The Postie (Heartstrings of Honor #5)

Chapter 1

Jeremiah

Iwas twenty feet from freedom when Cuddles sank her teeth into my shirt and tried to drag me down like a gazelle in a nature documentary.

“Let go, you ribbon-wearing hellbeast!” I shouted, bolting up the cobbled walkway with the town’s most deceptively named golden retriever snarling and frothing behind me, her not-so-precious teeth latched onto the back hem of my uniform shirt.

She wore a pink satin bow behind one ear like she’d just come from a spa.

I wasn’t fooled.

Cuddles had bloodlust in her eyes and a vendetta in her soul.

At the picket fence gate, I made the executive decision to tear free.

Literally.

Fabric ripped, buttons flew, and I launched myself forward with the desperation of a man pursued by medieval sword-wielding tax collectors.

I landed in a bed of disappointed hydrangeas.

Cuddles huffed and returned to stand proudly on the porch behind me, half my shirt clenched between her teeth like a trophy.

The fluffy shit wasn’t even breathing hard, pride glinting in her eyes, as though she’d had a job to do—and she’d done it well.

I picked myself up, brushed mulch off my knees, and assessed the damage.

My uniform shirt hung open like a navy blue cape, revealing pretty much everything the company paying my bills preferred to keep covered. My truck was packed full of packages, and the sun was beginning to set, so there was no time to run home for a fresh shirt.

“Great,” I muttered, gathering the scattered buttons. “Just great.”

The package in the bag slung over my shoulder had somehow survived the attack, which was more than I could say for my dignity—or my poor shirt. I walked a few doors around the dead-end cul-de-sac and checked the package’s address again:

Mrs. Vivian Rodriguez, 44 Maple Street.

The rectangular box was wrapped in discreet brown paper that practically screamed, “online shopping from stores that don’t put their name on the box—for good reason.”

Stopping before a small house with blue and white shutters, I wiped the sweat from my brow and sucked in a steadying breath, then chanced a glance backward to find Cuddles still staring from her throne on the porch.

Evil golden retriever and her vicious teeth.

I turned back to the Rodriguez house. It was the kind of place where someone arranged their garden gnomes in perfect formation and probably ironed their dish towels. Even the doormat was perfectly aligned.

Everything was so neat it felt unnatural. It actually made me nervous.

And . . . of course, this was a “signature required” package. I couldn’t simply drop, buzz, and go.

Awesomeness.

I stepped up the two concrete stairs, tried—and failed—to make my shirt stay somewhat closed without its buttons. It turned out that holding my shirt closed with one hand while balancing a package with the other and trying to press a doorbell was much harder than I imagined.

The sound of tiny feet approached—not the clomping adult footsteps I’d expected.

The door swung open to reveal a girl who couldn’t have been more than five years old sporting pigtails and dinosaur pajamas. She looked up at me with bright, curious eyes and a smile that could’ve powered half the neighborhood.

“Hi!” she chirped. “You’re tall.”

I glanced around, expecting an adult to appear at any second. When none did, I crouched down to her level, still clutching my shirt closed.

“Hey there, sweetie. Are you the lady of the house?”

She giggled—a pure, delighted sound that made something warm unfurl in my chest. “Uh-huh!”

“Well then, I’ve got a special delivery for you.” I handed her the package, figuring her parents were probably just around the corner. Kids her age didn’t usually answer doors by themselves, but maybe her mom was in the bathroom or something.

That’s when the package began to vibrate.

The little girl’s eyes went wide. “Ooh! It’s moving! Is it alive? Is it a puppy? Or a pony? Please tell me it’s a pony! Or a unicorn! It’s a unicorn, isn’t it?”

“Uh . . .” I stared at the buzzing box in her tiny hands, my brain trying to process what was happening. “No, sweetie, it’s not—”

But she was already tearing at the brown paper with the single-minded determination of a kid on Christmas morning. “It’s like a present! A buzzy present!”

“Wait, maybe we should—” I reached out to stop her, but it was too late.

The packaging gave way to reveal a sleek black box with marketing that was definitely, unmistakably, absolutely not meant for five-year-old eyes.

The product inside continued its enthusiastic demonstration, and I felt my soul leave my body.

“What is it?” she asked, removing the wildly vibrating lady’s pleasure wand and hefting it above her head, posing like a miniature Statue of Liberty. She stared with innocent fascination, turning it this way and that like she was examining a scientific specimen.

My brain performed the mental equivalent of a complete system shutdown. Every rational thought I’d ever had fled like rats from a sinking ship. The little girl blinked up, waiting expectantly for an answer that I absolutely did not have.

“It’s, uh . . .” My mouth was moving before my brain could catch up. For absolutely no logical reason, my mind landed on lunch. “It’s a kitchen tool . . . for making pasta noodles.”

She tilted her head thoughtfully, still examining the vibrating device. “At least it has squishy handles. That’s so it won’t slip out of your hand, right? They kind of look like balls. Why would they put balls on a pasta maker? It’s so weird.”

“The weirdest,” I confirmed weakly, wondering if there was a patron saint of postal workers I could pray to in that moment. “It . . . uh . . . stirs them up with the sauce really well, makes sure every noodle . . . um . . . gets splattered.”

