Total pages in book: 22
Estimated words: 20065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 20065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
“All while going to school?”
I nod. “My mom really cared about my education, so I made sure I graduated. Then, I found Tangerine Forks on Google Maps, bought a bus ticket, packed a bag…and the rest is history.”
“Good for you.” He smiles. “That must have taken a lot of guts.”
By the way Lyle’s looking at me, I can’t tell whether he’s actually admiring me for sticking it out or if just feels bad for me. But either way, I can feel myself blushing. I mean, he’s so handsome, so obviously confident in himself, with such a strong jaw and such full lips and hair that blows perfectly in the breeze. This guy must get all the girls.
It doesn’t take us long to reach Lyle’s house. We make that sort of polite but meaningless conversation for the drive, and I pray that I’m not coming off like a total moron, because I am feeling so anxious around him that I really have no idea what I’m saying.
By the time we’re pulling into his driveway, I’m a hot mess and can barely even remember what I’m doing here.
“It’s up there.” He points to two windows above a white garage. “I’ll show you up.”
I’m about to protest and tell him that’s fine and that he doesn’t have to take me up himself and that I can figure it out on my own, but he’s already opening the side door to the garage and heading up the stairs before I can. So I just follow him on in and up to the apartment.
“It’s not much, I know, but I hope it will tide you over,” Lyle says.
It’s nice. Really nice, and would no doubt cost somewhere around five thousand a month back in New York.
“It’s great,” I tell him, admiring the queen-sized bed, the massive closet I’ll never fill, the flatscreen and the many windows to admire the foliage. “Seriously.”
“Bathroom’s in here.” He points. “There’s no fancy Japanese toilet to heat and clean your butt, but there is a nice shower with a bathtub I installed myself.”
I can’t help but giggle. “That’s okay. I can keep my own butt clean—”
The sound of tires scrunching outside causes Lyle to freeze. He raises a hand for silence and instantly looks out the window and then back to me.
“Delilah…” he mutters. “Okay, I need you to stay here and stay quiet for me. Cool?”
“Yeah,” I reply, confused. “Cool. But what—?”
“Seriously,” he says, his voice firm. “Stay here, stay quiet, and stay out of sight. My…girlfriend’s home.”
With that, he quickly leaves back out the door, leaving me standing there stunned. I have no right, but I feel lied to…cheated and blindsided as I hear him going down the stairs.
Is every guy in Tangerine some kind of dickhead?
“Girlfriend…?”
2
Lyle
I grab a wrench off the workbench before stepping out of the garage so I can have something in my hands when I wave to Delilah as she pulls her car into the driveway. She knows that I wouldn’t have been upstairs working on the apartment after coming home from the shop, but I could have been working on the John Deere.
She’s smiling as she gets out, having just got back from Melissa’s baby shower, and immediately starts spewing off all the details to me at a speed I can barely even process. Of course, the fact that there’s a strange, gorgeous female upstairs in the apartment isn’t doing much for my focus.
“Melissa was so happy, Lyle, and her husband, John, you know the one you met at the lake? He was just so supportive and amazing. He’s just right there for her with whatever she needs. All the girls there were just talking about how perfect he is.”
I try to ignore every instinct I have to look behind me and glance up at the studio windows to see if Yara is looking out at us. I warned her to stay out of sight, and she seems like the kind of girl who listens, but you never know.
I finished all the work on the studio four months ago, and one of the reasons we haven’t been able to find someone to rent it out to yet is because Delilah is so specific about tenants; she will not rent to a female who could be considered even remotely good-looking or a threat to her and my “relationship.”
“That’s great,” I nod, circling over to the steps so her line of sight will be on the house and not on the garage.
“Yeah, it is.” She says, excitedly. “She told us all about how John proposed to her out at the docks where they went on their first date.”
Delilah isn’t the most subtle girl in the world. It doesn’t take Albert Einstein to figure out where this conversation is headed.
“Did you guys eat there?” I ask, trying to change the topic. “Are you hungry? Cause I’m hungry—”