Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 62643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
“Hey. What brings you by?” I asked my sister, sounding as casual as a man could when ninety-nine percent of his blood supply refused to circulate above his waist. “Come to see how your paint swatches dried? Or did you want to make sure I wasn’t mistreating the turkey?”
“Hmm?” Alana tossed her designer handbag onto the dusty worktable by the door, her attention still focused on Charlie, who’d fired up the engine on the side-by-side. “Oh. Neither. I told Mom I’d help her bake desserts this afternoon.” She gave a curled-finger wave in Charlie’s direction before turning toward me with a dramatic sigh. “Good gravy. That man is hot as hell and a total sweetie pie to boot.” She sighed again. “Too bad he’s gay.”
As the words trailed off, she seemed to realize that she knew an eligible gay man who should be benefitting from this situation, and her eyebrows rose to her hairline. “Speaking of which—”
“No,” I barked. “Don’t say it. Do not—”
“—now that your date is over and your feud is finished, you should totally hit that!”
“Nobody uses that phrase anymore,” I said desperately. “Besides, you heard what I said last night. Charlie is persona non grata—”
“Oh, I heard alright,” Alana agreed, stalking closer and using her laser-eye-contact power on me, though I tried valiantly to put up my shields. “But that was before you went and spent two thousand dollars on the man, then paraded him around the town square.”
“Nothing’s changed,” I insisted, not sure which of us I was trying to convince anymore. “He stole—”
“If you mention Dolly Parton again, I’m going to get violent.” Alana set her hands on her hips. “You know how much I loved that turkey. I treated him like my own personal baby doll whenever I could get away with it. Remember how annoyed you’d get when you caught me making him flower necklaces and putting him in my doll carriage? And even I think you’re being ridiculous. Charlton didn’t hurt Dolly. He brought him home safe and sound. Heck, he’d given the bird a bath.”
“Even so.”
This comment provoked a withering look I was pretty sure I deserved. “You’re just looking for excuses, aren’t you? I know that three-quarters of your personality is pure stubbornness, Hunter, and most of the time, that’s a good thing. It led you to build a huge, thriving business when other folks might’ve settled for good enough. Keeps Mom from setting you up with a different man every day of the week and two on Sunday. It makes you take on huge jobs—” She waved a hand to indicate the barn renovation. “—even if it means learning as you go. But stubborn as you are, it’s not like you to be closed-minded. Or mean. Or angry at someone who wasn’t much older than little Jack Nutter when this incident happened. So what gives?”
“I… I don’t know,” I admitted, running a hand over my face. I was confused by my own feelings. Hell, I was confused to find I had feelings at all. Two days ago, I’d have told anyone with perfect sincerity that I hadn’t thought of Junior Nutter in years, and now… Now I wondered if all along he’d been like the gap in my mouth after I’d had a tooth knocked out in Little League—an empty spot where something used to be, a bruise I couldn’t stop pressing.
When Charlie had reappeared, my first instinct had been to remind everyone of the bad things he’d done. Turkeynapping. Friendship-betraying. Abandoning me—I mean, everyone in the Thicket—for his fancy life. I’d been provoking and defensive. I’d been grumpy. I’d wanted to teach him a lesson.
But with every one of his sweet smiles and eye rolls, every sexy turkey twerk and impassioned conversation about his career, every hour watching him sand my floor with tongue-between-his-teeth concentration, and every riled-up, mind-melting kiss, the person learning their lesson was me.
No matter what happened during The Great Turkey Incident fifteen years ago, the Charlie Nutter of today was a good person. A person I could like. A person I wanted.
Badly.
“Look, just hear me out,” Alana went on. “Why not have a holiday fling with the hot turkey?”
Her statement so closely aligned with my own thoughts that I fumbled the scraps of used sandpaper I’d been collecting from the floor. “Wha—? No. We’re not talking about this, Alana.”
“A long weekend is the optimal length of time for a fling. He’ll be gone before Mom can get any ideas in her head—”
I shot her a disbelieving look. Our mother could go from zero to sixty ideas in under a second, faster than a luxury sports car.
“Before she can act on them, then,” Alana corrected. “And since he probably won’t be back anytime soon, there’ll be no tricky relationship entanglements. You should go after him now, Hunter. Today. Go pluck that bird!”