Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
“You look a lot like Zeke,” Charlie said softly.
“We both got my father’s eyes.”
“Around the jaw and mouth too,” he said with a small smile. “Strong genes.”
I tried to put myself in his place, but I couldn’t imagine it. I’d only met Lucy hours before, and I still couldn’t fathom losing her and then coming face-to-face with her lookalike brother. It must’ve been a complete mind fuck for Charlie and painful as hell.
“I got your shit,” Lucy announced, bounding down the front steps. “You ready?”
“You didn’t have to do that, Luce,” Charlie said as she tossed him his bag.
“I didn’t mind. You take the front seat.”
“Back,” Charlie countered as we reached the car.
“Your legs are longer,” Lucy argued.
“I want to lie down. Take the front.”
I watched the two of them in fascination. Lucy seemed bigger when she was near Charlie. She hadn’t been some wilting flower when we’d found her in that motel, but it still seemed like she’d grown a couple of inches just by the way she was holding herself now that her brother was present. She was more sure of herself and more assertive than she’d been before.
Her gaze softened as she reached out and squeezed her brother’s bicep. “All right, but we’re waking you up for lunch. No sleeping through it.”
“Deal,” he said, throwing open the back door.
I rounded the hood as Lucy climbed into the passenger seat. By the time I sat down beside her, Charlie was sprawled out across the back seat with his head resting on the bag his sister had thrown him.
“Where are we going?” Lucy asked, her body twisted in the seat so she could watch the farmhouse disappear behind us a few minutes later.
“West,” I said dryly. I knew she’d gotten my reference to her earlier reticence when she shot me a look before settling back into her seat.
“Ha. Ha.”
“Oregon,” I clarified.
“Or bust,” she said with a sigh. Reaching back without looking, she rested her hand on Charlie’s knee.
Twenty minutes later, Charlie was snoring softly in the back seat when Lucy finally brought her hand forward. I didn’t react when she silently reached for my hand and pulled it to her thigh, but I felt it in every millimeter of my body.
Chapter 3
Lucy
Iwas in a rundown hotel room somewhere in Indiana, and I was pretty sure I was dying.
Staring at the bathroom door, I both wished that Charlie would finish his shower to come say his final goodbyes and that he’d take long enough that, by some miracle, the heat racing through my body in agonizing waves would be gone by the time he came out of the bathroom. The air conditioner was running full blast, complete with a loud clanking noise that didn’t happen with any kind of regularity, but it didn’t put a dent in the heat. I couldn’t even open a window to let in a breeze. Ambrose thought that we hadn’t been followed out of Pennsylvania, but of course nothing was sure.
Charlie had slept for hours while we’d made our way west, and I hadn’t had the heart to wake him for lunch even though I’d said I was going to. It seemed like the only time that his face lost the pinched, haggard look was when he was asleep. I wasn’t sure if being unconscious was the escape or if he saw Zeke in his dreams. Either way, sleep had been his reprieve since we left Europe. We’d gone through a drive-thru at dinnertime and only stopped for gas and bathroom breaks once. Ambrose was clearly on a mission to get us to Oregon as soon as possible.
After the day cooped up with him in the car, I couldn’t say I was mad about the rush. Once Charlie was with us, and I’d lost the panic I’d felt while we were separated, my attraction toward Ambrose had amped up so much that more than once I’d found myself fantasizing about making him pull the car over so I could strip him bare on the side of the road. I obsessed over the flex of his forearms while he drove. The grip of his fingers around the steering wheel. The tendons in his neck as he looked over his shoulder while switching lanes. To say it was inconvenient was an understatement.
It didn’t make any sense that I was his mate. Beyond the fact that the odds of that happening, which were very low, he was ridiculously gorgeous. And me? I was average at best. I’d never had a problem finding men to date or sleep with, but I was under no illusion that I was some kind of beauty. My face was round, my body wasn’t slender or voluptuous, but somewhere in between. My hair was plain brown and slightly wavy. Nothing about me stood out. We didn’t fit.