Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 88736 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 444(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88736 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 444(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
I knocked quietly before opening my bedroom door. Inside, Teddy was standing next to the bed in a baggy T-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts that hung to her knees. She’d been rifling through a duffel bag that I recognized from the truck, but her head turned toward me as I entered.
“Hey,” I said, watching for some sign that she was afraid of me.
“Hey,” she replied softly. “I’m done in the bathroom if you need it.”
“I might,” I said, closing the door behind me.
She didn’t move, but it was as if every inch of her body went on alert.
“Jesse just threatened to murder me in my sleep,” I continued, keeping my voice even as I grabbed my bag off the floor. “Might need to change my drawers.”
“Shit,” she said with a sigh. “I’m sorry, I—”
I shook my head as I headed to the bathroom. “Nothin’ to apologize for. They’re just lookin’ after you. Would’ve done the same thing for my mom if I was in the situation you’re in.”
“They don’t know the situation we’re in,” she countered.
“They know you just moved them in with a man they’ve never even heard of,” I said, pausing outside the bathroom door. “It’s all good.”
She nodded.
“Teddy…” I paused, thinking about what I wanted to say. I’d never had a problem talking to women, but this whole thing was so far out of my experience it was messing with my head. “I won’t hurt you, yeah? You and the kids are safe here.”
“I know,” she said, her lips tipping up in a small smile. “We’re good. It’s fine.”
I smiled back, but I was pretty sure it was as stiff as hers.
Chapter 5
Teddy
I opened my eyes to sunlight on my face from the curtainless window across the room. I was alone in Curt’s massive bed, and the bedroom door was cracked so I could hear movement in the rest of the house. Rolling onto my back, I took a few moments to let my new reality set in.
We were in Eugene, Oregon, and I’d just spent the night next to a man who—for some reason that hadn’t been explained to me—had put his life on hold to fake a relationship with a woman he didn’t know.
I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to make sense of the decision I’d made on a whim and I now had to deal with.
I’d gotten into bed the night before and lay there stiff as a board, waiting for Curtis to come out of the bathroom. He’d been pretty touchy-feely on the ride north, and I wasn’t quite sure just how real he thought we were going to make things. From my experience with men, if you gave them an inch, they’d take a mile, and I’d given him quite a few inches. I wasn’t looking forward to telling him that he would not be giving me a few inches. That was when I’d really know what kind of man he was, and if I was honest, I was worried that my gut instinct had been wrong about him.
It was wrong a lot.
So I’d waited there in bed, hyping myself up to turn him down and deal with the fallout, and he hadn’t come out. There was no clock in the room, so I couldn’t be sure how long I waited, but it was so long that I’d managed to fall asleep. I woke up sometime in the night to find him snoring softly beside me, sprawled out on his side of the bed with his hand on my ass, but he hadn’t even twitched when I’d moved it away. I wished it hadn’t been pitch black in the room so I could’ve seen what he looked like when he was sleeping.
Now, it was today, and now I had to do all the things that I’d pushed out of my mind during our mad dash. The kids’ school needed to be informed that they wouldn’t be back, and I was hoping that they would just let finals slide and post the grades as is since they’d only had a week left anyway. I needed to call Sara to let her know I wouldn’t be back in and why. She’d wonder what the fuck was going on, but she wouldn’t ask. She’d gotten enough of my history during a drunken night when the kids were at friends’ houses that she probably wouldn’t be surprised I’d found a way out and taken it. The kids needed furniture, and our boxes needed to be unpacked so we had food and towels and all the other little things that you didn’t realize you needed until you needed them. I also had to start looking for a job—I had a little put away, but not nearly enough—and I needed to touch base with Grease.