Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 36987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 185(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 185(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
“Hey,” he said, chuckling, “since when do you wait to eat?”
“I’m having an existential crisis,” I groused at him.
His smile was brilliant. “Have it after you put something in your body.”
“I thought I was having your sister’s world-famous pot roast?” I said, then took a bite of the burger. “What happened to that?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, and it was ruined because it was forgotten and overcooked with everything else that happened.”
“Is that something else the assistant was supposed to be here to take care of?”
He squinted at me. “Listen, my sister pays her assistant—Kara, I think her name is—a small fortune to not only watch the boys now and then and take things out of the oven, but keep her on track and on top of her schedule. So let’s not judge Sin. Everything—children, house, the party—was supposed to be in Kara’s very capable and trusted hands.”
“So why didn’t she get here?”
“Apparently her boyfriend took her car when his wouldn’t start, without telling her, and by the time the service Sin uses could pick her up, all this happened.”
“Got it.”
“When we got in here, the timer was going off in the kitchen. One of the guys had Brad go turn off the timer but, you know, didn’t worry about the oven.”
“No, I suspect the oven was low on everyone’s priority list.”
He nodded, smiling at me. “Eat already before you pass out.”
“Is the oven off now?” I asked to be a smartass.
He shot me a look, and I laughed. So good to just be there with him.
The burger was amazing. I started wolfing it down, and as I ate, there was suddenly a four-legged black panther on the other end of the island, padding silently over to me.
“There you are,” I said to Bubs, my cat, smiling at him as he reached me, sniffed my burger, didn’t like the smell of it, and then bumped his head on my cheek when I leaned sideways to greet him.
He always did a weird thing where he nibbled my chin when I first got home. I’d wondered if he’d do it when we were somewhere else, and he did. He rubbed his face on my temple, scent-marked my hair, then took a few steps away and watched me eat. I always got the feeling, because he was such a picky eater himself, that I grossed him out when I ate.
Turning to Kurt as I dragged the onion rings through the ketchup mountain he’d squeezed out for me, I saw how fondly I was being looked at.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said with a sigh. “You’re just pretty, is all.”
I scoffed, but he reached out and took an onion ring, something he never did. As a rule, fried food was not his thing. “You just want to eat my food.”
“I missed you, and you were almost killed, and I—” He was shaking suddenly, ready to fall apart.
I put a hand on his cheek. “Oh, honey, I was so not gonna die. Not from those mutts,” I said, shaking my head. “The guys in my unit would be horrified at how messy that all was, but I’m fuckin’ tired and that’s my excuse.”
“Are you kidding?”
Being a shrink, you would think Kurt would know when I was changing the subject and getting him focused on something else. But perhaps he did know and just played along for my benefit. To let me think I was helping him.
“Listen, I’m better trained than those guys, or more likely, just plain trained at all in comparison. That wasn’t luck I had going for me.”
He nodded. “I know. I just don’t want to lose you.”
Hooking my hand around the back of his neck, I pulled him forward and kissed him. When I let him go, he was smiling.
“What?”
“There’s grease on your lips,” he said.
“I know you like it.”
“You’re gross,” he said but kissed me again, so I was guessing he wasn’t that bothered.
I had no idea why fountain drinks always tasted better than cans, but as soon as I swallowed my latest bite and took a huge gulp of Pepsi, I took a breath. “If it would be all right with you, I would like to start paying half the mortgage on the house.”
His eyebrows rose, but that was all the reaction I got.
I ate a couple more onion rings and waited.
He cleared his throat. “What about your apartment?”
“I should get rid of that, don’t you think?”
He nodded while pressing his lips together, probably so he wouldn’t tell me it was about time, or to comment on what an idiot I was, or worst of all, laugh himself silly. I growled.
“I—yes,” he replied, keeping his voice level. That was his professional tone, the one he used with new clients before he got to know them. “I think that is a sound choice and a perfectly logical one, Mr. Hunt.”