Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
The drive to Birdee’s place took all of five minutes, and when I got there, it was to find her halfway down the road ready to walk to work.
I pulled over and rolled my window down. “Get in!”
She was wearing head-to-toe black, dressed warmly in a thick North Face jacket and pants. Her boots were solid and thick, and the only thing I could see of her face were her eyes and her nose. Her perfectly red nose.
She tilted her head. “What are you doing here?”
I leaned over and threw the truck door open. “Get in.”
She contemplated it for a few seconds, but then a gust of wind swept past, taking with it a tuft of snow from the road and spraying it into her face.
She wiped it off, then climbed in.
“Thank you,” she said softly once she had the truck door closed.
I waited for her to strip free of some of her layers before saying, “I stopped by the coffee shop, and the owner gave me your order.”
She froze with her gaze on the cup of ‘coffee.’
“Reyelle gave you my order?” I asked.
“She did,” I confirmed. “She also saved some special pastry for you.”
She looked at the box next. “Did she really?”
I nudged the box toward her. “She did.”
“Ohh,” she breathed.
When she had her seat belt on and she was situated with a scone in one hand and her coffee in the other, I swung the truck around and headed to her work.
“How’d you know to go there?” she asked.
“One coffee shop in town, babe.” I chuckled. “Other than Starbucks, and you don’t strike me as a franchise girl.”
“I’m not,” she admitted as we came to a stop near the diner in town.
She looked over and froze, her gaze lingering on three people in the front window of the diner.
Cody, Vito, and Mable.
She looked away, not saying anything, and took a small bite of her scone.
“These are my favorite,” she admitted. “Which Reyelle knows. Every good memory I have from childhood was spent at Shade’s house with Reyelle.”
“Shade, your friend that gave the lime to Mable?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
Birdee’s shoulders slumped. “He’s a great person. Truly, he is. He’s just…protective. For the longest time, Mable was enemy number three for me.”
“Who was number one and two?”
“My mom and dad,” she admitted, purposefully not looking at the diner and the three laughing people there. “Shade’s protective. He saw everything from my point of view. He was always there for me when I needed someone. But he does have impulse control issues. I don’t think he would’ve normally done it if he’d had more time to think about his actions.”
I snorted. “He’s lucky he only lost his job when he did that.”
“I know,” she sighed. “He’s really a good person. Will give you the shirt off his back. But he’s seriously got issues when it comes to the people that he loves being hurt.”
I was thankful when the light turned green and she finally allowed some of the tension in her shoulders to relax.
She reached for the coffee, and another thought occurred to me. “Reyelle mentioned you have a heart condition…”
“Long QT syndrome,” she answered before I could form the question. “I’ve always had issues with dizziness and fainting. In college, though, I started having seizures. When I went to the doctor, they found that I had a prolonged QT interval. That’s part of the heartbeat in layman’s terms. I’m on beta blockers now that help with it, but I was told that I can’t have any caffeine at all.”
“What about chocolate?” I asked.
“I’m going to pretend to not have heard you. As far as I’m concerned, chocolate doesn’t have caffeine.”
My stomach clenched.
“But it does…”
“La-la-la-la.” She covered her ears with a hand holding a scone, and the other holding her coffee.
My lips twitched.
“I’m doing way better. I have some palpitations at night when I go to bed. Some dizziness. But overall, I’m doing okay,” she said. “Thank you for the latte and the snacks.”
“They’re yours,” I said as I pulled up to her job and shut the truck off. “I’ll help you get it all inside.”
She grabbed her jacket and I grabbed the pastries and her drink, as well as my own.
She let me into the building, and then I started to look around. “I guess I never really thought that you would just have snakes all over the place like this.”
I looked at the wall to ceiling cages that housed multiple types of venomous snakes.
“Pretty cool, huh?” she asked.
“Very.” I dropped down to look at one rather large rattlesnake. “How many kinds of snakes do you have here?”
“Since the region of Montana we’re in only has one type of venomous snake—the prairie rattlesnake—that’s mostly all that we have on hand, this being a local business. There are other, much bigger companies that’ll do all of them, but the owner of this one doesn’t see the need. We have some frozen for other venomous snakes found throughout the country, but mostly we don’t need them.”