Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Not offering another detail more, Delaney spun back around to take in her dress and boot options once more. She waffled yet again. “Maybe the booties—”
“No, the boots, Delaney. The boots,” her cousin stressed. “Because it looks sexy as hell with that loose sweater dress look, you know? Yeah, a peek of your thighs will show—good. That’s the point. Skin doesn’t mean touch me. Also, you rock those boots.”
Bexley made good points.
“Good for you,” Delaney muttered.
“What?”
She smiled, turning around to face Bexley before bending down to remove the suede ankle boot. “You actually said hell—I mean it’s not Jesus, but …”
Bexley rolled her eyes. “Just because I’m taking a healthy break from my faith doesn’t mean I think we should do things vainly.”
“Mmhmm.”
At least, one of them had given that part of their life some thought. Lucas’ unwanted Bible remained untouched on the corner of her workstation, tucked behind the jar of Barbicide, at the salon. And of course, her cross necklace remained around her throat, but she didn’t give God much more thought. For the moment, she couldn’t emotionally or mentally afford to.
One thing at a time …
“So, what time is the date again?” Bexley asked.
Delaney fell to the end of her platform, queen size bed. The pale pink duvet fluffed up around her at the bottoms. As she worked her size seven foot into the leather boot, she told her cousin, “I’ve got half an hour before he’s supposed to show up outside.”
Which meant she managed to finish her makeup and get her hair curled into soft waves before having just enough time to pick an outfit. With that done, Delaney could breathe for a bit before her evening really got started. Just because she wouldn’t put out for a man on a first date had no bearing on the fact that she wanted to—in fact, the man hadn’t left her mind.
“A half an hour? That so?” Bexley asked.
“Yep, why?”
“And his name is …?”
Delaney gave her cousin a knock it off look. “Lucas. Lucas Dalton. Mind your business. Otherwise, if I don’t call or text at least once an hour, call the po-po and pass the name along. You can even write down the plate number for good measure. Okay?”
She was joking. Mostly. It wasn’t Delaney’s first date.
Bexley rolled her eyes at the extremes, but she snickered as she exited the room as fast as she came, muttering, “The po-po … Something is wrong with you.”
Nope.
Delaney was just fine—most of the time. It was everybody else that didn’t get things right.
Chapter 10
The noisy ringtone cut through the music on the radio, dragging Lucas’ attention away from the road for a mere moment. Long enough to see who was calling, and to roll his eyes at the name on the dashboard.
J. Dalton, it read.
No surprise there.
His gaze went back to the road while he picked up the call from his younger brother using the button on his steering wheel. Without a proper hello. “Didn’t I tell you that I was meeting up with—”
“Delaney, yeah. At six. That’s why I’m calling,” Jacob interrupted like it should have been obvious to his brother. “To make sure everything was good, you know?”
“Mmhmm.” Lucas didn’t believe that for a second. “Not to see if you could pry more details out of me?”
About the date.
Delaney.
Anything at all.
Jacob tried for every bit of it only to get Lucas’s somber stonewalling in response. There wasn’t much to tell—yet. Maybe he would when—or if—that changed. Lucas couldn’t say. He had an entire evening to get through with Delaney yet.
His brother’s chuckles echoed over the rental car’s speakers. “My bad for being interested in your life when you finally have something interesting going on, bro.”
He did have a point there.
Lucas still refused to concede. “Was it just your interest when you tried to get her last name out of me?”
“Nah, that was for research purposes. The online kind. The type you can’t do because you won’t get out of the stone ages and make a fucking social media profile. Even the brewery has its own pages, man.”
Lucas didn’t dignify the comment with a response because there wouldn’t be one worth his breath. A waste of his time.
Nothing about mindlessly scrolling a glowing feed on the screen of his phone or laptop to watch the online lives of acquaintances and strangers play out appealed to him, and he wouldn’t apologize for not pretending that it did to please his brother.
Besides, he doubted there was much about Delaney Reed—online or otherwise—for Jacob to find that Lucas hadn’t already learned about the young woman. A social media profile felt like a resume in the way it laid out a person’s age, interests, and surface history attached to a smiling photo or candid shot with friends.
He knew those things already.
Because she told him.