Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77354 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77354 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
I laugh and head to the bathroom. It takes me five minutes to make it from the bed to the door of the cabin, dressed in my plaid shirt.
“Efa,” I call and head out to the deck. Did that girl start without me? I dread to think the damage she could do with a sharp axe. “Efa!”
“Did someone call?” she replies and walks into my eyeline.
She’s wearing the cowboy hat that was hanging on the porch, sunglasses, my walking boots, and nothing else but a white bra and matching panties. And she’s got an axe over her shoulder.
I’m pretty sure every teenage boy in America would pay for the view I have right now.
“Can I get photographs of this?” I call.
She turns around in a circle, showing off her bare ass in her thong. When she’s facing me again, she puts her free hand on her hip. “I’m ready for action. Come show me how to do manly wood-chopping things.”
“I’m not going anywhere near an axe when you’re dressed like that. I’ll cut off my own hand.”
“Hmmm.” She taps her finger against her chin as if she’s thinking about solutions that don’t involve her going inside and getting dressed. “I guess I need your shirt, then.” She smiles, pushing out a hip.
I pad down the wooden steps, unbuttoning my shirt, stripping as I stride toward her.
“Put some clothes on,” I say, draping my shirt over her shoulders.
“First time you’ve ever said that.” She hands me the axe and puts her hands through my shirtsleeves.
“First time you’ve ever wielded an axe.”
My shirt hits her knees, and even though she’s rolled up my shirtsleeves, they still go past her wrists.
She looks perfect.
The last thing I want to do right now is chop wood.
“So?” she says. “Where do we start? And honestly, like why? I get it if you want to chop down a tree, but whenever I see people chopping wood on Insta, it’s already in little chunks. Why are they cutting it down again? It’ll already fit on the fire.”
I love how her brain works, how she sees gaps in logic without really looking for them. Even if she’s wrong in this instance.
I grab the log from where she’s placed it, ready to be split on the stump, and toss it back into the pile where she got it from. “Well, firstly, there’s no way you’re chopping anything wearing… nothing, even if you do now have my shirt on. And secondly, you split wood to speed up the drying process. Nothing we split now can be used right away.” I head to the log stack on the porch. “These, on the other hand, have all been split and dried.”
“But I want to do outdoorsy shit. Shouldn’t we split some others so whoever comes next has dry firewood?”
“You’re not dressed for outdoorsy shit, other than fucking on the porch. And I guarantee Worth has someone come in to make sure the cabin is set up for whoever’s coming next.”
She pouts a little and steps toward me, tracing her finger down my chest. “I have a lumberjack fantasy I was hoping to bring to life.” She shifts her weight and looks up from under her lashes.
Never have I given in to a woman—to anyone—so easily.
“I’ll split one piece of wood if you stay on the porch where you can’t get hurt.”
She tilts her head and a smile nudges the edge of her lips. She’s won and she knows it.
“You got yourself a deal.” She turns and shrugs off my shirt, but takes it with her. She leans against the post of the porch at the top of the steps.
I take back one of the logs from the pile and place it on the stump. Growing up in Hollywood, I didn’t get much opportunity to split logs. Lucky for me, I’ve taken a few camping trips and learned the basics. I may not give Efa all the details of what has become a cringe-worthy phase in my history—I bought a truck and grew a beard, on top of changing my name—but I can give her a glimpse of one of the skills I learned during that off-the-rails time. I wanted to do every anti-Hollywood thing I could think of. And right now—thank god. I don’t remember ever wanting to impress anyone as much as I do Efa in this moment.
“You’re so fucking hot,” she shouts, and I can’t help but grin. She never second-guesses herself. It’s so fucking refreshing.
“Back at you,” I say, just before I bring the axe down, being careful to aim for the edges of the wood and not the middle, just as I’ve been taught. The blade slices through the wood, cleanly splitting the log in two.
Efa whoops from the sidelines, a one-woman cheerleading team. I’m not ashamed to admit, it feels fucking great.