Chapter 1 #2
At least from the back. She was still trying to decide what his face would look like.
She always caught him either stepping inside the café or wandering down the street with a to-go cup, broad shoulders set back and one hand usually in the pocket of his jacket.
Except he wasn’t wearing a jacket today, and she could see every rippling muscle stretching the black cotton of his jumper.
Her stomach wriggled at the sight of sturdy, jutting shoulder blades and an unreasonably plump backside.
His hand raked through chestnut-brown hair, longer on the top than the sides, and she bit her lip.
Where had he come from? Her imagination, possibly?
She’d known most of Belbarrow’s residents her whole life, yet she’d never seen him before a couple of weeks ago.
She tried to convince herself that it was just novelty – the new face, or back, was why she was paying so much attention to him rather than focusing on bringing some autumn magic to the bookshop window for the last of the fair-weather tourists.
It certainly had nothing to do with the thickness of his thighs, as demonstrated when he squatted to kindly pet Captain Angus’s scraggly Irish wolfhound, Doris, who was enjoying her weekly puppuccino while her quirky owner smoked his pipe.
Nope. Eiley was an adult who would not be swayed by such superficial things.
Coffee Giant disappeared inside the café, and Eiley blew out a breath to cool her sticky forehead before continuing her work. Get yourself together, woman. She was almost thirty, for goodness’ sakes. She had better things to be doing than daydreaming about a stranger.
Still, one eye remained trained on the café as she straightened the garland, and she took longer than necessary to twist the leaves to be sure they all faced the right way.
She was just so curious about what he might look like from the front.
Did he have a kind face or a haughty one?
Did he have a beard? She didn’t really like beards.
When he was that tall, though, would she mind either way?
At five-feet-two, she’d barely be able to see that high up.
She’d get a lovely view of his broad chest, though.
Stop it!
Her heart raced faster as a shadow appeared behind the glass door of the café. Just as a bus drew to a stop between her and coffee shop.
When it passed, she realised it had been doing her a favour, trying to prevent her from crushing even harder on the stranger, because he was much, much better looking from the front.
Hair falling over thick brows. Deep-set eyes and Roman nose.
A jaw with such sharp corners it would make a square jealous. No beard.
“Fiddlesticks. This is a problem.”
Or was it? She was allowed to fancy people.
Everyone else did. Harper, who was in a very committed relationship with Fraser, had a new celebrity crush every week.
Besides, it wasn’t like Eiley planned to do anything about it.
She was just … admiring the view. And with the ruby maple tree shedding its leaves beside the cobblestone walls of the café, splattering Main Street with colour, a few fluffy clouds in the wide highland skies, it was a very lovely view.
Almost as lovely as the ones in her small-town romance books.
When the bell above the shop’s door tinkled, Eiley almost tumbled off the windowsill, gripping the frame to steady herself and dropping the garland in the process. Thankfully, the face that greeted her was familiar, albeit curious: proof Eiley had been caught in her daydreaming.
“What might you be doing up there, Eiley?” asked Harper, dragging Fraser inside with her. As always, she looked beautiful, dressed in seasonal burgundy plaid and draped in accessories galore.
Fraser, too, raised his eyebrow, though the concern on his rugged features showed it was for a different reason. “Shouldn’t you use a stepladder for that?”
Eiley rolled her eyes. She loved her big brother, but he was still working on treating her like she wasn’t made of glass.
Granted, his concern had been warranted last year – she hadn’t been in a good way during the Finlay drama – but another reason she’d moved out of their mum’s house was to prove that her family didn’t have to worry about her anymore.
That she could fend for herself. She wasn’t broken, and even if she was, it wasn’t their job to fix her.
She hopped off the windowsill and said, “I think I’ll manage.”
Harper unravelled the tartan scarf from around her neck, freeing her shiny blonde waves as she moved to the window to see what Eiley had been staring at.
“Oh my. Hello, Hercules,” she said on peering out at Coffee Giant, who now had his phone pressed to his ear as he leaned against the wall of the café, one boot propped against the brick.
He was laughing. Eiley couldn’t see properly from here, but his grin seemed to tilt higher on the right side.
