Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
“He ran the dishwasher?” she asked, giving me that look again.
“Don’t read into it. He probably felt bad for me. I’m pretty sure I came off borderline deranged when he was here.” I’d certainly felt that way. It was amazing what a few consecutive hours of sleep could do for your mental health. I still felt like I was in a fog, but my emotions didn’t feel quite so raw anymore.
“Still. A lot of men would have just left. And likely trekked mud through your house in the process.”
“He offered to wear booties when he saw Adelaide.”
“Aww.”
“Gracie…” My voice held warning.
“Oh, let me be a romantic.”
“Just because he’s hot?”
He was.
He was knock-you-upside-the-head hot. And I wouldn’t lie that when he showed up at the door the first time, I’d had some very vivid fantasies of him grabbing me and the two of us doing all sorts of steamy things for a few hours.
He wasn’t my typical type. My cousins would likely accuse me of only falling for ‘suits.’ There was some truth to that. I’d mostly dated men who I met in my circle. And my circle was business.
Owen was not a suit.
He was work boots and jeans worn soft from too many washings, stained permanently in different shades of paint. He was shaggy dirty blond hair, a scruffy face, and that kind of lax, easy carriage that you found in blue-collar men.
It was appealing.
Just not what I saw for my future.
Which was why I’d seen a torrid, short-lived affair in my mind and not wedding rings.
“Well, there’s that,” Gracie agreed. “But it’s also a man seeing something that needed to be done… and just doing it. Better than that, he did it without expecting any kind of praise for it. He just did it and left. And locked the door, by the way. I had to plug in my code.”
“He’s a good man,” I agreed.
I stared at the dishwasher for a moment.
It was such a small thing. Ridiculously small, really. Loading the dishwasher wasn’t exactly an act of heroism. It wasn’t changing a tire on the side of the road during a storm or rushing into a burning building, or any of the other ways the men in stories did to somehow prove they were worthy of the heroine.
Still, the act made my chest ache.
Because he hadn’t done it for me to see.
He hadn’t mentioned it. Hadn’t waited around for me to wake up and see it and hear my appreciation. He hadn’t made some joke about the state I let the house get into.
He’d just noticed the dishes and done them.
Maybe that’s what got me.
I was used to men who claimed they wanted to help. Or ones who asked what I needed. But there was something different about a man seeing something that needs to be done and simply… doing it. Without direction or expectation.
And that, yeah, that was a good man in my estimation.
“But?”
“But I’m so not interested in dating right now. Or maybe ever again.”
Gracie winced at that.
We both knew why. She’d been right there in the aftermath of the last time I’d trusted a man… and had him blow my whole life up. She wouldn’t blame me for never wanting to go through that again.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t be pushy. You don’t need a man. You just created a whole human being. Who I plan to hold at some point. Maybe while you take a shower,” she added, glancing up at my greasy hair.
“I will take you up on that,” I agreed.
Suddenly, I knew it was all going to be all right.
No matter how sleepless I got, how disconnected from the world I felt, no matter how many things in my house broke, it was going to be okay.
I had more people looking out for me than I even realized.
Including, it seemed, my handyman.
CHAPTER FOUR
Owen
“Just gonna stop here for fifteen minutes, bud,” I told the Golden Retriever lounging in my passenger seat, still smelling strongly of the coconut/pineapple finishing cologne from the groomer.
He looked beat.
Probably from all the tail-wagging and tongue kisses he’d given everyone he’d come in contact with since I dropped him off and picked him up again.
If you were looking for a lovable oaf with hardly two brain cells to rub together, Tuna was the dog for the job.
“I just gotta check on the bathroom,” I told him as I parked in Willa’s driveway.
I didn’t need to check on the bathroom.
It had only been two days.
There was almost no way the space was dried out enough to do more work.
But, yeah, there I was.
“Don’t honk the horn, okay?” I asked, making sure the heat was on and the window cracked. “There’s a baby in there.”
With that, I climbed out of the van and made my way to the front door.
On my way, I spotted Willa in the living room window with a cup of tea in her hands.