Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 100367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“The baby wants bread, Tucker. Are you going to tell your niece no?”
I hold my hands up in surrender and bend down to kiss her cheek.
“Eat all the bread in the land, I don’t care. You look great.”
“I look like I ate a basketball.”
“Did you eat a basketball?” Easton asks, and now her glare is turned his way, letting me off the hook.
He smirks at me, and I walk into the kitchen, eyeing the spread of Italian food, and then my father, who shouldn’t be eating pasta.
“I’m not eating much of it,” he assures me. “And my numbers are good, my medication is handled, and Dr. Son-in-Law assures me that I’m fine to eat this in moderation.”
“Great.”
I clap him on the back, and we all settle in around the dining room table with plates heaping with steaming pasta and sauce. This is the table we used my whole life. Dad took it with him when he moved out, and I bought something new for the farmhouse.
“So, Chad, how’s the legal system these days?”
Chad shrugs a shoulder at Harper’s question. “It keeps going.”
The man dating my baby sister is always polite, but he’s quiet. And he always gives nonanswers, which is suspicious to me.
“I’d planned to do this at the restaurant,” Chad says, clearing his throat as he turns in the chair so he’s facing Ava. He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a motherfucking ring.
My eyes go to Dad, who’s stopped chewing. He looks confused, which tells me that Chad the Douche didn’t ask our father for his blessing.
What an ass. He can’t even be bothered to get down on one knee?
“Ava, I enjoy you so much. Getting to know you over the past year has been some of the best moments in my life. I would love it if you’d take the next step with me and agree to marry me.”
Ava blinks.
I scowl. Where’s the I love you and I can’t live without you and if you say no, you’ll tear my heart out of my chest and set it on fire?
Even Harper’s nose wrinkles as if she just tasted something disgusting.
“Yes, of course.”
Wait, what?
Chad, with a pleased grin on his stupid face, slips the ring on Ava’s finger and then leans in to press his lips to hers in a chaste kiss that has me wanting to punch him in the nuts.
This idiot did not discuss this with our father, he didn’t say one thing about love in his ridiculous little speech, and then when she said yes, he gave her a peck on the mouth.
Not that I want to ever witness my sister having her face chewed off by some dude, but come on.
She just agreed to marry him, not pick up his fucking dry cleaning.
“Um, congratulations,” Harper says, still frowning. “I didn’t realize you’d talked about marriage.”
“Well, we really haven’t,” Ava says, looking as surprised as the rest of us. Her eyes are pinned to Chad, who’s gone back to eating his dinner, as if he just told Ava they needed to get gas on the way home.
She glances down at the rock on her finger. It’s . . . big. That’s all I really know about diamonds. But I can see by the way her brows pinch together that the way this entire fucked-up thing went down is not how she envisioned it when she was a little girl.
And my sister deserves the fucking world.
I glance over at Easton, and he’s already looking at me. He gives a little nod.
We need to have a conversation with Chad.
But I won’t do anything to upset Ava, so we’ll choose another moment for our little heart-to-heart.
“You got a whole big-ass truck of dirt delivered,” Scott says the next day, as we watch a vehicle that’s not quite the size of a dump truck pull down the driveway, the bed full of soil for the planters.
It’s good timing because we just finished setting the last one in place.
“You’re observant,” I reply, sounding short even to my own ears.
I can’t help it.
Darby still hasn’t come home, and it’s been almost two days that she’s been gone. She texted me this morning to tell me that they should be able to wrap it up today, but she has no idea when.
It’s not that I need her here for anything ranch related. All the animals are healthy.
It’s that I haven’t had my eyes, not to mention my hands, on her in the better part of forty-eight hours, and I’m losing my fucking mind because I don’t know for sure that she’s okay. She has to be exhausted. I’m sure they’ve brought food in, but I would have had food delivered without hesitation.
I’ve had her here on my property for such a short time, and yet, she belongs here. With me. It’s not the same without her here, and I don’t know what that means for the future, if she decides to move on.