Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
I nodded. “Why mess with perfection, huh?”
“Right,” he said simply before digging into his food.
For several minutes, we continued to eat in comfortable silence, though it took a boatload of effort to stifle my reaction when I bit into the crispy spring roll. When I saw that there was only one piece of chicken left, I caught the lip of the bowl with my fork and pulled it across the table toward me, my lips pursing playfully when he shot me an incredulous look.
“What?” I quipped before popping the last bite into my mouth. “You said you’d share and then you went and ate it all.”
The napkin that was in his hand dropped onto the table and he leaned back, stretching his arms out to the sides before folding them behind his head. “If I’d known you weren’t a vegetarian anymore, I’d have brought more to share. Seems like there’s a lot I don’t know about you anymore.”
I pushed the empty containers away and rested one forearm on the table, using my other to prop up my chin. “I could say the same about you. You said earlier you took the day off. I don’t even know what you do for work.”
He shifted, his biceps flexing with the action, the tattoos moving almost like they were alive on his arms. My mind wandered to what they would look like without the confines of his shirt. Had he gotten more ink over the years? There’d been a day when I’d had them memorized and spent hours blindly tracing them in the dark as we lay naked in bed, sweaty and sated.
When his biceps flexed again, this time one after the other, I knew I’d been caught. I tore my stare away and sputtered, “You, uh, you were saying?”
“I hadn’t said anything yet.” He grinned wolfishly. “But you asked what I do. I’m a corporate recruiter. Specifically for veterans. I help them transition into civilian life, find jobs that suit them rather than based solely on what they did while they were in.”
It didn’t surprise me one bit that Truett had found himself in a career like that. He’d always been passionate about the military, even after he’d been medically retired. It sounded like the perfect job for him.
“You work remotely?”
He nodded. “What about you? What were you doing before you decided to revamp this place?”
I looked around at the mess. What had I been doing all the years before I dove headfirst into the sinkhole of restaurant ownership?
“I was being a wife. A mother. A cook. A maid. A chauffeur. A zookeeper for Nate. A punching bag for Jeff.”
“A what?” he growled, his aura no longer relaxed, but tightly coiled, ready to snap.
“No, no. Not a literal one. He never laid a hand on me. That was a poor choice of words. I only meant that my ex was, and still is, an ass of epic proportions. The very definition of a narcissist, and I was usually the target of his bad moods.” I reached across the table, resting my hand over his clenched fist, and squeezed his fingers, trying to bring his focus back to me, “True, I know that look. And I’m telling you I’m okay. I wasn’t for a while, but I am now. I promise.”
His eyes blazed with fury desperate to escape, but with nowhere for it to go, he unclenched his fist and laced his fingers with mine. “I know shit ended bad with us, but you wouldn’t lie to me about that, would you? You’d tell me if he ever hurt you, right?”
“He hurt me, True. We were together for ten years. Some were worse than others, but he didn’t hurt me in the way you’re thinking. I swear.”
His eyes searched my face, looking for any signs I was downplaying the truth. When he found nothing, he visibly relaxed. “Is that why you bought this place? After your divorce?”
“Yeah. When I realized that I needed a career and had a hole in my résumé over a decade wide, I decided to take a leap and used the mall settlement money to buy the place.”
His eyes widened as he sucked in a sharp breath.
“I know, I know. I vowed to never touch that money. But I figured using it to start over, for myself, for Nate, that couldn’t be wrong, could it? Now, I’m not so sure that it was the smartest choice, but what I lack in talent, I make up for in feral determination.” I let out a short laugh. “Or lunacy, not sure which.”
“You have more skills, more talent, more everything, than any person I know.” His voice was gravelly, the sincerity in each word painfully clear.
“That pile of tile over there would probably beg to differ.” I moved to pull my hand from his.