Jesus, what was coming out of my mouth?

I could feel the trauma clawing its way up my neck, likely making me look all red and embarrassed and wanting to jump behind the nearby hedge.

“Daddy!” she called over her shoulder, still holding the item like it was show-and-tell. “The mailman brought us a pasta maker!”

Footsteps thundered down what sounded like stairs, followed by a voice that made every nerve ending in my body stand at attention.

“Debbie, what did I tell you about answering the door by your—oh my God.”

I stood to find a guy who looked like he’d just tumbled out of a science fair.

He was skinny, almost scrawny, and only rose to my shoulder.

His brown hair stuck up in about twelve different directions, and wire-rimmed glasses had slipped down his nose.

His cardigan looked soft enough to nap in, and his face was cycling through approximately seventeen different expressions, none of which looked good.

“Daddy, look what the mailman brought us!” Debbie announced cheerfully, holding up the still-buzzing device. “He says it’s for making pasta, but I think it’s broken. All it does is wiggle, like it’s trying to bust out of its own skin. But look, it has ball handles. That’s good, right?”

I bit my bottom lip and tried not to die.

The man stared at the scene before him: me, half dressed and standing on his doorstep like some kind of demented stripper turned postal worker; his five-year-old holding a massive black vibrator; and the vibrator itself, which seemed determined to make this moment as mortifying as possible, switching from fast to intermittent to “rock your world” mode .

. . at random . . . like it was a store display cycling through its levels to illustrate every possible feature.

His mouth opened and closed several times, like a fish trying to figure out how it had ended up on dry land.

“That’s . . .” he started, his voice about three octaves higher than it probably usually was. “Debbie, that’s not . . . we don’t . . .”

“Can we have pasta for dinner? Please?” she asked with the kind of earnest curiosity that had probably gotten humanity expelled from the Garden of Eden. “Mr. Mailman, tell Daddy to make pasta. I want to see the Willie Wee work.”

The man covered his face with both hands.

“Well . . .” I looked desperately between the pair. “It’s for . . . very specialized pasta.”

The man made a sound that might have been a whimper.

“What kind of pasta?” Debbie pressed, because of course she did.

“The . . .” I cast around wildly for inspiration. “The really . . . twisty kind they serve in fancy restaurants.”

“Like rotini?”

“Sure,” I said weakly. “Like rotini.”

The man stepped fully into view then, and I forgot about the vibrator, Cuddles, and my missing shirt buttons.

Even flustered and mortified, with his hair sticking up and his cheeks flushed, he was adorable.

It was the kind of cuteness that made my knees wobble and my carefully practiced charm abandon me completely.

“I am so sorry,” he said, reaching for the device with hands that were visibly shaking. “Debbie, we need to give this back to the mailman right now.”

“But I want to see how it makes pasta!” she protested.

“It’s, um, broken,” the man managed, his voice doing that squeaky thing again. “Very broken. We’ll . . . we’ll get you a different pasta maker.”

“A better pasta maker?”

“The best pasta maker,” he promised, finally wrestling the vibrator away from her and clutching it against his chest like a pageant contestant with her bouquet.

A heartbeat passed before he realized the thing was still vibrating, making his glasses wiggle and body shake, so he held it out by two fingers like a proper lady holding a dirty nappy.

I was still trying to hold my shirt closed when I realized I was staring.

The man was all nervous energy and flustered intelligence . . . and I couldn’t tear my gaze away.

“So,” I said, because someone had to break the silence. “I’m guessing you’re not Mrs. Rodriguez.”

“No, I’m Theo. Theo Jamison,” he said faintly. “And this is Debbie. Mrs. Rodriguez is next door.”

“Jeremiah,” I said, unsure if the introduction was meant to go both ways but determined to keep the conversation going. I let my shirt go, and it fell open again. I looked down and frowned. “I had a disagreement with a golden retriever.”

Theo’s eyes dropped to my torn shirt, and I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. He then smacked his lips like a man desperate for moisture. “I . . . I can see that. Cuddles can be . . . quite vicious.”

The vibrator chose that moment to finally run out of batteries, dying with a pathetic whimper that somehow made the whole situation even more mortifying.

“Well,” I said, backing toward the neighboring house. “I should probably go deliver this to the right address.”

“Probably,” Theo agreed, though neither of us moved. His eyes drifted, and he seemed to think a moment before adding, “But . . . the company might not want you delivering used, um, pasta makers to their customers. It might be best to send that back as a damaged item.”

“Right.” I nodded, shoving the device back into its box and fiddling with the lid that would never close again. “Never double dip your pasta wand . . . maker . . . thing.”

“Daddy,” Debbie piped up, looking between us with the expression of a child who sensed adult foolishness but couldn’t quite put her finger on what kind. “Why is your face all red?”

Theo’s flush deepened impossibly. “It’s just . . . warm in here.”

“But we have the air conditioning on. My feet are cold. Why are you hot?”

“You have tiny feet. They get cold easily. I’m, um, very warm,” he insisted.

I bit back a grin, realizing that my quiet Tuesday had just become infinitely more interesting. But looking at Theo—adorable, flustered Theo—I was pretty sure “interesting” was a very good thing.