Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Her lips tipped up and her eyes lit, and he liked both.
“Sure way to piss me off,” he carried on, probably due to that light in her eyes and curl in her lips, “is call me John. Dad went by that, so did I when I was younger.”
“So now it’s Doc,” she noted.
“That or Riggs, whichever works for you.”
She nodded, ducked her head in a shy way, and turned to the stove where she dumped an entire box of spaghetti in boiling water.
She picked up a wooden spoon and stirred the long lengths of pasta, saying to the pot, “And you know who I am.”
“Yeah, Nadia,” he said gently. “Went into town today, heard word. I know that sucks, but in a twisted way, you should be glad. Means I’m gonna stop being a dick to you.”
Her ponytail had fallen down to hide part of her profile, so she peeked around it to look at him and give him a tentative smile.
And damn.
He liked that too.
She pulled it together, put the wooden spoon down, picked up another one and started to stir the sauce, commenting, “You do apologies really well.”
Now he was uncomfortable.
So much so, he had to clear his throat before he said, “It’s not the same, but there are similarities to our stories, and misery loves company.”
She turned fully to him and said outright, “Your openness means a lot, Riggs.”
So she picked Riggs.
Not many people did, but that’s how he thought of himself, more than Doc.
And there was something about the fact she called him what he thought he was that started getting under his skin.
Though, if he was completely honest with himself, she’d done that when she told him not to run through her yard.
“I was talking about the wine,” she continued. “A five-hundred-dollar bottle of wine is a pretty classy apology. I’m not sure how dubious your authority actually is. They know good wine.”
And now it was Riggs who was staring.
“What?” she asked, putting down the spoon and going to the fridge.
“Got that bottle from a bud of mine. Keeping the honesty going, it cost a whack, but not that big of a whack. And after we’re done with it, I’m going to have to take the bottle home with me because, I’m not certain, but better safe than sorry, so I’m gonna have to get rid of the evidence.”
She laughed as soft and sweet as she spoke when she wasn’t pissed off.
No surprise, he liked that too.
“He knows right from wrong,” Riggs went on. “He just chooses to ignore one side of that on occasion.”
The laugh she gave him after he said that was bigger, but it wasn’t louder.
“How long we gotta let this shit breathe?” he asked.
She was pulling out a bowl to toss the bag of Caesar salad mix she’d taken from the fridge.
She set the bowl on the counter and went to the bottle. She checked the label closely and said, “Half an hour.”
“So you know wine,” he noted.
A slight shrug.
She knew wine.
“Would you put together the salad while I set the island?” she requested.
“You got it,” he agreed.
He hadn’t done anything truly domestic with a woman for years.
But as he tossed that salad, and she put out placemats, cloth napkins, cutlery and pasta bowls, that thought didn’t enter his mind.
It wasn’t until a lot later he realized how easy he fell into it.
And how bad that was.
SEVEN
Flower Lights
Riggs
It was after dinner.
She made good spaghetti, spiced up the sauce just right, not too hot, not bland by a long shot.
It was excellent.
Riggs had steered the conversation out of the heavy.
He told her about his team, how he took jobs, and they worked them, twelve-hour days, six days a week, until they were done. Then they’d come home for a break that was never less than a week, though the longer the job or string of them, the longer the break before they headed out again.
He also told her his last job started the day after he met her on his run and ended the day before.
She’d asked how long he was in town now, and he’d loved and hated how the little wrinkles around the edges of her lips formed when she was trying not to smile when he told her a month.
On her side, she’d told him shit he knew, but he didn’t tell her he knew.
That her husband died of cancer after a short marriage (she didn’t dive deep into that, this time, because he guided her out of it). That she was thirty-three years old. And that she’d taken a year’s sabbatical from her teaching job to come to Misted Pines to “get away from it all.”
He talked more than she did, mostly in an effort to put her at ease.
In fact, he talked more that night than he ever did, with any woman, or man.