Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Dean looked better, in my opinion, but not by much.
Both men were sexy, but mine was what I liked to call good ol’ country boy. His jeans were old and worn, whereas Bowe’s were pressed and perfect. Both men had exceptional bodies, but Dean’s seemed to call to mine like a siren.
And his beautiful dark brown hair that was in need of a cut brushed the top of his shoulders each time he moved.
Bowe’s hair was a brown so dark it looked black in certain light, and cut short close to his scalp.
I’d never seen his hair any longer than it was right then. Then again, it was a rare day that I ever saw him without a baseball cap of some sort on his head.
Dean wore baseball caps, too, and oh man, was he sexy in them.
The one he had on today was one of my favorites.
It was black with KFD stitched on it in neon yellow thread.
He was wearing it backward on his head, and he had a pencil behind his ear as he measured and cut.
Then, almost as if he was aware of my eyes on him, his eyes glanced up and he immediately zeroed in on me in the window.
I tried to back away, but with Angie directly behind me, I only managed to knock us both sideways, bringing the window dressing down with us as we fell.
Both of us went down in a pile of limbs, and I moaned in embarrassment.
“Do you think he saw us fall?” I whispered to Angie.
“Yes,” she replied instantly. “The real question is whether or not he’s going to come over here and make sure you’re okay.”
I laughed at her and sat up, then moved even further to my feet.
“Nope,” I guessed. “He doesn’t like me.”
“How do you know he doesn’t like you?” she demanded as she too got up. “It looks to me that he likes you. He can’t take his eyes off you.”
I had my back the window, and something going on behind my back had me starting to turn, but she stopped me with her words.
“Don’t move,” she said.
I froze.
“Why?” I whispered.
“There’s a wasp on your shoulder,” she said.
I immediately jerked, jumping and slamming my hand down on my shoulder in an automatic reaction to someone telling me there was a wasp anywhere near me.
Normal people didn’t have the same problems as I did.
When I was growing up, our trailer house hadn’t been very ‘bug proof.’
Every spring, wasps and yellow jackets would find their way into the faulty paneling in our walls, coming through cracks on the outside of the trailer to make their nests behind the walls.
Then I’d find them randomly flying around our home.
Before the summer of my senior year, I hadn’t really thought much of it. If I saw one, I’d swat it with the fly swatter. However, something weird happened that summer, and they’d made their home in my closet, of all places.
I’d unsuspectingly reached in for a shirt of mine and had just gotten it settled into place when what felt like hundreds of wasps started stinging my arms, chest and back.
I’d been stung so many times that I’d had to be taken to the hospital in order to have my airway monitored.
I’d survived, of course, but it had left me traumatized.
Every time I saw a wasp, a fear like none other would come over me, and I’d freak out.
I had zero control of my actions, and that was exactly what happened the moment she told me there was a wasp on me.
Acting on instinct, I slapped at my shoulder at the same time I threw myself backwards.
Screaming, I pulled my hand back to see a red welt already popping up on the tip of my middle finger.
I was so focused on that and finding out where the little devil went that I wasn’t paying attention to the window at my back.
Had I been paying attention, I would not have leaned on the flimsy panel of glass.
But I wasn’t paying attention.
In fact, I was so focused on the pain on my finger that I didn’t hear the cracking of the glass until the entire pane gave way with my weight.
I fell, and my shoulder exploded in red hot pain as my back hit the grass.
My eyes squeezed shut, and I gasped in a painful breath as I tried to roll.
Tried being the operative word.
The moment I shifted my hips, the pain in my back multiplied tenfold.
“Oh, my God!” Angie cried. “July, are you okay?”
I was so far from okay that it wasn’t even funny.
Then, to put the cherry on top of my fucked up pie, Dean leaned over me and stared at me with worry-filled eyes.
“Are you okay?” he rumbled gruffly.
I shook my head.
“I think I broke something in my back,” I whispered shakily to him. “Can you see it?”