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)
He gestured at the cash register and the items beeping through as the proof. What more needed said?
Even the woman with LORA on her nametag gave a soft laugh. The amount of sugar going through really was ridiculous.
Charlotte smiled, but still shrugged. “I’m gonna get the soda.”
“Whatever, hurry up,” Malachi called at her retreating back when another customer moved in behind him in line.
“Is it always quiet?” he asked Lora.
She continued scanning and bagging items, cold with cold, veggies together, as she replied, “On the weekends, sometimes. Morning is ... boring.” Her eyes widened and rolled with playful annoyance. “Doesn’t really matter which day of the week, though.”
“I could see that.”
The sleepy town of Plaster Rock had a quarter of the population of the valley, one main road running straight through from one side to the other, and the only real source of work came from the lumber mill across the river, or the grocer and convenience stores. Besides the small elementary and middle-high schools, situated in the middle and end of town, respectively.
It was a forty-five minute—if one illegally speeded—from the tiny valley town where Malachi had grown up and called home, so he hadn’t spent much time in the neighboring, rural village. At most, he’d been inside the welcome center, a large log cabin in the middle of town, and the corresponding hockey rink just across the parking lot for tournaments between schools.
That had been a long time ago, though. One he didn’t particularly care to go back to, either.
“You’re not from around here, I guess?” Lora asked.
“Close, downriver,” he replied.
Their polite conversation continued even after Charlotte returned with three different two-liter bottles of soda.
“He needs a choice,” she’d said as an explanation.
Not that Malachi had asked.
Charlotte and Malachi took two bags per hand, and he replaced the cart in the corral at the front of the store on the way out. Holding the door for Charlotte on the way out, the woman who had begun checking out the man waiting in line behind Malachi waved to him from behind the cash register.
Politely, he waved back to Lora.
“Should have asked for her number,” Charlotte noted as they crossed the parking lot.
For a moment, he pretended like she hadn’t said it. More often than not, that was Malachi’s go-to option for situations like these.
Charlotte, unfortunately, took his blatant silence as an opportunity to continue the conversation. “Oh, are you and that Gracen woman dating? I think Chip said—”
“Chip probably didn’t say much,” Malachi interjected, knowing it was the truth without needing Charlotte’s confirmation.
Partially, because Malachi had not given his friend a lot of details about his private business with Gracen. Chip didn’t have the whole story from beginning to end, so anything he might have to say would be purely speculation. He wasn’t the type to peddle in the gossip mill, but especially not with a woman whose main purpose was to keep his bed warm.
Malachi would bet on it.
“Sorry,” Charlotte mumbled as they approached the rear of Chip’s SUV. “I wasn’t trying to be nosy.”
Malachi opened the back hatch and placed his bags inside. While she did the same, he told her, “There isn’t a lot to tell, but I probably wouldn’t even if there was, okay?”
Charlotte nodded once. “Got it. And for the record?”
“Hmm?”
“Chip just said you don’t really see a lot of women, so.”
His eyebrows lifted high. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe that you must really like her?”
“Huh,” he said, unwilling to offer more about his friend’s astute observation.
“Crap,” Charlotte muttered, eyeing the store over her shoulder. “We forgot a case of water. I’ll grab it?”
“Go for it.”
Malachi didn’t have a preference, and the lodge’s well water was far better than anything he drank that came wrapped in plastic.
Once he sat alone in the Cadillac, behind the driver’s wheel, Malachi’s phone lit up with a call in the middle console. He picked up Gracen’s call with something different than his usual.
“We’re just about on the way back, babe.”
He didn’t mean to, really.
It slipped out easily.
“Are we ...” Gracen trailed off on the other end of the phone before trying again, surer in her tone when she spoke the second time. “We’re doing something, aren’t we?”
“Something?” he asked, confused.
“Us—you and me.”
Oh.
So she hadn’t missed the babe.
Or the fact they kept coming back to this mutual place. Those thoughts and ideas weren’t only in his head.
“Do you want to be?” Malachi questioned, thinking that was the safer route than a direct answer to Gracen’s question. Things weren’t black and white between them, but he’d been told before that nothing good came easy, either. Wasn’t it safer for one’s feelings to test the waters before diving right into possible heartbreak?
Shit usually went that way for him, anyway.
Gracen took a few seconds to reply.
A lot more than a few.
“I’d rather talk about it face to face,” she said. “It’s doesn’t seem fair to do it all over the phone.”