Total pages in book: 9
Estimated words: 7742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 39(@200wpm)___ 31(@250wpm)___ 26(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 7742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 39(@200wpm)___ 31(@250wpm)___ 26(@300wpm)
She’s a girl I want to protect from the dangerous things in the world, not one of the groupies that gather outside the stage door now that I’m a rock star, too.
Genny isn’t a one-night stand kind of girl. She’s too serious and intense for that. And she feels things way too deeply.
Even more importantly, on the night of our first kiss five years ago, she was only seventeen.
But now she’s all grown up. And so am I.
And the holidays are made for magic and second chances…right?
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
GENEVIEVE FRANCES HALLORAN
A woman on the verge of drowning in cat hair and despair…
Hindsight really is 20/20, even when a twenty-five-pound cat with one eye, three teeth, and a rusty meow is all that stands between you and certain doom.
Looking back, it’s easy to spot the domino I never should have let fall…
If only I’d demanded my share of our tips before Bryce and I closed the bar for the holidays. If only I’d held strong against his claims that taking our entire Friday night haul was the only way he could afford presents for his two kids and baby mama, Elana, a saint who deserves better than a flake like Bryce who’s never met a special occasion he couldn’t screw up by failing to plan ahead.
If I’d taken home my tips, I wouldn’t have been fifty dollars short on rent.
And if I hadn’t been short on rent, Carl, my heartless, Dickensian landlord wouldn’t have changed the locks on my stupid apartment while I was out grabbing my pitiful Christmas Eve cheeseburger dinner and refused to let me back in until I paid my debt.
And if I hadn’t been locked out, I never would have ended up here, at my Aunt Kirby’s house, breaking in through the kitchen window, tumbling onto the floor in a tangle of bruised limbs, and barely punching the security code into the alarm in time to avoid a visit from the Hidden Kill Bay police.
I thought that was it, the worst of it, and I was finally safe for the night.
Aunt Kirby and her husband Colin are out of town with my parents and the other original Lips on Fire band members. The band’s playing a reunion show at some swanky casino in the Bahamas and then they’re all staying on the island through New Year’s Eve for a break from the Maine winter quickly locking our sleepy coastal town in its icy grip.
But Aunt Kirby wouldn’t care that I broke in and plan on staying here until I head back to work on Monday, get my tips, and pay Carl the Wretched the money I owe him. Kirby is the coolest. I have no doubt she would have told me where the spare key is and encouraged me to raid her pantry for snacks if I’d been able to get a call to connect to her cell down there in the tropics.
She isn’t really my aunt, but she might as well be. I grew up hanging out in her office upstairs in the attic, writing poems in my journal while she banged away on her ancient typewriter. I’d pretend I was a famous author like her while the rest of the kids rampaged through the downstairs playing tag or hide-and-seek or that game Panic made up where you had to get from the second floor to the basement without touching the carpet.
Panic…
He’s everywhere in this house, memories of the children we were and the mortifying things I said to him the last time we were in this room together make my cheeks burn with shame.
I avoid making direct eye contact with his blue gaze staring down at me from the family portrait above the fireplace as I’m perched on the back of the couch like an unkempt gargoyle.
If I’d known I was going to get locked out of my apartment, I would have brushed my hair instead of shoving it up under my polka dot sock cap and swept on some lip balm to protect my lips from the winter wind. And if I’d remembered that Aunt Kirby’s latest crop of rescue cats are of the opinion that everyone, save Kirby, is a monster person who should be ripped to shreds with their freshly sharpened claws, I would never have dared enter with food in hand.
“Good kitties,” I whisper, my wobbly voice echoing through the eerily silent house as I toss another chunk of hamburger to the predators prowling the carpet in front of me. They pounce on it, hissing and scratching as they battle for a chunk of the treat. “But I’m almost out of goodies. So, you’re going to have to let me off the couch and over to the stairs. Okay?”