Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 105921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
"Good. Quiet." At breakfast, I'd said something about hitting the trails before work and Thatcher had asked if he could come. Shocked, I'd immediately shifted my plans from a run to a hike. If Thatcher was asking to spend time with me, I wasn't going to say no.
Scarlett let out a short chuckle. "Sounds about right. I swear, since he hit puberty, his vocabulary has devolved into mostly grunts and annoyed sighs. We used to have great conversations. We still do, sometimes, but he's made silence into an art form."
"It was okay. I'm good with a quiet hike. He said he liked it, so that was something. He wants to do it again. And he thought it was cool I can fly fish and asked me to show him how." I swallowed. "I want him to like it here."
This thing with Scarlett was so new, I was still adjusting to the idea of exposing my vulnerabilities, still surprised by how many I had when it came to Scarlett and her boys.
"I want him to like it here, too." She leaned her head against my shoulder for a moment, her love filling that dark hollow of worry inside me. Scarlett fit me like a puzzle piece. I hoped she'd stay with fierce desperation. I couldn't imagine the hole she and the boys would leave if they went back up north.
"I'm glad he had a good time. I liked showing him the trails." It had been too long since I slowed down and really paid attention to my home. Too long since I'd seen it with new eyes.
With Thatcher beside me, everything was new. The mist clinging to the treetops, the way the branches seemed to brush the sky above moss-covered rocks and roots in every shade of green and grey and brown. Thatcher had stopped, stunned, when we'd surprised a family of wild turkeys, his eyes wide at the sight of the small, plump poults guarded by the hen and tom who gobbled at us until we backed away.
"We could grab one for dinner," Thatcher had joked.
"We could, but check out their feet. Those claws are no joke."
Thatcher had stepped behind me, crouching down to take a closer look without scaring the birds. "They're so big."
"Sometimes they wander down to the house and hang out on the lawn."
Thatcher turned to look up at me, the fascination on his face reminding me how young he really was. "So, you have wild animals hanging out around the house? No one shoots them or anything?"
"Turkey season is only a few weeks, and they don't bother anyone. It's the bears you have to watch out for. When I was a kid and the fountain in the gardens worked, sometimes a mama bear would bring her cubs for a swim."
"For real? Are there still bears now?" His eyes were wide with a hint of worry.
"Oh, yeah, but they aren't much trouble. They have plenty of room to spread out here. As long as you never get between a mama and her cubs, you'll be fine."
At the memory of the disbelieving look on Thatcher's face, I grinned. "It was cool showing him around." I hoped he took me up on the offer to do it again or take him fishing. It had been way too long since I’d taken my fly rod out to the river.
"Did he say anything about Elliott?" Scarlett asked.
"Not to me. Did he say anything to you?"
She shook her head. "Only that he was worried about the Learys following his dad. I wish we had the stupid bust of Vitellius so we could put an end to the whole thing." She shook her head again, this time in disgust. "Fucking Elliott."
I had nothing to say to that. I'd only spent a few minutes with the guy, but I had the feeling he didn't grasp the danger he'd brought to his family. Or maybe he did, and he didn't care. Either way, they were mine now, and I wasn't going to let him hurt them. That didn't mean we didn't have another set of problems on my side of the family equation.
"Hawk still doesn't have anything solid on Bryce. Plenty of suspicions and circumstantial evidence, but not enough for West to bring charges on anything. And if Bryce is the one who took Vitellius, Hawk hasn't found it."
"And neither have we," Scarlett finished, lifting her head to look around the crowded attic. "He could have stashed it anywhere."
I wrapped an arm around her, pulling her into my side and kissing her temple. "We'll get through this. I'm not going to let anything happen to you or the boys."
Scarlett turned her head to kiss my jaw. "Or you, right? I haven't forgotten all those guns pointed at you. That's not happening again, either."
"Agreed. Not the high point of my summer. I'm good with no more guns pointed at any of us for the rest of forever."