Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
It all began with letters. Every word he wrote etched itself into my mind, into my soul. I had no choice but to fall in love with him.
Was it really so bad that the letters were part of a pen pal program, sent from a penitentiary?
Or that they weren't really addressed to me?
It's not as if he'd ever find out the truth.
It's not as if I'd ever get to look those eyes that are as blue as the sky over his ranch he left behind.
Or that I'd ever get to feel his work-roughened hands dominating my body as he does my fevered dreams.
Until one afternoon when I find myself standing in front of him—pretending to be someone I am not.
But the joke's on me because for all my pretenses, his deception is much crueler.
The hardened, dangerous, impossibly beautiful man is nothing like the man in the letters.
And it's too late for me to run
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
IN HIS LETTER, he told me to wear something white.
It sounded like an innocent enough request, something to help him recognize me when he saw me for the first time. But now that I’m here, standing at the door of the café, it feels like…
I’m a lamb being led to slaughter.
I know. I know I’m painting a pretty dramatic picture. And I’m not someone who gives in to drama at all. In fact, I try to stay away from it as much as I can. But this has to be the most dramatic thing I’ve ever done.
By this, I mean going to meet a man that I’ve only ever talked to in letters.
Actually, no. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not going to meet some man that I’ve been talking to in letters for the past six months.
I’m going to meet a man who up until last Friday called Montana State Prison his home.
So, basically, I’ve come to this café, wearing a white dress with a delicate lace overlay and a swishy skirt, to meet a convicted felon that I’ve only ever talked to using the prison pen pal system.
Well, ex-felon, since he got out on parole last week.
In any case, I’m stupid, aren’t I? This is stupid. More than that, this is dangerous.
So what if it’s broad daylight and the café, from what I can see through the glass door, looks fairly busy? He was the one who picked this place and told me to meet him here. Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe he’s got his friend watching, ready to pounce on me when I go to the bathroom. Maybe there’s a secret hallway in this establishment that he can drag me into as I’m coming out of the restroom.
Except… it doesn’t feel dangerous. Just terrifying.
So despite myself, I push open the door and step inside.
For the first few seconds, my vision seems blurry. All I can make out is fuzzy colors and shapes, but slowly things become clear. I see red leather seats and wooden walls. I see people, tons of them. Almost all of the tables are occupied, and there’s a long line of customers at the counter, ordering and waiting for their coffee.
Witnesses. It should be a relief.
But how on earth am I going to find him in a churning sea of broad shoulders and tall bodies, most of them wearing Stetsons? Maybe if I was taller than my five-foot-two frame or wearing heels rather than these stupid schoolgirl Mary Janes, I’d be…
Oh, but wait a second.
I don’t need to worry about finding him because I think that he found me.
See, there’s a man.
In the center of all the chaos.
Still and unmoving.
He has a trucker’s cap on, black with an intricate R in white. Even though he’s sitting down and there’s no way for me to know, I can tell he’s the tallest man in here. At least he’s certainly the broadest, given how his shoulders span and block the top of his high-backed chair and almost all of the potted fern behind him.
And I think, I think, it’s him.
Even though he looks… wrong. He looks nothing like what I imagined.
I never thought he’d be this large, busting out of his black T-shirt. Or that his skin would be so tan that you’d guess he’d been living under the open, free sky rather than inside a concrete block and barred windows. I definitely never thought his face would look that… merciless.
The upper part of his face is hidden, courtesy of the cap, but whatever I can see makes me think that like his body, his face is also a study of superlatives. Like that stubbled jaw of his quite possibly is the most angular jaw I’ve ever seen. And his lips, dusky rose, may be the fullest set of lips that I’ve ever come across.
It’s laughable to call him beautiful, given how aggressively masculine everything about him is, but that’s what he is. Beautiful. Ruggedly so. Like the mountain range that you can see wherever you go in Montana.
Before I can really question my thoughts, I’m walking toward him.
While my footsteps are drowned by the din of the crowd, I can hear my heartbeats clearly. There’s a stampede in my chest, wild heart, wilder beats, and strangely, I think he can sense it from afar.
I’m sure he’s watching me walk over.
Again, I don’t know how I know this because his eyes are hidden by the cap he’s wearing, but I do. I can feel their gaze, all heavy and charged, through the space. The intensity only growing the closer I get to him.
Until it feels like a calloused hand sliding over my skin. As soon as I reach him, he looks up and that hand tightens.
No, that phantom grip around my neck turns hot.
Branding me.