Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“It’s noon?” Tessa gasped and rolled out from under him. “I can’t believe we slept so late.”
He fell to the bed, his cock still throbbing. It was going to be a rough day.
* * * *
This morning had been a near thing. Tessa was still thinking about how close she’d come to telling David that she was being silly and of course they would see each other when they got back to Texas. How could they not when they fit so perfectly together? She’d woken up all happy and warm, and she’d had to force herself to remember that this wasn’t some fantasy where they lived happily ever after.
Your parents did. Why shouldn’t you? Stop beating yourself up. You made a mistake and now you’re never going to try again?
This. This was why she shouldn’t have even thought about getting in bed with David. Or rather she’d thought she could avoid this by doing precisely that. She’d thought she could quell all these questions if she did the man and got it out of her system.
Turned out he was pretty hard to get rid of.
She glanced down at her cell. No bars. Someone had to have a phone because she needed to call back home and get started on finding out who Mateo was.
David was in the library again, his nose in a book, of course. They’d had breakfast with Eddie and Luis and then the men had hidden themselves away in the library, and she’d been left to wander around the house. She’d gone into the gardens and strolled around, took a couple of pictures so anyone looking would see nothing more than some full of herself American tourist taking selfies for her social media.
The last thing she wanted them to realize was that she was hella suspicious and thinking seriously about pulling David out of here.
But there was also a piece of her that wondered if she wasn’t the one she was trying to rescue because she wasn’t sure her walls would hold up against the professor.
It was exactly why she shouldn’t have come on this job. She wasn’t sure she trusted her instincts when it came to him. She might be more invested in protecting herself than him. At least on an emotional level.
If she was a phone, where would she be?
She’d walked around this floor yesterday, and it was all guest bedrooms. Luis had the room across the hall, and two others in this wing were unoccupied. She stopped in front of a big display case. There were pictures of Ricardo Montez with different world leaders. Those were displayed in ornate frames, but there were other pictures, too. Ones of Ricardo with Eddie. A few of them were of Eddie as a child, holding a fishing pole and showing off a gap-toothed grin.
She stopped on the picture of Eddie standing with a younger David Hawthorne. They were both wearing the caps and gowns from their graduation ceremony. Eddie was giving the camera a thumbs-up, but David’s expression was tight, like he was smiling for the camera but something was missing.
His dad, probably.
“We were twenty-four when that was taken,” a deep voice said. “Though I will admit David has always seemed older to me.”
Eddie stood behind her. He was dressed for the heat in cargo shorts and a loose button-down. He was an attractive man, almost a mirror of his father, though all the pictures of Ricardo showed gray at his temples and Eddie’s hair was still pure black.
“He doesn’t look happy in this picture,” she commented. Of all the people she wanted to underestimate her, this man was number one. She wanted him to see her as nothing more than David Hawthorne’s girlfriend, someone who held his hand and enjoyed the ride.
Someone who could handle his quirks. Who didn’t mind that he got lost in work because she was cool with reading a book while he studied or wrote.
She kind of wanted to meet his cat.
“This was shortly after his brother was in a car accident.” Eddie picked up the frame, looking down at it. “I think someone died and his brother felt…like it was his fault. Kyle was being self-destructive at the time, and David felt that strongly.”
“Because he’d lost his dad years before and couldn’t stand the thought of losing his brother, too.” She’d heard rumors that Kyle had gone into the Navy because he’d had some focus problems. She also knew he didn’t have a car. Kyle was notorious for hitching rides with anyone who was going close to where he lived, and she’d heard him talk David into picking him up more than once. He kept saying it was because he hadn’t gotten around to buying a car, but now she wondered about her fellow employee. Kyle seemed so serious. He held himself apart, but he’d also recently hired on, so she understood that. What if it was something more?