Total pages in book: 35
Estimated words: 34206 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 171(@200wpm)___ 137(@250wpm)___ 114(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34206 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 171(@200wpm)___ 137(@250wpm)___ 114(@300wpm)
She quickly opened the door, but the mailman and his van were gone.
Teal looked up the street, but there wasn’t even a scent of an engine in the street either. It was like he didn’t even exist, which was crazy. The mailman had handed her the wrong package meant for Jaxson.
She couldn’t go and stop her parents’ fight. They would just start asking her no end of questions. Even though they’d been the ones to uproot her life, they had told her, seeing as she didn’t take her learning seriously, that it was up to her to find her tutors.
Yay. And yeah, that was never going to happen. Her tutors were well aware of what she was and wasn’t capable of. They knew. What they tried to do was create the examination environment that would help her become accustomed to testing.
It never, ever worked.
All she did was flunk, and it was so freaking weird because it wasn’t like she was any stranger to pressure. Two corporate parents. The parties. Having to study while mingling, holding conversations, and she had done it all.
Yet, out of nowhere, she had this huge problem, and she couldn’t even fathom why.
Examinations weren’t that big of a deal. It was silence, for however long you tested. It was complete and total attention.
She had passed in her old school, piece of cake. All the practice runs, everything. Then out of the blue, taking a couple of exams before the end of the year, and it was like her whole world came crashing down.
Why?
None of it made any sense.
She was in her final year of high school. The crucial year. This was where she needed to keep a level head and to test well. Where had it come from?
After stepping out of her home, she walked down the small path and then turned toward Jaxon’s home.
They hadn’t spoken much. A few choice words and greetings here and there. Her mother had been rude, not even noticing him. Teal noticed him. She walked up to his front door. To her, she felt rude, just crossing over their yards, so she always walked up her path, took the few short feet, and then down toward his home.
Mail had turned up for him a few times. Letters, which she shoved through his letter box. This was the first package. She couldn’t just shove it through his letterbox. This required her knocking. If she knocked and didn’t bother ringing the doorbell, then she could leave his package outside, and there wouldn’t be anything she’d done wrong.
She would have done her duty as a friendly neighbor.
Easy. Easy peasy. Ugh, she hated peas.
After drawing her wrist back, she knocked on the door and waited.
Was it polite to knock more than once?
No, the point of knocking was to make sure he wasn’t at the door, ready to answer. All she had to do was leave the package, and then ring his doorbell as one final warning.
She was just about to do that when the door opened.
Jaxson, naked, apart from his low-riding jeans, opened the door. “Teal,” he said. He’d learned her name on their first day moving in. Her mother had constantly been shouting it, telling her where to take the boxes to and fro.
“Mr. Rebel.” Her mouth felt so dry.
Was it her imagination or did he smell really good? “Er, the mailman delivered this to our home.”
Jaxson took the box from her, and Teal smiled at him.
“Strange, I haven’t ordered anything.”
“I don’t know what it can be, but it is addressed to you.”
“Thank you.”
She offered a smile and then held her hand up as if to say goodbye.
“How have you settled in?” he asked.
“Oh, er, fine, I think. Yeah, everything is fine. It is all fine.” She had said the same word at least three times. She had to stop. “How about you?”
Why was this conversation so hard?
****
Teal Larson was a very beautiful young woman.
Jaxson knew he should have let her leave the box and ignore her, just like he’d been trying to ignore her for several weeks now.
It was next to impossible. For some fucking reason, every time he arrived home, Teal was out in the yard, and he wasn’t a rude guy. Life would be so much easier if he did just ignore her.
He knew she watched him. He’d seen her standing at her bedroom window, looking down at him, watching him. Normally, any woman watching him so blatantly would bother him.
Teal was different. He saw it in her eyes. And of course, he heard it in her voice whenever he overheard a conversation with her mother. Her relationship with her parents was strained. Not that he could blame her, even between her parents, their relationship was strained.
Originally, when he moved in, he believed the story Bethany had told him. About moving here for Teal’s education and college applications, all that crap.