away a Big Mac like nobody’s business, but I don’t like the way the inside of fast-food joints look, if you know what I mean. Greasy.”
He made a good argument, though.
Gracen’s acid-wash, ripped jeans, and tummy-baring balloon-sleeved crop top wasn’t the appropriate attire for the only fancy restaurant in the falls that Malachi could seem to come up with in the spur of the moment. The thing was—well, the town had probably grown since the last time he’d been in the area.
“Did you forget about the Chinese buffet?” she asked, pointing at the sign of the place she mentioned that’s name had never changed in more years that she could remember. The business, with food that was not Chinese and a typically empty parking lot, sat just across the street from where Malachi had needed to stop at a red light.
Not that she would eat there.
Gracen heard enough stories.
Better yet, warnings.
He acted like he couldn’t see a thing. “The golden arches, then? We can take the drive-thru—”
“Oh!” Gracen interrupted. “Yeah, and then eat at the falls.”
“You’re reading my mind, woman.”
Malachi had already turned on the blinker to switch lanes before the light turned green again. The parking lot of a nearby grocery store also acted as way for vehicles at the light to enter into the mall’s lot and the McDonald’s on the corner. Just beyond the fast-food joint and the Ford dealership on the edge of town sat the hotel on the hill overlooking the dam and falls down below.
“I could eat something greasy,” Gracen agreed.
“I’m paying,” Malachi said.
No arguments there.
He shot her another winning grin that she answered with her own.
“By all means,” she told him, “take me to dinner.”
Malachi scoffed playfully. “It’s fast-food in a car—don’t get me feeling guilty.”
“About what?”
“If I start feeling like you’re making this into a date, then I might have to make it up to you with a proper one,” he muttered while he navigated the parking lot until he was around the other side and pulling along the driving corral for the drive-thru’s speakers.
Who said anything about a date?
“Is it?” she asked him then.
Malachi eyed her from the side as he rolled his window down in just enough time to hear the girl working the drive-thru ask, “Hi there. Can I take your order?”
Gracen shrugged away Malachi’s questioning stare lingering across the car. They could hammer out the unimportant details about what this night was later.
Food came first.
*
“Are you going to the engagement thing tomorrow night?” Gracen asked.
At the prime moment, too.
Malachi’s mouth, full of cheeseburger, didn’t have to come up with a response or distraction to the question right away. Gracen did that on purpose. The last time she asked about his sister and family, while they’d been looking for a place to park in the viewing lot facing the dam and falls, he changed the subject faster than she could blink.