Chapter 2
HONEY, PRESENT
While Dot bags my pastries, I sit at one of the barstools at the window facing downtown Paradise Springs.
It’s barely past eight o’clock in the morning and already, Paradise Springs is busy, with tourists strolling into The Cracked Egg and the dive shop across the street.
Businessmen and women in Florida business casual attire are striding with purpose across the square toward the city hall or the small, local bank on the corner.
My eye catches on a man facing away from me, walking past the town fountain. Tall, wide shoulders, well-muscled, jet black hair with silver running through it. A sliver of ice slices up my spine. Please don’t be Trey.
He halts mid-stride, still facing away from me. I tug my floppy sunhat further down onto my head, poke at the bridge of my sunglasses, and step further away from the window, watching him.
Please, please, please don’t be Trey.
Of course it’s not him. Trey wouldn’t be strolling through the town square.
People would be flocking to him for his autograph.
If he was in Paradise Springs, he would only be here for one reason—to bring me back “home.” To prove to everyone that we are back together.
Trey and Honey, back together, better than ever.
I just need to see his face. One tiny inch of it.
He pivots so that he’s facing the bakery window. Facing me.
A long whoosh of air escapes from my lips. It’s not Trey.
“Two creams and a shot of hazelnut.” It takes me a moment to shift gears and notice Dot standing next to me, holding out my cup of coffee and my pastry bag. “Hey, you okay?”
I take the bag and the coffee, nodding, trying to compose myself. “Low blood sugar and lack of caffeine. I’m wonderful now.” I hold up the coffee—a mistake because my hands are shaking.
“Sit down for a minute, honey.” The term of endearment startles me. Honey. My real name, even though Dot doesn’t know that. And once again, I wonder what on earth my mom was thinking when she named me. “You don’t look well. You sure you’re okay?”
“Yep. Fine.” My eyes unconsciously stray back to the man who’s not Trey.
He’s talking to another man I’ve seen around town before today.
His confident, lanky swagger and his thick, wavy, red hair, curling at the nape of his neck under his cowboy hat remind me of my first crush at a summer horse camp years ago.
Just seeing him provokes a visceral reaction deep in my core.
I was so sweetly innocent back then and so blissfully full of hope in the power of happily ever afters.
Dot follows my gaze. “Speaking of fine.” She chuckles.
“The guy with the dark hair works at the courthouse in records. He used to date Reagan, the owner of Book Bliss, but that was more than a year ago. He’s free now.
Maybe too free. The man he’s talking to is a real sweetie.
He’s the foreman at May Ranch.” She smiles down at me.
“So, which one do you want me to introduce you to?”
“Oh no you don’t.” I hold up the bag of goodies. “I’ll stick with my cinnamon buns and a good book.”
She laughs. “I don’t blame you. Sounds easier.
” She pivots. “See you day after tomorrow? Pecan rolls. I’ll save two for you.
” She returns to the counter, and I head for the door, hot coffee in hand, trying to tuck the bag of pastries in my satchel even though I might as well throw the whole bag in the next available trash can.
The shot of adrenaline from seeing Trey—who wasn’t really Trey—has caused me to lose my appetite.
I’ll be on edge for hours or even the next day or two, losing even more weight that I didn’t need to lose.
As it is, I’m all sharp angles. If Aunt Birdie could see me, she’d set me down in front of a big plate of biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, country fried ham, and a stack of pancakes.
I ram the door open and collide with a wide, hard torso.
My coffee cup jams into my chest. Burning hot coffee spills all down the front of me, the heat immediately inflaming the thin skin of my chest and making me gasp.
The cup plops onto the ground, splattering over a pair of jeans and cowboy boots.
I frantically pull at the front of my shirt as the boots slip past me and then return.
“Here. Are you okay?”
I blink up at the red-headed cowboy Dot said worked at May Ranch. He’s holding out a stack of napkins, so I can blot at my chest, as if that will do anything at this point.
“My skin is on fire.” I bite out the words.
“And I want to rip off my T-shirt and jump in the water fountain in the middle of the town square! Does that sound okay to you?” Yes, I did just say that aloud.
That’s how my mouth and brain work together—first, my mouth says something stupid and then, I think it through and immediately regret it.
“Sounds more than okay to me. But maybe we should go to the clinic instead.”
“Maybe you should watch where you’re going.” I level him with a look.
“Okay, ma’am. I’m going to be polite right now and take the blame even though you were barreling out the door like you were a rodeo bull, and I had no time to get out of your way.”
Everyone in the coffee shop is staring out at us.
I tug my hat further down and frown at him.
“Never mind. I’m going to—” I wave my hand toward the bathroom, then very calmly and sedately walk to the door, open it, lock the door, and hide in the bathroom long enough that hopefully everyone will have forgotten I exist. When I finally walk out, the redhead is leaning against the counter, chatting with someone, his long legs crossed, his eyes laser-focused on the bathroom door.
Ugh.
“Thought you’d escaped out the window,” he bellows.
“It was too small,” I mutter.
“You’re tiny. I figured you’d fit.”
