Page 244 of Santa Daddies
Grab her some food.
His brother sent him back a thumbs up. He better not be checking his phone while driving.
Anson turned on the oven. The fridge was already on.
“I think it’s getting warmer in here, don’t you?” she asked as she walked into the kitchen. “Oh no! I don’t have any food.”
Because she’d left it all at his place.
“Joey is onto that.” He wished he could get her everything she needed. That he didn’t have to rely on others for help.
Then again, that would mean being away from her.
“Oh, that’s kind of him. Thanks again for helping me. I hate being a burden.”
“You could never be a burden,” he told her.
She gave him a small smile. “Never say never. I have it on good authority that I’m pretty dumb and useless.”
Anger filled him. And he had to fight hard to keep his breathing normal. Because he just knew that wasn’t her talking. That was the asshole who had abused her.
“Who told you that?” he asked.
“No one,” she said hastily. “I think I’ll go check the hot water.”
A smart idea, but he wasn’t going to let her run off.
“I looked in your book,” he told her.
She turned to him. He moved to the sofa by the fireplace and sat. His leg was still aching, but it wasn’t as bad when he was sitting.
Maybe he should have held that information back, but he wanted honesty between them.
“I know you did. You told me.”
“No, I mean that I looked at more than just the stuff you wrote about me. After you left that is.”
“What . . . what exactly did you read?” she asked, sitting in an armchair across from him.
It was definitely getting warmer in here. But having the fire on would warm the place up even more.
“It’s not a diary, is it? It doesn’t read like a diary.”
“In a way, it kind of is, I guess. I don’t write in a diary format and not everything in it is stuff that I’ve seen or experienced. Some of it is pure fiction.”
“It is?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’m . . . they’re ideas for stories. Romance books. But I wasn’t going to write about you . . . just take aspects from you. Maybe bits of your personality to put into a book. It would never have been about you, I promise. However, I can see why you thought that.”
“I get that now and I’m not worried about that. You can use pieces of me in your books if you want.”
She breathed out a sigh and nodded.
“You’ve published a book?”
Her face lit up in a way that he hadn’t seen before. Pure joy and happiness and it took his breath away. He hadn’t seen that look on her face before, but he wished she looked like that all the time.
Could he help her find that level of happiness permanently?
