Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 96850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 484(@200wpm)___ 387(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
He’d half expected Eve to clam up after they had sex, too much vulnerability on display for one night. Thank god she hadn’t. With her hair in disarray and her face free of makeup, she fucking glowed, her smile coming so easy that his conviction that Eve should be with him—and out of Cumberland, kids and all—only grew by the minute. And there was no chance he’d say that out loud and risk shattering the perfect evening, but damn, his bones were feeling it. How the hell was he going to let her leave in the morning?
“I know you stumbled into baseball by accident. After all, I was there the day it happened.” She flashed him a half smile. “Before that, what did you want to be when you grew up? When you were little, I mean.”
“A grocery bagger.”
Her laughter said his answer had caught her off guard and the rare lightness of the sound made him dizzy. “For the money or the apron?”
“The gossip,” Madden scoffed, as if that should have been obvious. “My first memories are my mum taking me to the shops and finding out everyone’s business from the man who bagged the ingredients for supper. Mr. Leary was petty as sin and everyone knew it, too, but they continued to tell him their secrets in exchange for somebody else’s. I thought he was more powerful than the president of Ireland.”
Her eyes were wide as saucers. “Do you remember any of the gossip? What was the best/worst thing you heard?”
“I once found out two of my primary school teachers were shagging and I pretended to be sick the next day, I was so anxious about seeing them.” Watching Eve giggle into the crook of her elbow, Madden couldn’t control his smile. “The little bits of hearsay were the best, though. Like the two elderly men in the neighborhood feuding because they supported rival rugby teams. One of them tipped over the other’s grocery cart right there in the store—this is all coming from Mr. Leary, mind you, so it could be an exaggeration—but anyway, the man felt so ashamed about knocking over the cart, they had to call a priest down to the shops to absolve him. They still went back to feuding the next day, but it was smaller things, like sniffing aggressively at each other in the pub.”
“Not the aggressive sniffing,” Eve gasped, her eyes sparkling with tears of mirth. “Do you think Mr. Leary is still there?”
“I don’t know,” Madden said honestly. “If not, I hope at the very least they retired his apron.”
Eve sat looking content for a moment. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be Vanna White. You know, the lady who turns the letters on Wheel of Fortune. Not because of the gowns, although I coveted that wardrobe.” Eve shrugged. “But mainly because she was always smiling. I thought she had to be the happiest woman alive. She really only had to smile for half an hour a day, though. I didn’t grasp that until I was older and I think it only made me envy her more.”
Madden wanted desperately to pull Eve into his lap and hold her, because he didn’t know the right words for the revelations she was bestowing on him, like little glimpses into the place she’d always been so cautious to allow anyone, even him, but he wanted to keep her relaxed. Free of pressure. Laughing. If this spell was broken in the morning, he wanted her to remember she was happy here with him. “Eve.”
“Yeah?”
“I adore you, but it would have killed you to smile even for thirty minutes a day.”
She was eating a cracker when he said it and she had to cover her mouth to keep it from ejecting along with her laugh. “They call me Vanna Spite.”
His deep rumble filled the room. “Frowns not gowns.”
“Stop,” she wheezed. “Game show dreams: dashed.”
“Something tells me you’ll recover from the disappointment,” he said dryly.
She grinned at him so long his chest started to hurt. “Were you hazed as a freshman on your college baseball team?”
Madden didn’t bother trying to hide how happy it made him to have her curious. About him. To be showing it so openly. “I was, but not in any horrifying or illegal ways. Dirty jockstrap in my locker. Vaseline in my glove. Things like that.”
“Boys are so weird. Did you haze the freshmen, too, when you became an upperclassman?”
“That’s not really my style, love.”
“I know.” Eve paused in the middle of putting marmalade on a cracker to study Madden under her lashes, before continuing. “They probably idolized you.”
He squinted at her, genuinely curious. “Why would they idolize me?”
“Because you have a moral code and nothing shakes it. You’re solid and unwavering and good. I can imagine you in the locker room, sighing heavily and letting everyone else spin out.”