Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Malachi didn’t offer the information with any malice; but it was clear that his friend’s antics were something he had grown accustomed to for however long he’d known his boss.
“Does that stop him from trying, though?”
Malachi smirked. “Not one bit. Gotta give Chip that, I guess.”
Figures, she thought.
“Chip’s good,” Malachi added about his boss and friend. “No worries there. Plus, he brought a friend that knows how to keep him ... busy.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
Malachi scratched at his jaw where he’d shaved it clean and smooth since the last time she saw him. “He likes his distractions.”
“And?”
“He’s fully invested in his current one at the moment,” he finished.
Ah.
Malachi sighed, adding lower, “Until she gets boring to him, anyway. That’s neither here nor there.”
Well, Gracen wouldn’t ask more questions in that regard. The personal life and private activities of a man with enough money to build himself a log home in the middle of nowhere so he could go boat down a river when he was drunk was not her business at the end of the day. What did it matter now when the invitation to the lodge had already been extended, and here she was?
“So, we’re here until Sunday afternoon?” she asked, surveying the quiet front of the lodge’s property with a well-landscaped walk that extended around the veranda.
“You didn’t mention anything else to do,” Malachi replied.
That was also true.
“You caught me at a good time,” she replied with a shrug.
“Don’t you usually take clients on the weekends?”
“Usually, but not this one.”
Or rather, every appointment was cancelled now.
Perhaps he had heard the hint of unhappiness in Gracen’s tone when she spoke about the salon and her clients, because he asked, “A bad week?”
She glanced his way again. “What makes you think that?”
Malachi’s relaxed posture eased what remained of Gracen’s nerves about her weekend plans. If he was comfortable here, then she could be, too.
“I can’t imagine me being the only reason you would choose not to work on a weekend,” Malachi admitted. “No offence, but you don’t seem like the type.”
He knew enough about Gracen to be right on the money, too.
“It’s been a long week,” she settled on saying. “My friends might have helped to get me out of town, too.”
Delaney and Margot were owed their credit for giving her the gentle shove she needed, after all.
“Wanna talk about it?” he asked. “I can give you the tour while we do it.”
Talk about her ex?
Here? With Malachi?
It would mean bringing his sister into the conversation, too, as well as the connection between Malachi’s sibling and Gracen’s ex-fiancé. If he hadn’t already figured out that piece of her past and present, and opted not to bring it to her attention, that was. If that was the case then Malachi had the patience and grace of a fucking saint.
“Tour first,” Gracen told him, an awkward laugh escaping her at the idea of going to that terrible place tonight with him. There were a million better things she could dream up for the two of them to do. “Maybe we can get to the rest later.”
Or not.
We’ll see how I feel.
Not that she added that bit out loud.
That was just for her.
Malachi chuckled. “I can work with that.”
Gracen decided right then and there that she liked men who made things work, as he put it. Mostly, she just liked him.
Something about Malachi was different.
“All right,” she told him, hooking their arms at the elbow as they turned toward the doors, “give me the grand tour.”
*
The lodge opened to fifteen hundred square feet on the bottom floor with an extra five hundred square feet of loft space in the cathedral tall ceiling in the main foyer. A sitting room welcomed guests with plush leather couches sitting across from one another between a black bear skin rug that’s roaring head faced an unlit fireplace. Most of the downstairs was an open-concept floor plan where one could walk between the sitting room, state-of-the-art kitchen, and the dining room that connected to the wrap-around veranda with ease.
She might have lingered a little longer in the kitchen—and the massive bathroom with an antique clawfoot tub—just to give the rooms the appreciation they truly deserved. Gleaming hardwood floors and log walls complemented the dangling bare-bulb light fixtures wrapped around wooden beams that hung overhead.
Longer than it was wide, the lodge’s high, sweeping eave matched the one in the back facing the river. Although, the windows reached from the floor to the log beams overhead in the rear of the lodge. Two bedrooms, both featuring en-suite bathrooms, sitting rooms with fireplaces, and private access to the rear veranda made up the back of the lodge.
Gracen didn’t get to see the inside of the bedroom and connected suites across from the one Malachi prompted her toward, but he explained it was the same layout. Just different decoration as it wasn’t meant to be used for guests when Chip called it his own.