Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 106538 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106538 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
“They’re just flowers.” He shrugs. “I didn’t buy them. I just picked them.”
Biting my lower lip, I shake my head. “You just picked them,” I whisper with a soft chuckle.
“Maren?”
“Hmm?”
He flicks his gaze over my shoulder. “If I weren’t riding off into the proverbial sunset on a bicycle, I’d kiss you. But my life is complicated, so I have to take it slow.”
More slow dancing.
“That’s my line when I fly off into the literal sunset. Slow works for me,” I say.
Ozzy shakes his head. “And you thought I was the one saying all the right things.” His lips twitch. “Good night.”
“Night.”
When he passes me, the back of his hand slowly grazes mine.
“Now you’re just teasing me.” I glance over my shoulder just as he peeks over his and winks.
I’m a goner. Single dads who say all the right things, pick the perfect number of wildflowers, and have the perfect hand brush before riding off into the sunset on a bicycle are officially my new favorite drug.
Chapter Six
Ozzy
The following morning, the foot of my bed dips, rousing me from a good dream about flying. Three weeks before the car accident, I got my pilot’s license. And now I may never use it.
“It’s Saturday, pumpkin. Do you want to crawl into bed and go back to sleep with me?” I mumble, rolling to my side and pulling the covers over my shoulders.
“Not really,” Amos says.
I quickly lift onto my elbows, blinking hard to see in the dark.
He stands, then opens my room-darkening shades, and I squint as the light burns my retinas.
“We have to talk,” he mumbles, but it sounds more like a grumble.
I reach for my watch on the nightstand. It’s not quite seven. So much for sleeping in this morning. With a deep sigh, I swing my legs off the side of the bed and stretch before twisting my back from side to side. “What do we need to talk about?”
“Have you had the talk with Lola?”
“The talk?” I stand and stretch some more.
“The sex talk.”
I step into a pair of jeans and wait for something real to wake me up. There’s no way Amos is in my room, this early on a Saturday, asking me about the sex talk.
“If not, today might be a good time to bring it up,” he says.
Shit. I’m not waking up. This must be real. It’s the 2.0 version of “What are your intentions with my daughter?” Men joke and brag about sex; we don’t talk about it.
“Not gonna lie, Amos. I was planning on doing yard work today. So, sadly, I’ll need you to elaborate on why I should talk about sex with Lola.” I give him my dead eyes after pulling on a T-shirt.
Amos adjusts his Texas-size belt buckle. He’s always in Wrangler jeans with a big-ass belt buckle and a western button-down. “There was an incident last night,” he says. “Lola forgot to take a glass of water to sit by her bed. So she woke up a little after midnight and came upstairs.”
I don’t like where this is going.
He glances behind him and closes the door. “I was watching TV.”
“Porn?”
He clears his throat. “Sexually explicit.”
“Porn?”
Amos frowns and nods several times. “I’m not sure she saw much. She was rubbing her eyes when she stepped into the living room and said, ‘Hi, Pa.’ I immediately turned off the TV.” Again, he adjusts his belt buckle and sniffs, as if throwing back his shoulders and acting all manly will make this less awkward.
Staring at the gray carpet, I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Were you just watching it? Or were you participating?”
“I was under a blanket.”
He was participating. Fuck my life.
“I asked her what she needed, and she said a glass of water. So she got it and headed back downstairs with nothing more than a good night. I don’t think she saw anything. But in case she did, I thought I should mention it.”
My hand falls to my side as my whole body deflates. “This is yours, Amos. Your actions. Yours to clean up. I don’t have an issue talking to her about sex,” I say, even though that’s not entirely true. “But pornography is not a conversation I’m ready to have with my ten-year-old daughter.”
“What am I supposed to say to her?” he asks, narrowing his eyes until every line on his old face collapses into a deep wrinkle.
I hold my hands out to the side. “I don’t know. This is your lesson to learn, not mine. As a rule, we shouldn’t do things in this house that we’re unwilling to explain to the resident child. There’s a reason bedrooms and bathrooms have locks on the doors. I guess you can start with the sex talk that usually involves two people falling in love. Now, how you get from that to an old man on the sofa jerking off under a blanket to two strangers on television having sex . . . well, that’s a complicated bridge to build.”