My whole body freezes, and I have to order my legs to keep walking.
“Let me buy you another coffee as an apology.”
“No, thank you.”
He follows me out the door, his long legs keeping pace with me. “You’re staying in one of the cottages at Heaven, aren’t you?”
I step out onto the street, making a beeline for my bike. He sticks a hand out, grabs me, and pulls me back onto the sidewalk just as a car honks and swerves.
I yank away from his grasp, my pulse pounding in my ears.
“Didn’t mean to scare you. We’ve got plenty of people here who feel like they have the right of way when the light is green. So, you might want to watch where you’re going.”
“Touché.”
“Interesting. You speak French?”
I glance over at him and sigh loudly. “Please have a nice day. Somewhere else in another direction.”
“I’m going this way.” We cross the street, his stride still frustratingly level with mine. “I’ve got to see if I have a change of pants in my pickup. Somebody spilled coffee on them.”
I ignore him, thinking instead about how we’re passing the park bench that I usually sit at to caffeinate while people watching before I hop back on my bike and ride back to the cottage.
Yeah, I really miss that coffee. I should have taken him up on the offer for another cup.
Or even better, although the coffee sucks there, I should have walked to the gas station a couple blocks down and grabbed one because sucky gas station coffee without the current company would have been so much better.
He’s still keeping stride, looking down at me with his light blue eyes—another thing he has in common with my first crush. How many men have red hair and blue eyes? It’s got to be some kind of gorgeous genetic anomaly.
“Are you by the lake or in the forest?”
“Yes,” I say because he’s staring at me, waiting for a reply, and his blue eyes are annoyingly unsettling.
“Huh.” He tips his hat at a couple walking past. “It’d be a difficult decision for me, but I’d choose forest over lake if someone had a gun to my head and I had to choose.”
“Hopefully, for your sake, that never happens.” I stop in front of my bike, figuring he’ll continue on his annoying way, maybe with another antiquated gentlemanly tip of his cowboy hat and a “ma’am.”
“I’m glad you feel that way. I was getting the idea that you might not like me.”
I tuck my bag into the cooler with the groceries I already picked up at Greene’s. “I have no idea why you think that.”
“You bike from Heaven?” He lifts an eyebrow. “Impressive.” And then he actually gives my legs a once-over.
“Why is that so impressive? Because I’m ‘tiny?’” I glare, but he’s oblivious because my sunglasses are too dark. It ruins the whole effect.
“Yep.” He crosses his arms. “What? I shouldn’t have called you tiny?”
Bingo. “Just because you think something in your head, doesn’t mean you have to say it aloud. I didn’t call you an ass—aloud—even though you seem like an ass.”
“You don’t seem like you’re tiny. You are tiny. Compared to me, anyway. Now if you go back to the Middle Ages, when the average woman was five feet or shorter, then—"
“Hey, Fox!” somebody calls out from across the street. “Those brackets Heathcliff wanted came in. Don’t forget to stop in and pick them up.”
“Will do, Rena.” He turns back to me and for some reason, I’m still standing right next to him. “So, how long does the bike trip to Heaven take?”
“About forty-five minutes.”
“Unless you’re into self-torture, I could give you a quick ride back to Heaven.” He points two fingers at an old beat-up pickup truck with an Operation Desert Storm combat veteran sticker on the back. “If you want to take the risk of hopping into a car with a devastatingly handsome stranger.”
When I was growing up, my big sis, Cat, tried to put the fear of God in me to never get into a car with strangers or I would die…
or worse. Not that I knew what “or worse” meant back then.
She never explained the “or worse.” But now I know.
Yes, the stranger could be a serial killer.
Or a rapist. Or a groper. Or one of those guys who tries to make an awkward pass at you when you get out of the car, and you have to avoid them like leprosy after that for the rest of your life.
Or—in this scenario right here and now—he could ma’am me to death.
Or call me “little lady,” because he thinks it’s a compliment.
Or he could ask me questions about myself.
And then I’d have to either keep my mouth shut or lie through my teeth about where I’m from, why I’m visiting Paradise Springs, or what fun things I’ve been doing on my “vacation.” Because those are the typical things one chats about when they’re “on vacation.” Either way, it would be a very awkward ride back.
“It’s okay,” he says, shaking me out of my reverie.
“Just say ‘no, thank you.’ You don’t have to overthink the offer.
I don’t blame you for not wanting to get in a rusty old pickup with me for a ride through Billie’s Marsh.
You don’t know me. But since it’s a short trip if your mode of transportation has an engine and because I don’t have a stick up my ass, I was trying to be neighborly. That’s all.”
“No, thank you.”
He tips his hat. Finally. As he walks away, I watch him. He checked out my legs, so I might as well check out his backside. And for the record, it’s true—he does not have a stick up his ass.
He turns, and I glance down at my bike basket and fiddle with the cooler, my expression blasé even though I’m blushing internally. He really does have a nice backside.
“Maybe I’ll see you around again?” he calls out.
I look up. “It seems inevitable in such a small town.”
“Inevitable. Huh. I like those odds.” He winks.