She blushed, suddenly feigning interest in a coffee ring on the table. She was fairly sure it had been there since she’d first started treating this place as her sanctuary fifteen years ago.
“Um, hello, sunshine. Remember me, your vaguely insecure boyfriend?” Fraser shook his head at Harper as he crossed his tattooed arms over his chest, sending a glower with his blue-green eyes.
He’d inherited their mum’s beauty, including her auburn hair, which darkened at the roots with each passing year.
Eiley had never thought it fair: she’d always been stuck with boring strawberry blonde, an unwelcome reminder of their absent father’s fairer complexion.
She always felt like somebody had leached the colour from her in comparison to her siblings, right down to the dull grey of her eyes, and wondered if it was a reflection of her subdued personality.
Then she’d seen how beautiful her children were with the same features and changed her mind.
“Don’t worry. If he’s Hercules, you’re, like, Ares.
” Harper placed a quick kiss on his lips, and Eiley felt another clench of something unpleasant.
She’d been noticing it more lately: as happy as she was that her brother had found love with somebody as effortlessly gorgeous and talented as Harper, a smidge of envy burrowed inside her – especially because she’d never experienced the happiness written all over his stubbled features as he pulled Harper close.
It was the same with her younger sister, Cam, who had been mostly happily married to her wife for years now.
It would be just a tad easier to heal from her heartbreak if everyone around her wasn’t so sickeningly in love. Another way she was the odd one out.
She supposed, more than anything, the jealousy was a sign she’d done the right thing in finally cutting loose from Finlay.
He hadn’t been good for the kids or her, hadn’t left her glowing the way Harper was, and she was glad she no longer had to live with him.
Being stuck in that house was an altogether different type of loneliness, one that came from spending every day trying to quietly keep herself together, because talking about it only ended in arguments.
And it was also a sign that she needed to move away from the window, immediately, because she was not like her siblings.
She wasn’t meant for world-ending, all-consuming infatuation.
She had her kids to think about. They were her world.
Daydreaming about book boyfriends, or tall coffee drinkers, wouldn’t help her gain her true independence.
She turned around, riffling through the decorations once more, when Harper nudged her. “You should accidentally bump into him sometime. Perhaps spill coffee all over that big chest. Wouldn’t it be a terrible shame if he needed your help drying his shirt?”
Fraser tutted. “Could you perhaps not encourage my little sister to start wooing some lad who’s newly blown into town?”
“Why not? She’s single and she deserves a good rebound.
” Harper whirled on him defensively, wafting her near-permanent scent of fresh, earthy forest mingled with her favourite fruity designer perfume, which Eiley wasn’t fancy enough to even try to name.
She and Fraser spent most of their time in his quaint little cabin in the woods, and had done since Fraser had converted her to a nature-lover like him.
Or, at least, a nature-tolerator. Harper required the occasional city break to visit her family in Manchester or cure her writer’s block with retail therapy.
At the word rebound , Eiley snorted, heat prickling her cheeks. Her window reflection showed that her freckled face had turned tomato-red. “I think those days are over, but thanks, Harper.”
She’d never really wanted to date, anyway.
She’d been lucky enough to have met Finlay at university, and he’d charmed his way into her life quite quickly, pulling her nose out of her books for just long enough to win her over.
But now, the thought of flirting with a stranger, even an attractive one like Coffee Giant, made her nauseous.
She couldn’t trust like that again. She certainly couldn’t hurt like that again.
The kids deserved a mum who wasn’t distracted or heartbroken.
As Harper opened her mouth to protest, Coffee Giant’s eyes snapped to Eiley’s suddenly, and she ducked below the windowsill at lightning speed. “ Poo . He saw us staring!”
Fraser tutted but, undeterred, Harper started beckoning for Coffee Giant to come closer, which was infinitely worse.
“You heard Eiley! She’s not interested!” Fraser tried to wrestle Harper’s arms down.
“Exactly! Not interested!” Eiley agreed, tugging at Harper’s dress and hissing, “Stop!”
Harper slumped. “He’s gone, anyway!”