Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Madden giggled again and cried. “It’s your board!”
Jesse cracked a smile. “Oh. Right. Well, whatever. When you own all of Misted Pines and I’m late on rent, remember what a good loser I was.”
Madden burst into gales of laughter.
Rus grinned at Lucinda at the same time wondering if this might be a good read of the future for Madden, successful Misted Pines tycoon.
Lucinda smiled back, knowing it was.
They’d been playing Monopoly for an hour and a half.
Rus had purposefully lost half an hour ago, not a difficult feat since the Bonner women were relentless.
However, he did this because he wasn’t into board games seeing as, when he was growing up, not allowed TV or a ton of other activities kids should be allowed to do, they played a lot board games.
Now, he hated them.
Since Jesse was out, the only ones left were Lucinda and her daughter, both with huge piles of money in front of them.
Obviously, Lucinda had brought Madden for dinner, and Rus was pleased she did.
He was because Madden had lost Brittanie, and more than usual, she needed her mom. Also because Rus loved watching them together, seeing as they were so damned cute. Last, he knew it was Lucinda’s indication she was putting no pressure on him to take what was happening between them further when he had other things he should be thinking about.
And her understanding his need to focus meant a lot to him.
Oh yeah.
And, since she brought her daughter, he’d learned the important fact she was insanely competitive, so was her girl, which was important to know.
“Call it a draw?” Lucinda asked Madden.
Madden brought her hands up in front of her and twiddled her fingers together, a move akin to what Rus had seen her mother do a couple of days ago.
“No, we’re in it until the bitter end,” Madden announced.
Watching this, Rus thought Disney had missed the boat.
They shouldn’t have been focusing on the singing, dancing fairy princesses.
They should show young girls how awesome it was to be the cunning queen.
On this thought, he felt something strange and looked to Delphine, who had her eyes aimed at the kitchen.
The expression on her face told him what he’d see even before he peered over his shoulder to follow her gaze.
Jace had opted out of the game but had hung with them until he’d wandered to the kitchen with his dad, after Bohannan had done what Rus had done, and successfully lost early.
Jace was now walking out of the kitchen toward the doors to the back deck, Bohannan with a face full of worry watching him go.
That night, Rus had found it surprising they’d all known Delphine for what amounted to a short time, considering she was so close to Celeste, it seemed she was her mother. And she doted in a loving, shovel-a-lot-of-shit way on Jesse and Jason, which also appeared like she was the proud mom of two grown men.
Part of Rus’s job was to get a bead on people and places. But if he’d walked in this house with no information, he would have told you Bohannan and Delphine had been married for thirty years and had three great kids.
Delphine being perfectly in tune to what Bohannan was right then perfectly in tune to said it all.
Rus shot Lucinda a look, glanced through a concerned Celeste and Jesse, who had his eyes to the back door and a muscle jumping in his cheek, both of them clearly having decided to give Jace space, and made a decision.
He rose from his chair.
“Excuse me,” he murmured.
He took his beer and headed outside.
The air was chill in that wet way that made a little cold seem biting.
Jace was on the end of the back deck, staring into a heavy fog, which clung to the lake so thick it almost cloaked it, and it encroached toward the house, so all Jace had to do was step off the deck and he’d disappear in it.
Rus came to stand next to him.
“That’s a lot of fog,” he noted.
“Hot springs,” Jace replied. “In the summer, smooth as glass and you can see from here to the other end of the lake, which is a hike. Minute it gets cold, though, the warm off the water hits the air…” He took a drag from his beer, swallowed, and explained, “Misted Pines.”
Absolutely Misted Pines.
“That’s got to be a lot of hot springs,” Rus remarked.
“That’s what everyone says,” Jace replied. “The good, we could swim right now, and it’d feel like summer. The bad, mist hides shit, so if they drained this lake, the bottom is probably covered end to end in bones.”
Another indication of the lore this town carried.
“Harry told me there were stories,” Rus shared.
“Yeah. He tell you of the buried treasure?”
Of course there was buried treasure.
“Nope, he failed to mention that.”