Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69303 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69303 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
That made me angry, until her next words stopped me.
“And you know what’s super funny?” she asked as she looked at me over her shoulder. “All of my student loans are paid off. All of them. Oh, and that loan that I took out to help pay for my brother’s defense? Also paid off. How weird is that?”
I bit my lip.
She narrowed her eyes, then shook her head before continuing on. “This is my favorite.”
I blinked. “Where did you find this?”
“Tractor Supply,” she answered as she shifted from foot to foot in excitement. “What do you think?”
“I think that you’re going to have to find a place to put a nine-foot highland cow decorated in Christmas lights,” I mused. “But it’s kind of cool.”
“It’s so cool!” she corrected me. “I had some help with this one.”
“From who?”
“That’d be me,” Jasper grumbled from behind me. “Are those cookies?”
“Cookies?” Dru whipped around, looking everywhere for the cookies.
Except from this angle, Rudolph’s head was blocking the box.
“Yeah, I stopped and got some,” I said. “I also ordered a latte machine that should’ve come in. Did y’all see it?”
“I took it inside when I got here,” Jasper continued to grumble. “Am I done, Dru?”
“You are.” She smiled sweetly. “Take a cookie!”
Jasper took the entire box and walked into the house.
Obviously, his “am I done” meant “can I go inside and eat these cookies.”
“I like him a lot,” she whispered. “He’s extra grumpy today. Apparently his new neighbor is a real bitch.”
I scoffed. “He’ll eat all of them. Come on, let’s get in there.”
Then she took my hand and we walked hand in hand into the house.
Or we would have had a golf cart not pulled up before we could close the door.
“Mr. Reins,” a nasally voice called out. “May I speak to you a moment?”
“Go inside and make sure that he doesn’t eat everything,” I ordered. “I want one of the snickerdoodles.”
She took off like she was shot from a cannon yelling, “Don’t you dare eat all those, Jasper ‘Hush’ Madden!”
I snorted and closed the door on them, happy that they were getting along.
Jasper was a good guy.
His life was about to irrevocably change, and he had no clue.
I was thinking he could use a good few days, because shit was about to hit the fan for him.
“What can I help you with, Mr. Worth?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
I pulled out my phone as the man walked up the length of my walk, stepping in my grass instead of using the concrete.
Asshole.
“Get off the grass,” I mumbled as I used my phone to hack into the HOA’s shit, via Mr. Worth’s personal phone.
Worth’s entire being was this stupid HOA.
He lived, breathed, and dreamed fucking people’s lives up.
I usually ignored it, because I didn’t care.
But my girl did care, and I wouldn’t have them fucking with her happiness.
It took me all of five minutes to get into Worth’s phone and through his phone into the HOA’s bylaws.
I went ahead and changed everything in there that I could to “free to decorate as desired” and deleted everything else off the server that I could find.
Once I was done, I sent the new bylaws on decorating to everyone in the neighborhood, being sure to highlight the new changes and backdate it to three days ago, and shoved the phone into my pocket.
“Now, it’s all very cute, but it’s going to have to go,” Worth continued talking, as if I hadn’t been ignoring him for the last five minutes.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said as I pulled out my phone and toggled to my email. “But this email went out a few days ago about decorations, and it was stated that we could decorate how we want at Christmas.”
He frowned. “It most certainly did not!”
I pulled up my email and showed it to him.
He reached for my phone, but I shook my head. “Sorry, Mr. Worth, but I don’t like people touching my phone. Germs are pretty bad right now, and I’d like to keep the flu away as long as possible.”
Worth dropped his hand, but reached for his own phone once he realized he needed to check out what I was saying.
He frowned so hard that the divots in between his eyes started to tremble with the strain.
“What on earth?” he asked. “That’s…that’s not…I didn’t send that!”
“It says it came from you.” I smiled. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my family is in there eating all the cookies without me.”
He grumbled and started to hurry toward his golf cart.
I went inside while chuckling to myself.
Maybe I should’ve done this years ago.
Tavi would’ve loved having more decorations than simple, boring lights.
Hell, I’d already bucked tradition and put up colored ones because he loved them.
I came to a stop in the living room when I saw the massive tree that was taking up most of the room.