Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
“I can actually see the water from here if I stand on the couch!” Serena said from her precarious perch on the arm of the sofa. She’d been here all of an hour and was already climbing up the walls. My sister had never been good at sitting still.
“I’d be careful if I were you. That’s not the sturdiest piece of furniture.” I threw my suit jacket over a dining room chair and went back to organizing the grocery order that had just been delivered.
“Are you telling me you put it together with a butter knife?” she asked, jumping to the hardwood floor.
“Hardly.” A corner of my mouth lifted. “Nate put it together when he came to visit about . . .” I did the mental math. “Eight months ago.”
“And you don’t trust his construction abilities?” She wedged herself between my body and the opposite counter in the U-shaped kitchen and grabbed the coffee creamer, then put it into the refrigerator.
“I do. But I also know what that thing looked like coming out of the box.” I rose on my bare toes and put the boxed stuff on the highest shelf.
“Eight months seems like a pretty long time,” Serena said, leaning back against the counter. “Have you seen him since then?”
“Nope.” My chest clamped down like a vise. “He’s been gone more than he’s been home, according to his texts and letters.” I put the fruits and vegetables away. “If he’s not at some training or school, he’s . . .” I shrugged because I honestly had no clue.
“Is that normal for Special Forces, or whatever he’s doing?”
“How would I know?” I handed her a box of coffee. “Behind you.” Truth was, I’d barely heard from him in the past seven months, and what I had heard had been vague and short.
She leaned sideways and put the coffee away without getting off the counter. “But you’ve heard from him, right?”
“Yeah.” I finished the last of the order and leaned back against the counter. “I mean, not in the last month, but he told me that he was going to be busy.” There was some kind of test he was taking, but he hadn’t gone into detail, which meant I wasn’t supposed to mention it.
“Busy?” Serena cocked an eyebrow as Tybee, my six-month-old Maine coon kitten, jumped onto the counter.
“You’re not supposed to be up here, are you?” I asked him, scratching under his chin before I set him back on the floor. Not that he’d listen. Tybee had taught me that cats did whatever the hell they wanted whenever the hell they wanted to. I envied them their give-no-fucks attitude. I shrugged. “He texted and said he wouldn’t be able to talk this month, but he’d meet me at O’Hare.”
Serena blinked. “So you’re just going to fly off to Palau tomorrow and hope he meets you at O’Hare?”
“It worked last time.” I shrugged again. It wasn’t like I needed to worry. Nate was one of the only people in my life who always did what they said they were going to do. “No news is good news with Nate. If something had gone awry, he would have told me. We planned out our trips for the next four years while he was here over Valentine’s Day. We couldn’t buy our tickets or book most of the resorts, so Nate hired a travel agent and dumped more money than I care to even think about so they’d make the arrangements when the dates became available.” It had been overwhelmingly, sweetly romantic, and yet had told me he was still planning on this being the way we lived for the next four years. He’d gone so far as to tell me that even the wives weren’t getting much face time. Hell, I wasn’t even a girlfriend. “Assuming we don’t have to move dates for deployments, which he said we undoubtably would. I’ll just have to cross my fingers and pray I can get time off when he has leave.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And it doesn’t bother you that you don’t know where he is half the time or what he’s doing?”
“Of course it does.” I lifted my shoulders and let them fall. “But I don’t exactly have the right to know.”
“What if something . . .” She struggled with her words. “Happened to him?”
“Then hopefully someone—probably one of his friends—would tell me.”
Her head tilted to the side as she studied me. “He could have an entire family, a wife and kids, down there in North Carolina and you wouldn’t know.” She pointed her finger at me. “And don’t you dare shrug at me again.”
I locked my posture. “He doesn’t. I might not know where he’s sent, but he’s always honest with me when he’s dating someone, the same as I am with him.”
“And how long has it been since you’ve dated someone?”