Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Chapter Fourteen
AVERY
“Dinner first,” he said, his voice rough. “I don’t want to rush this.”
“Fine,” I agreed. “Dinner first.”
I finished slicing the bread, putting it on a plate to bring to the table, where he’d already set out softened butter. I turned to see West, a pasta dish in each hand, piled high, decorated with ribbons of basil, creamy lemon scents filling my nose.
“Oh, that looks good.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Smells amazing. Finn said the recipe wouldn’t be too hard, but I didn’t believe him.”
“But it’s not?” I asked. Finn had made it for me plenty of times, but I’d never done it myself. He didn’t like people in the kitchens at Heartstone. He got cranky if you touched his stuff. Considering Finn was a way better cook than I’d ever be, I didn’t argue that much.
“No, it really wasn’t. Want another beer?”
“Sure,” I agreed, realizing the one I’d been holding was empty.
We sat at the table and I dug in, twining pasta around my fork. It was perfect, the creamy lemon flavors exploding on my tongue. We didn’t talk much, too focused on filling our bellies.
“I missed lunch too,” West said in between bites. “I brought a sandwich, but somebody broke into the gear closet at the Inn, and I had to head over there.”
“Oh shit, really?” I asked after swallowing. “Are they still having trouble over there? Royal and Tenn haven’t said anything.” Not long after my father had died, Royal and Tenn had a problem with sabotage at the Inn, but I didn’t think they’d had any issues recently.
West shook his head. “Teenagers staying at the Inn with their parents. They wanted to go out on the river in the kayaks.”
“Do they not know how cold that water is?” I asked.
“Apparently not,” West said dryly.
I shook my head. “I’m always surprised by how many people forget we may be in the South, but we’re still in the mountains. It gets cold up here.”
“Exactly. Fortunately, we caught them before they got in the water. No life vests, no helmets.” He shook his head. “Dumbasses.”
“Well, that’s teenagers for you.”
“You weren’t a dumbass when you were a teenager,” West said. “I would have heard about it.”
“Nah, not me. It wasn’t worth getting on my father’s radar. Neither were you. Son of the mayor, future police chief. You stayed out of trouble.”
West smirked and shook his head. He swallowed a bite of pasta, took a sip of beer, before he said, “It’s not so much that I stayed out of trouble as I knew how to not get caught. Someday, maybe you can get your brother to tell you all the shit we got up to.”
“Why don’t you tell me, and then I can torture Griffen with it.”
He laughed. “Can’t do it. Best-friend code.”
“Huh. I’ll get it out of you. I have my ways,” I said, leaning forward and looking up at him through my eyelashes.
His eyes darkened. “I bet you do.”
Heat spiked through me. Dinner first, I reminded myself. This pasta was too fucking good to leave behind. I watched West’s fingers twirl his fork in the pasta, his hands strong and a little banged up from whatever he’d been doing all day. He lifted the fork to his mouth, pasta neatly twirled around it, his jaw flexing as he chewed. How was it that everything this man did was hot?
There were a lot of things I didn’t know. If I could really run the brewery by myself. If I were going to figure out the recipe I’d lost. If I were able to find out who killed my father. But I knew one thing: I wanted to strip West Garfield naked and have my way with him. And when I did, it was going to be amazing.
I looked down at my mostly empty plate, and shot a glance at his before taking another bite, and another, steadily finishing my dinner. Finally, I dropped my fork back onto my plate with a clatter. I took a long sip of beer, watching West wipe his mouth with his napkin and do the same. I was already standing when he pushed his chair back.
He never made it to his feet. I stepped in front of him, my hands on his shoulders, and swung a leg to straddle his lap. Leaning forward as I made myself comfortable on his lap, I cupped his bristly cheeks in my hands and pressed a kiss to his lips. Before it could go anywhere, I leaned back, heat spiraling through me as his hands settled on my hips, his fingers curling in a tight grip.
“We’re going to do this, right?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Hell, yes,” he answered.
“Is it going to get weird?”
“Weird how? Like kinky-weird?” He raised an eyebrow, the side of his mouth curling up.
“Well,” I considered, “it could get kinky-weird, but that’s not what I meant. I mean like you and me and you’re Griffen’s best friend and, you know, that kind of weird.” I shifted on his lap, the heat of his body between my legs doing things to my head.