Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Friendly.
I doubted I’d ever think of Gage Buchanan in terms described as friendly, but I could pretend, couldn’t I? Because he might be able to help me in my current endeavor. He might be able to shed some light in places where I couldn’t.
Gage opened the bottle and poured two glasses of wine as I took a seat in one of the backless chrome barstools that was much more comfortable than it appeared. He handed me the wine and then clinked my glass. “To Ernest—”
“Buffalobeam,” I finished with a laugh.
Gage grinned, placing his glass on the counter, then picking up a towel and tossing it over his shoulder. “I hope you’re not averse to carbs.”
“I never met a carb I didn’t love.”
“Okay, good.” I watched him as he collected ingredients from the refrigerator and placed them on the counter, and then opened a large drawer at the base of the cabinets and chose a pan. When he turned his back again, I glanced into the open door at the other side of his condo, the corner of a bed barely visible. That goose trampled back over my grave, causing my nipples to harden. God, what would it be like to have access to Gage Buchanan in a bed for an entire night?
Stop thinking about that, Rory.
But apparently, I didn’t even listen to myself, because a small voice in my head answered, Perfect, that’s what it would be like.
I’m not as perfect as I seem.
If you’re not perfect, what are you?
I don’t know.
The words Gage had said to me in the heat of passion came back to me and I paused as I brought the wine glass to my mouth. What had he meant by that? In the moment, I’d just been responding to his utterances with my own, a free flow of thoughts uninhibited by walls or rationale. Passion had burned all that to the ground.
I’m not as perfect as I seem.
Interesting. But honestly? None of my concern.
“So tell me about Mud Gulch,” he said, setting a cutting board on the counter and reaching over his shoulder to pull out a knife without even looking.
“Mud Gulch. What’s there to say about Mud Gulch?”
He smiled as he began chopping an onion into quarters. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
I gestured to where he was expertly chopping some green leafy thing I couldn’t even name. “Can I help?”
He slid what he’d been chopping off the knife into a silver bowl next to the board. “Nope. I’ve got this. You entertain me.”
“Entertain you? Ha.” I took a sip of wine. “You want a story about Mud Gulch? Okay, there is this legend…”
“Ohhh,” he dragged out the word, “I love a good legend.”
“It’s named Mud Gulch because when the early settlers first landed on our shore, the mud in the valley at the edge of town mysteriously pulled at the feet of some, and didn’t with others. The Indigenous people explained that the earth there connects to human heartbeats, staking claim to some, and not to others—for mysterious reasons unknown, of course.”
A smile floated around his beautifully shaped lips, his eyes held on his working hands, now chopping garlic so fast, the knife was practically a blur. “It asks some to stay and tells others they’re free to go?”
“So the legend says. Only, no one really believes it at this point. It’s just a fun story that probably has to do with the shoes you’re wearing as you walk through the valley of mud.”
“So, your family was wearing the right shoes, I take it?” he asked as he dropped pasta into the water now boiling on the stove top.
“Or wrong, depending on your opinion of life in Mud Gulch. But yes, according to legend, the earth pulled at my ancestors and asked them to stay.” I thought it was more likely the sea and the need to feed their families compelled them to make a home there, as I came from a long line of fishermen. But whatever the case, generations of Casteels had raised children in that small fishing town, enough of them feeling the pull to stay that, a hundred and fifty years later, we remained there still.
“And you?” he asked. “Has the mud staked its claim on you?” Something moved across his face, an expression that was too fleeting for me to attempt to name.
I took a long sip of wine and then shook my head as I swallowed. “No. I’ve always felt this pull…elsewhere.” I thought about how being here had seemed to free my thoughts surrounding that incessant pull. Perhaps I’d been scared to attach it to my paternal parentage because doing so would make it seem like I wasn’t appreciative of all the sacrifices my mother’s family had made for my sake, and the fact that I’d been loved so well. “It’s so difficult to explain because even I don’t understand it completely. Maybe the pull is just from inside of me…all of my unanswered questions, my longing to know who and where the other half of me came from… Or maybe it was my father,” I said, the words releasing on a breath, the admittance making me quake inside just a bit. “Calling to me in some mysterious way.”