Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
My lips curved up at the edges when I saw.
Skintight jeans tucked into flashy red cowboy boots. A pearl snap shirt. Rhinestone belt. And a cowboy hat that had slipped off and covered part of her face.
Closing her door, I headed to the hall to set the alarm when there was a knock at the door.
Expecting it to be my parents, I opened the front door wide and felt my mouth drop open. “Odin, what are you doing here?”
Seventeen
Paying taxes on roads rough enough to knock a tooth out is wild.
—Odin to Constance
Odin
Great freakin’ question.
What was I doing here?
I’d intended to go home with my tacos and beer.
Instead, I’d found myself driving out of town to a certain woman’s house in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary. Clearly, I wasn’t using my brain.
I had a case of beer under one arm, Peanut’s leash in the other hand, and a bag of tacos between my teeth.
She reached forward to catch the greasy bag from my mouth and looked at me with curiosity.
Waiting for me to answer.
“I was going to go home,” I admitted.
Her shoulders slumped. “But you came here?”
“But I came here,” I agreed.
“Oh.” She nodded. “Do you want to come in?”
I nodded, giving the bird in the tree glaring at me one last glance before I stepped over the threshold.
“Your pet doesn’t seem to like me.”
“He’s jealous,” she admitted. “He likes to monopolize my time. He barely tolerates Wendy. I try to spend alone time with him every single day, because of his obvious control issues, but even that’s not enough sometimes.”
My lips quirked. “Not a bad thing having an animal so fully devoted to you.”
She looked down at Peanut who was leaning against my leg looking up at me with the same devotion. “Looks like you got one of those of your own.”
I shrugged. “He’s extra clingy today. He’s not usually glued so securely to my leg. I think he thought that I’d given him away when I took him to the trainer. When he got here, he turned into this clingy fool.”
“That’s sad,” she said as she walked farther into the house. “Is it snowing too bad yet?”
“Not terrible,” I called after her. “Tonight’s just supposed to be a dusting. The real stuff won’t start for another month or so, according to the locals.”
“You’re not local?” she asked in surprise.
I winced, wondering how I was going to explain this. I hadn’t had the need to use my “lie” before with someone that was going to want to know everything and would likely sense that I wasn’t being completely truthful.
“No.” I shrugged. “Moved here about a year ago.”
Not a lie.
I had moved here.
Only after I’d been broken out of prison.
“Oh.” She nodded. “That makes sense. You said something the day they were choosing jurors about how you weren’t too keen on the snow. How last winter was brutal. But then the lawyer said that it was mild in comparison. You said ‘you wouldn’t know.’”
I had said that.
She was too perceptive. That’d been a passing comment, and she’d been across the room. How had she heard?
“Let him off his leash,” she suggested. “I have some big bowls you can use for water right there on the counter.”
I got Peanut some water and set it on the floor for him.
He sniffed at it but didn’t go for it.
I took his leash off and hung it on the back of the dining room chair before shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.
“Do you plan on staying for a while?”
I opened my mouth to say no but that was not what had come out. “As long as you want me.”
Her eyes lit up with excitement. “How do you feel about House?”
I’d never watched it before in my life. Which I admitted to.
Usually, I tried to stay away from medical shows. Usually, they ended up pissing me off.
“I’ll start it from the beginning. You’ll love it.”
I didn’t love it.
In fact, it was outrageous that they couldn’t come up with the obvious as soon as the symptoms were presented within the first five minutes of the show.
Drama for drama’s sake.
“She has lupus,” I murmured.
“How do you know?”
I explained all of her symptoms that instantly pointed to lupus and why they pointed to lupus. There should’ve never been a question as to what she had. Even a first-year med student could figure this out.
“This is something we learned in the first year of med school,” I said, then realized that I was being rather hard on her show. “But still fun to watch.”
Kind of.
Watching an obvious drug addict was slightly worrisome.
Especially how all the staff seemed to know it yet still allowed him to practice medicine.
“The way he comes up with these epiphanies at the end made me think that it’s not obvious.” Constance frowned.
The show ended with the woman having lupus and the doctor saving her in a dramatic fashion at the very last second.