Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
I laughed, and doing it, felt Hutch’s eyes on me.
I looked to him.
“Love you’re having a good time, baby,” he said softly. “But it’s getting late, and we got a trek to get back.”
Nadia and Ledger exchanged goofy grins when he called me “baby.”
I ignored them.
“Right,” I said, pushing up from my ass on the floor.
Hutch pointed with one long finger to the arm of the chair he was sitting in, an arm that was opposite the arm where Gia was sitting, getting scratches on her head from her first daddy.
Yes, with all the good comes the bad, including as pertains to his testosterone levels.
I decided to dial back the sass in front of his friends and went to sit there to wait for Doc to come back.
He did, with a baby monitor, and as Nadia hustled to send a slice of cake with me (she didn’t bother with Hutch), and we said our goodbyes, I got the far more comprehensive BFF Auxiliary Eye Test from Doc.
I supposed I passed when he gave me a big hug inside my door and bid, “Stay safe.”
He spotted me up into Hutch’s truck even if, although it was high, I could pull myself up easily. But it was sweet he shut the door, slapped a hand on the roof and gave us a finger-to-the-forelock salute before he went to join Nadia and Ledger on their little front deck to watch us pull out.
“Nadia was a serious city girl when she got here,” Hutch said as he started us down their lane. “She couldn’t even hike herself up into a truck.”
He noticed everything.
“That explains that,” I replied.
He pulled out onto the road that would take us to the one to Misted Pines.
And I remarked, “Their house is wild. I’ve never seen a house so weird and interesting. Did Lincoln Whitaker really design that house?”
“Unsure. He wasn’t an architect. But he definitely had a heavy hand in it.”
“It must be strange to live there,” I noted, thinking of all the history.
“What built that place was love, loyalty and family,” Hutch returned. “What’s there now is the same. Unspeakable tragedy happened in the middle. But what that family built endures as it is today.”
He was also very wise.
“That’s a good way to look at it,” I mumbled.
“You’re really good with kids, May,” he remarked.
I smiled at him. “That’s because I’m just a big kid myself, Hutch.”
He returned my smile, but his was necessarily aimed at the windshield.
“You’re good with them too,” I said.
A small shrug and, “I dig kids.”
He did, very much, and I had to ignore that as well.
I was ignoring a lot lately.
Including the fact I was ignoring a lot lately.
“You got your shit?” he asked.
“You carried it to the truck for me,” I answered.
That “shit” being my overnight bag.
With the litter arriving, we’d switched things up.
Tonks had the same training schedule, but Monday and Wednesday of this past week, I spent the night at his. Now, it was Friday and I was spending the weekend there too. And Hutch told me this had to go on for several weeks, until the pups got older, just because they were young and shouldn’t be left alone for very long, but also because he’d already started training them.
Since I liked his house, and his pups, and him, I had no qualms with that.
Okay.
Yes, I knew we were skating close to the edges of a razor-sharp line we did not want to cross.
But I was happy.
Hutch was happy.
I hadn’t had a lot of clean, good, lasting happiness in my life.
And I was getting the impression Hutch hadn’t either.
So I determined we’d skim that edge.
We might get cut.
But some things were worth the pain.
“I cannot believe you talked me into this,” Hutch said in a whisper the next evening.
A whisper that should have been a whole lot quieter.
Or not come out at all.
“Shh,” I shushed him as two people turned to give us be quiet looks.
I shot them a sheepish smile, but inside, I was proud of myself because I could now easily identify tourists.
She was in a waterfall cardigan that was very pretty and stylish, but nowhere near warm enough in this chill. So the Misted Pines Ghost Tour had only started, and her arms were already wrapped around her, and she was rubbing them.
This was paired with a tee (she should have had a thermal on, at least), fancy jeans, and high heeled booties (the brochure said we’d be walking about a mile, so I didn’t know what she was thinking on the footwear score).
The man she was with was wearing a crisp, white and navy checked shirt, a matching navy puffer vest, also fancy jeans and boots with no scuffs on them. He was likely freezing too, but his dick, which had probably shrunk in the cold, wouldn’t let him show it.