Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
I smiled. “You said one of your sons. Do your other children live in town, too?”
Hope shook her head. “It’s just Fox now. My other son, Ryder, passed away years ago. I don’t think I’ll ever remember to say ‘my son’ rather than ‘my sons’.”
“Of course not. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
Opal interrupted our conversation. “Can I steal our guest of honor away for a bit? I want to introduce her around.”
“Of course,” Hope said. “It was wonderful to meet you, Josie. You’re as lovely as your father was.”
“Thank you.”
The next few hours were a whirlwind. Opal introduced me to dozens of people, and most had a story to share about my father. I learned more about his childhood in one afternoon than I had in a lifetime. Henry Preston loved fishing, playing the drums, and he and his friend Tommy Miller were apparently a pair of pranksters. He loved to paint, like I did—something I’d never known about him. And he’d volunteered at the animal shelter, walking dogs and cleaning up after them. Ginny something told me he’d gotten her through math class in elementary school. She loved singing and hated math, so Dad had made up funny songs to help her remember formulas. She’d wound up becoming the local music teacher and taught his songs to her students for fun.
It was a great day, but by the time I left, I felt a bit overloaded—like I needed to sit in a quiet, dark room, or do something mindless and repetitive like ride a stationary bike. My brain needed to simmer for a while on all the information it had taken in.
I pulled into my driveway and looked over at my neighbor’s house. Fox was outside, pushing a wheelbarrow across the lawn with no shirt on. I licked my lips. Sex would really work to clear my head, too. Too bad that body was attached to such a jerk.
I’d poked that chest with my finger, and it was impossible to miss how the seams of his T-shirts stretched to their limits around hulking biceps, but seeing all that flesh bared at once was something else. The man was seriously stacked. Chiseled pecs, deeply etched lines contouring the peaks and valleys of abs, thick bulging muscles on his arms and legs. There wasn’t an ounce of soft anywhere on him. He didn’t wax like Noah, but his chest hair was trimmed neatly, and it suited him. Clean shaven would’ve seemed odd on a man like Fox, a man who was so…primal.
I sat in my car, enjoying the free show from a distance. Fox went back and forth, shoveling mulch from a pile on the driveway into the wheelbarrow, then rolling it over to the flower beds and spreading it around. Forget riding a stationary bike or sitting in a quiet, dark room. This allowed my brain to power down. I wasn’t sure how long I sat gawking, but by the time I got out of the car, there wasn’t much mulch left in the big pile.
Instead of going right into the house, I thought I’d share what I’d learned about my dad’s high school sweetheart. Plus, a close-up view couldn’t hurt…
“Hey.” I smiled. “Guess who I met today?”
Fox looked over and kept pushing the wheelbarrow. “A contractor to take over fixing up that shitshow of a house you got, I hope.”
“It’s not a shitshow. It just needs a little TLC.”
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “Truck Loads of Cash.”
I frowned. “Now I don’t even feel like telling you my funny news.”
“Oh no,” he said flatly.
“Jerk.”
Fox pulled off a work glove and used the back of his hand to wipe sweat from his brow. His eyes dropped to my torso, like he was noticing I had one for the first time. He swallowed before speaking. “What’s your news?”
“I met my dad’s high school girlfriend today.”
He shrugged. “Okay. I’ll bite. How did it go?”
“It went well. She was super sweet and had nothing but kind things to say about him. Actually, the entire day was pretty amazing. But that’s not the funny part.”
“You look like you’re going to burst if you don’t get it out, Josie.”
I smiled. “My dad’s girlfriend’s name was Hope.”
Fox’s brows drew together. “Hope who?”
“Hope Cassidy!” I clapped with excitement. “Isn’t that crazy? Your mom and my dad were a couple, apparently for a long time—all through high school.”
“She never mentioned that.”
“Did you ever have a conversation about who she dated before your dad? I never spoke to my dad about that, or my mom either.”
“I guess not.”
“Anyway… I managed not to laugh when she called you sweet. You’re welcome.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Any other fun news you want to share, or can I get back to work?”
Fox being Fox, he didn’t wait for me to respond. Just grabbed the wheelbarrow handles and started walking again. I followed.