Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
“I was on my way to you too,” I said. “I don’t know what happened…” I paused from continuing that lie. Mace needed to know the truth if I ever expected to live a genuine life with him. Man, did I crave such a wonderful existence. I drew in a deep breath and released the truth on the exhale. “I’m not the confident person I pretend to be. I have deep flaws that caused me to doubt myself. When the life I’ve been planning since we first got together became a possibility, it scared me. I felt inferior.”
“It scared me in the beginning too.” Mace nodded as he spoke his quietly muttered truth, tying a giant bow around my happy heart. “But we have this. And we’re good together. You’ve made me and my entire family insanely happy. They’re killin’ it out there.”
“Money might be a concern,” I said off the cuff, wanting no more secrets between us. “I won’t know more until… well, I don’t know.”
Mace’s eyes widened, and he actually took another, much longer than the first time, step backward, pulling his phone from his pocket.
“I’m gettin' an apology from that family responsible for my accident, and a settlement, but check this out.” His thumbs coasted over the screen deftly. The pecking finger was officially gone. After a few seconds, he flipped the screen toward me. “I started a YouTube channel and donation drive and an Instagram for the sanctuary. We’ve made almost three hundred thousand dollars in the last few days, and it’s still growin’. I’ve been postin’ short videos. Well, I guess Tommy’s postin’ and editin’ the videos. People are respondin’.”
His joy was my personal brand of everything. I might not have done anything else right, but I pursued this guy until I got him. I never wanted that to change.
Mace’s excitement was met with me drawing him back into my arms. “That’s incredible. My entrepreneur. I wanted to take you to my bedroom and let you soothe all my ruffled feathers, but now I only want us back in Texas. I love you. Thank you for coming to get me.”
“Let’s go,” he said and did his best to be free from my hold to leave the room. “Nico thought he’d be fired for keepin’ it quiet, and then for comin’ through the front.”
That was enough to break my concentrated effort in getting him into my arms. He bounced forward for the closed door, jerking it open.
“He should be fired. That’s exactly what should happen…” I couldn’t find any real anger though.
My guy cut me off to say pretty much what I wanted to say. “It was me pushin’ at Nico. I wanted you to see I wasn’t afraid of your life. Where’s that bedroom you talked about? I think comin’ all this way deserves a bedroom stop. You already made me wait an extra day. Now you want to wait another eight hours to return to Texas? Nah.”
This guy who had never been to this house before, actually led me to my bedroom. He led. I followed. Sounded like the foundation of a great life.
I wondered about Mace’s family? Were they banking as well as Mace had? The guy that kept insisting social media wasn’t real, sure had pulled in a lot of money for his cause. He opened my bedroom door and stepped away, extending an arm for me to enter into his magic trick of finding my personal room in this huge place I’d called home before I knew what one really was.
“You saved me,” I said, pivoting around just beyond the doorframe.
Mace was there, right there where he was needed the most. “You saved me right back.”
I’ll remember that next kiss for the rest of my life.
Chapter 34
Mace
One Year Later
“Babe, you gotta move out of the shot,” Slade said atop his stallion, Pepper.
Of course, I knew I was on the actual movie set. Absolutely. I wasn’t dumb, no matter how it appeared in that moment, but I was taking careful steps while recording a video for the sanctuary.
Besides Pepper being in Slade’s new movie, so was one of the geldings we’d saved and rehabbed. The horse was situated in the distant background, placed there with the purpose of filming him and others, pretending they were feral.
If Slade would stop fretting, I’d have video of him atop his now super-trained stallion.
A couple of perfect moments for our YouTube channel.
“I’m almost done, but you keep messin’ me up,” I said and dropped my phone in frustration. “Pay attention to anything else but me.”
“That’s hard to do when you’ve walked into the middle of the scene,” Austin said, frustration clear in his voice from his position atop his own horse. “It’s like you’re married to Lucille Ball, Whitaker.”
“I feel like you mean that as an insult,” I said, raising the phone again and walking widely around Slade and Austin, filming them both. It was extra, I knew, but also great to see Kitt’s plan working. Austin was becoming upset with me, but he’d get over it. “But I don’t know who that is so the jokes on you.”