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)
I glanced at the plate in front of the man to see him eating the Reuben and the other sandwich sitting across from him as if waiting for someone else to sit down to eat.
“Macaroni,” Odin groaned. “This sounds good. Thank you. I haven’t had a Reuben in years.”
He picked his sandwich up and took the largest bite I’d ever seen a man take.
My eyes were dancing with humor as I replied, “You’re going to finish that in four bites if you’re not careful.”
He scoffed. “Child’s play.”
I giggled. Like a child.
What was happening to me? And the feelings that were running rampant through me. It felt like I was sixteen again, with a crush on the high school prom king.
To distract myself, I took the cup of water and placed it down on the ground for Peanut, who greedily gulped it down.
“Don’t let him fool you,” Odin said, eyes soft. “He’s fed three square meals a day and has constant clean water because he drools like a rabid bear.”
“He’s definitely telling me different stories about you,” I said as I picked up my sandwich and took a bite.
Yum.
We ate and talked about a bunch of nothing for the next fifteen minutes.
At one point, I laughed so hard that I nearly choked on the bite of sandwich that I’d been in the process of chewing.
“You did not!” I laughed, my heart happy.
“I did,” he confirmed, leaning into the table toward me. “I ate it right there in the middle of the post office. Everyone saw me. Reyelle from the coffee shop. The postmaster and the postman that delivers my mail. Hux saw from the damn meat market. Not to mention, if you didn’t see it, you heard it. I hit the ground so damn hard that the ice underneath me cracked. It sounded like a gunshot.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” I mused. “Did they fix the leak?”
“Sure did. And offered to fix my broken phone that cracked when I went straight onto my back.”
I reached forward and caught his hand. “You weren’t hurt?”
A chair abruptly scraped back and the man out on the patio with us stormed out.
Odin watched him go before muttering, “Pendelton’s kid is such a creep.”
My brows rose. “That’s Dr. Pendelton’s kid?”
“Yep,” he said. “Kid’s never in school. He had to drop out because he ‘wasn’t learning.’ At least that’s the reason Dr. Pendelton’s wife gave. Pendelton said it’s because his mother is soft on him and gives him anything he asks for. More than likely, he wasn’t trying.”
Something niggled at the back of my mind, a little “hey remember, this is important” but it was gone just as quickly when I heard the squeal of tires in the parking lot signaling an abrupt exit.
But the thought was so fleeting that it was there one second and gone the next.
There was no force on Earth that could steal my attention away from the man in front of me.
He was a gravitational pull that I never saw coming.
“I’m sure the nurses that’d been complaining about the alleyway leading to the parking lot finally felt vindicated,” I guessed.
He’d been telling me about a certain drain that leaked onto the back alley of the hospital he’d used to work. How it always caused issues in the winter because it’d freeze and become slippery. But since it was just the nurses using it, the issue was never fixed.
Then Odin had exited that way one day because his badge hadn’t worked to get him into the doctor’s parking lot. And he’d nearly died—figuratively—in his haste to get home.
“The nurses threw a fit, which was obviously deserved. The hospital apologized to me, but hadn’t felt bad about the dozens of other nurses that had reported their issue.”
“So what happened then?” I asked.
“They went on strike,” he answered. “They…”
My phone rang, interrupting his explanation.
“Hold on, it’s Wendy’s school,” I said as I took the call on speaker. “Hello?”
“Constance, this is Judith at the school,” Judith, the principal, said. “There was an incident on the school playground a few moments ago. A man tried to take a few children.”
I gasped and stood up. “What?”
“The kids weren’t taken, but they were hurt. Wendy suffered a gash to the forehead and side. She’s bleeding pretty good, so we sent her to the hospital via ambulance.”
I was already moving, unaware of how I’d gotten to my car.
Odin shoved me into the passenger seat, ordered Peanut in, and slammed the door.
Peanut crawled over me to the back as Odin rounded the hood.
“What hospital?” he barked.
Judith didn’t argue with him as she answered, “The one closest to the school.”
Odin put the SUV into drive and was zooming down the main drag in Sawtooth moments later.
The last thing I saw as we raced away from The Mercantile was the uneaten turkey sandwich that was on the plate in the corner of the patio where we’d once been sitting. Not at the table with the half-eaten Reuben.