Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 145574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 728(@200wpm)___ 582(@250wpm)___ 485(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 728(@200wpm)___ 582(@250wpm)___ 485(@300wpm)
I laughed. Damn, how long had it been since a woman had made me laugh so many times in just a few minutes?
She folded her hands on the island, and her energy shifted. “Tell me why you’re really here, Noah.”
“I promised—”
“So, what? You’re just going to stand in my kitchen and make me tea?” Her chin lifted. “I know you’re here about the book.”
I studied her carefully, taking in the rise of color in her cheeks and the spark in her eyes. She was mostly back to what I’d consider normal, but in all honesty, I didn’t have a baseline when it came to Georgia Stanton. I was flying blind.
“You want to get out of here?” I asked.
“What do you have in mind?” She looked more than skeptical.
“How’s your life insurance?”
…
“No,” she said a half hour later as she stared up at the rock face that stretched a hundred feet above us.
“It’s fun,” I argued, gesturing to a couple of guys who were all grins as they packed up their equipment. “See, they think it’s fun.”
“You have lost your mind if you think I’m climbing that.” She lifted her sunglasses to the top of her head so I could see just how serious she was.
“I didn’t say you had to climb the whole thing,” I argued. “There’s a less challenging path right over there.” That one was only thirty-or-so feet, and my niece could easily do it, not that I was about to say that to Georgia.
“Are you trying to kill me?” she whispered as the other climbers walked past on the trail.
“We have equipment.” I gave the shoulder strap of my backpack a pat. “I brought an extra harness.” I eyed her footwear. “Your shoes aren’t exactly what I’d recommend, but they’ll do until we can get you some good ones.”
Her eyes narrowed. “When you said, throw on some active wear and let’s go for a hike, I assumed, shockingly, that we were hiking.” She gestured to her Lululemon-covered body.
“We did hike,” I argued. “It was half a mile to get up here from the trailhead.”
“Semantics, again!” she snapped, putting her hands on her very nice hips.
Stop looking at her fucking hips.
“What are you afraid of?” I turned my Mets cap backward and shoved my glasses to the top of my head.
“Falling off the mountain!” She pointed to the rock face. “It’s a pretty realistic fear when you think about climbing it.”
“Think of it as vertical hiking.” I shrugged.
“Unreal.” She jabbed her finger in my direction.
“I was only kidding about the life insurance comment. I won’t let you fall.” Ever. She’d already been let down too many times.
She scoffed. “Okay. Right. And how exactly are you going to prevent it?” She lifted her eyebrows.
“I’ll be your belay partner and control the rope in case you fall. See, we put the harness on—”
“Why the hell do you even have an extra harness? Do you just fly around the United States, hoping to pick up women climbers?” She folded her arms across her chest.
“No.” Though I couldn’t help but wonder if that thought was spurring her on or not. Sure, it made me an ass, but the thought of Georgia getting all worked up out of jealousy was pretty fucking hot. “It’s my extra harness in case mine breaks. I like to climb, therefore, I bring my equipment when I’m going somewhere with mountains…you know, like Colorado.”
“How did you even know about this place, anyway?” she asked, still downright hostile.
“I found it the last time I was here.”
She tilted her head.
“During the days I was waiting for you to decide if I was good enough to—”
“You promised!” And the finger was back again.
I pressed my lips in a tight line and breathed in through my nose for a count of three. “Georgia, I’m not going to force you up that rock face—”
“As if you could.”
“—but I am promising that if you choose to climb, I will not let you fall off the mountain.” I lowered my face to hers, making sure she knew I was serious.
My best friend thinks I should jump you. My brain was pretty much a broken record after hearing that.
“Because you control gravity?” She blinked.
I had never met a more frustrating woman in my life.
“Because I’m going to—”
She lifted that brow again.
I sighed. “If you wanted to climb, I would go first and hook the rope up. I scouted it the first time I was here.”
Her brows lowered. “And what would keep you from falling off?”
I swung the backpack from my shoulders and shook it lightly. “I’d clip in. We’re not talking about Yosemite here. It’s pretty well-traveled. Then as you climbed, I’d have you on belay, so if you did slip off, you’d just hang there dangling until you found your footing.”
Her jaw dropped. “You what?”
I lifted the backpack slightly. “You would be attached to one end of the rope, and I would have the other.”