Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Next year, I’ll go full time and the January first after that, I will probably have enough to finish the electrical and start on the drywall.
Wow. I’m trying to rally here, I really am, but when spelled out in no uncertain terms, my future is depressing.
There are no workers and no work being done at the estate this month because I used this month’s reno budget for a down payment on this huge SUV—which feels like a really stupid thing to do because the payment is fifteen hundred dollars a month and who the hell needs something that seats seven? But I was smitten with it in the showroom, not to mention flush with money at the time, so here I sit.
I look around at the interior of my Navigator, taking in all the luxury perks. The heated leather seats, the heated leather steering wheel, the massive display and reversing camera. It’s got three rows of seats and can pull a horse trailer. That’s why I got it. I was gonna buy myself a horse and start showing again next year and the extra-roomy interior was going to come in handy when hauling all my gear.
But I guess that dream is bust now.
I’m probably gonna have to turn this thing in and go beg Ethan Sardis, Disciple’s town mechanic, to sell me some used compact thing he got on special from a dealer auction. It’ll be a stick-shift and I’ll be lucky if I have electric windows and rear defrost by the time all this dust settles.
How? How can a life get so derailed in the span of one morning?
I don’t get it.
So I sit there for a few more moments, just blinking in surprise.
However, things must be sorted. I need a place to live and I’m not even sure this place is habitable. I’ve made incremental progress, but the only room that hasn’t been ripped down to the studs is my childhood bedroom in the attic. And while there are worse things in life than sleeping under a lacy, white canopy on a twin bed in your princess bedroom of yesteryear when you’re pushing thirty, it definitely wasn’t on my bingo card.
I might have to move in with Lowyn. Nothing like crashing your bestie’s new good thing.
Whoo. I need to pull myself together. So I shake my head. “All right, Clover. Rally, girl. You’re fine. You’re home. No one in Disciple is gonna let you sleep in your luxury SUV. It’s all gonna be fine.”
Once the pep talk is over, I get out and start rummaging through my purse, looking for my keys, as I make my way up the back porch and to the door.
I have a panic moment when I can’t find the little keyring and start picturing how I’ll have to break one of my new, very expensive, custom-made windows in order to get inside when I feel the cold metal between my fingertips.
Wow. I am not in a good place. My imagination is as wild as that horse I had as a teenager.
I twist the key, open the door, and step inside.
It’s… hmm. Not a total wreck. In fact, there’s drywall already up down here. It doesn’t have tape or mud yet, but there are walls! That’s something.
Maybe this isn’t gonna be as bad as I thought? Maybe it’ll be…
This optimistic train of thought comes to a screeching halt in my head as I notice a sleeping bag on the floor in the far corner of the front room, near the fireplace. “What—”
But that’s as far as I get, because… is that the sound of a shower?
I stand still for a moment, convinced my wild stallion of an imagination is getting the better of me, but then the sound of water stops and the familiar creak of a door—a creak I grew up listening to—filters down from the second floor.
What the hell is happening?
Is someone living in my house?
Should I run? Should I scream? Should I call Abel Bettington down at the police station?
These thoughts take up several precious seconds in real time and I still haven’t come to a conclusion when a naked man comes bounding down the stairs, his junk bouncing every time his foot hits a step.
My mouth drops open. I am in shock. Also unable to tear my eyes away from this man’s nether parts. “What the—”
That’s as far as I get. Because this massive, muscular (and unfortunately very handsome) man comes rushing at me, and the next thing I know, he’s got his hand pressed against my mouth, his naked wet body is pressed up against my back, and I’m being dragged down the hallway.
A moment later, he stuffs a rag in my mouth, ties my hands behind my back with a leather belt that is cinched so tight, it cuts into my skin, and I’m thrust face-first into the closet under the stairs.