Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 133224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 666(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 666(@200wpm)___ 533(@250wpm)___ 444(@300wpm)
“Calm down, Mom.” Blake widens his eyes, and I get the giggles.
“Oh, I’ve missed you, darling. I haven’t seen you for weeks.” She turns and hugs him again.
“I know, I’m sorry,” he replies. “I’ve been working long hours.”
Taking photos of my feet.
Guilt fills me. I need to stop being so demanding of his time.
Blake looks around. “Where are the girls?”
“Over here.” His mom takes his hand and leads us through the crowd. “This way.”
“What about my foot?” Belinda demands as she hobbles along behind us with her shoe in her hand. “Nobody cares about my feet.”
“You got that right,” Blake whispers under his breath.
Rosemary crosses her eyes.
I get the giggles again, and something tells me that Belinda is the drama queen of the family. We walk around to the side and see three girls standing together. “Here they are.” Rosemary smiles.
Blake kisses and hugs each one. “Rebecca, these are my sisters, Catherine, Aubrey, and Emery.”
“Hello.” They all smile and shake my hand one by one.
“It’s so lovely to meet you.” Blake hugs each one, and they all begin to chatter.
I’m shocked. These girls aren’t what I expected at all. Blake is so handsome and suave that I just assumed his family would be the same way. I expected glamour models and judgment and feeling inadequate.
They’re a million times better than anything I ever imagined.
Pretty, curvy, and warm. Catherine is tall, and Emery is short. Aubrey is about my height. They look like normal girls; they feel welcoming and happy.
“It’s so lovely to meet you,” Catherine says as she takes my hand in hers. “We’ve been waiting for what seems like forever.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Blake doing a tone-it-down signal with his hand behind my back.
“There you are,” a man’s voice says from behind. We all turn to see an older man approaching us. He’s tall and handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair: Blake’s twin.
“Your dad?” I smile.
“How’d you guess?” Rosemary smiles. “Twins, huh?”
“My god, you’re so alike.” I laugh.
“In personality too.” Rosemary smiles as her eyes linger on her husband. “Luckiest girl in the world, I am.”
“I got you some cream,” he says as he hands the bag over to Catherine.
“Thank you,” she says. “Hopefully this works.”
His eyes come to me. “You must be Rebecca?”
“I am.”
He holds his hand out to shake mine. “I’m Blake. It’s lovely to meet you.”
“Blake too?” I ask in surprise.
“They couldn’t think of another name.” My Blake rolls his eyes.
I smile. A weird sense of serendipity falls over me, and a few things click into place.
Blake Grayson Sr. is handsome and suave and everything that I imagine Blake’s father would be. And yet he loves a normal woman and has normal daughters. He’s normal; it’s only his outside that seems different.
Is that the same for my Blake?
Have I been reading him wrong all along?
Aubrey links her arm through mine. “Let’s go inside.”
“Okay.” I smile.
Emery links her arm through my other arm. “Off we go.”
“What about me?” Blake calls from behind us.
“You get to see Rebecca every day, Blake. Tonight it’s our turn.”
“And then I dated an artist,” Aubrey continues. “But he was all into creating and earthly experiences, and that’s great, you know? But when he’s too broke to buy a cup of coffee, and your entire relationship is based around what restaurant he won’t go to because it’s too expensive, what’s the frigging point?” She sips her champagne. “We couldn’t even go to McDonald’s without him whining about the price.”
“Ugh, that doesn’t sound fun.” I wince. I glance up into Blake’s stare. He’s sitting back in his chair with a glass of red wine in his hand as he watches me chat with his sisters. He’s wearing his black dinner suit, his hair has a bit of a curl to it, and he’s giving me the best come-fuck-me look of all time.
I smile shyly as I sip my champagne, knowing exactly what he’s thinking about. I turn back to Aubrey to try and pretend to listen to what she’s telling me. But who can concentrate when Blake Grayson is looking at you like the devil himself?
He’s so naughty.
You know those moments in life where you pinch yourself because things are going so well?
I’m in the middle of one right now.
Blake’s family is perfect—absolutely and utterly perfect.
His mom is friendly, his sisters are divine, and his father, well . . . let’s just say he’s a silver fox.
The man is ridiculously hot.
And kind and gentle and everything that I admire in a person.
His aunts and uncles and cousins, well, they’re all a little kooky, but I think that’s standard with extended families, isn’t it?
Not weird kooky, just embarrassing kooky, and I have to say I find it all the more endearing.
“Oh my god, then she went out with a firefighter,” Emery chimes in. “And he used to come over to Mom and Dad’s without a shirt on.”