Chapter Two
Attempting to fill out the paperwork for the contest while the hottest guy she’d seen in ages sat across from her was a challenge Tulip ‘Tilly’ Bloom was losing miserably.
All she could remember was their encounter on the steps of the courthouse.
At the time, she hadn’t been thinking about twirling under the arm of a total stranger.
She’d just been over the moon after her meeting with Chelsea, Marietta’s mayor, and had acted impulsively.
The moment she got a good look at him, her heart had thumped loudly and warmth had stolen over her.
She rationalized her reaction as a combination of embarrassment and excitement about the upcoming project.
Now sitting across from him, she had to consider the possibility it could be something different.
Something emotional. Which was totally ridiculous, because she didn’t even know him.
The only reasonable explanation for her reaction to Zach’s proximity was lingering excitement about the event she was going to organize. Nothing more. Nothing less. And it didn’t matter that he was the handsomest man she’d seen in a while.
In the past she’d gone out with a few good-looking guys, but the majority of them had seemed more interested in knowing how many women they could get to look at them while they were dating her than wanting to get to know her better.
It had been a while between dates—another reason for her response to Zach.
Somehow she got the impression Zach wouldn’t be like those guys.
He had an intensity and confidence about him.
He didn’t seem to care that people were staring at him as if they’d never seen a handsome man before—which plenty of women in the diner were doing.
Or as though they’d never seen him before.
Which, thinking about it, she couldn’t recall seeing him out and about in downtown Marietta.
The cute cottage she rented was close to the hub of town, so she was always visiting the stores on Main Street.
“Are you new to town?” she blurted out.
“Why do you ask?”
Hmm . . . the old ‘answer a question with a question’ trick. If he thought she was going to fall for that, he was very much mistaken. “I’ll answer that when you answer my question first.” She picked up her soda and took a sip.
A slow smile spread across Zach’s face, highlighting his high cheekbones. Tilly was glad she was sitting, because if she’d been standing, she would’ve had to grab for the nearest table, or chair, or person to keep herself upright.
How could a person’s smile be so potent?
“Fair enough,” he countered. “I’ve been in Marietta for a month. Now you can answer my question.”
Flo arrived again. “You ready to order, Zach?”
“Yep, I’ll have a burger and fries, thanks.”
“Perfect, darlin’. That’ll be out soon. I’ll put a rush on it, seeing as Tilly’s been waiting longer than I like my customers to.”
The only reason Tilly didn’t have her food was because of Flo, but she wasn’t about to bring that up with the diner owner.
Flo had given Tilly a job when she was fifteen, and she’d lasted all of two weeks.
Serving food to dozens of people a day was so not her thing.
The first of many jobs she’d attempted and hadn’t lasted long with.
Tilly pushed that thought away. She wasn’t that girl anymore. She’d held her current job for two years now. Didn’t matter that it was boring—nothing heart-stoppingly exciting about data entry—but it kept a roof over her head and food on her table.
It didn’t matter if it wasn’t her passion. Some things just didn’t work out the way she’d hoped they would. And that was her secret and hers alone.
“Tilly?”
Tilly looked over to Zach, not realizing she’d been stuck in her head, and hoped he hadn’t called her name more than once.
“Sorry, just thinking about, uh, my form.” Totally not the case, but it would do as an excuse.
“What were we talking about? Oh right, I asked if you’re new because I hadn’t seen you around before.
But here we are, twice in one day. So, not new to me at all. ”
She clamped her lips shut to prevent more inane words from spilling out of her.
“I don’t get out much. I tend to keep to myself.”
The way his eyes widened and he gripped his water glass suggested that he hadn’t meant to say that.
While she wanted to probe a little further, Tilly didn’t. “I hope now that you’ve ventured out, you’ll do it a bit more often. Marietta has a lot to offer and”—she pointed to the papers in front of her—“this is going to make you want to come out on Christmas Eve and see what’s going on.”
“Pretty sure I’ll be working that night.” Zach looked out the window before meeting her gaze again. “I’m a firefighter. I volunteered to work the Thanksgiving and Christmas shifts so the guys with families can spend it with them.”
“Oh, well, that’s nice of you. I’m sure they appreciate it.”
A nice guy as well as good-looking. Attributes she looked for in a prospective partner, but Zach was not that, so she could just shelve those thoughts.
He shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal. “I’m the new guy. It would be pretty rude of me to expect to get the holidays off.”
He made a good point, and one Tilly hadn’t considered. But again, he was showing that his looks didn’t give him an inflated ego, like some men. He actually cared about people other than just himself. Perhaps it came with his job as a firefighter. He put his life on the line to protect people.
“Will your family miss you? I know if I didn’t get to see my sisters on either holiday, it would feel strange. Even when my oldest sister, Chrissy, lived in Buffalo, she always tried to come home for at least one of them.”
“I don’t have a big family.” He shrugged and played with the paper straw wrapper in front of him.
The shutters came down, and Tilly added family to the list she was creating about subjects she apparently couldn’t talk to Zach about. Although she couldn’t imagine not being close to her family, she also knew that what she had with hers, other people didn’t have.
Their food arrived, saving Tilly from trying to find yet another topic for them to talk about.
Her mouth watered when her chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and gravy were placed in front of her.
Today she was indulging in her favorite ‘bad’ foods, but tomorrow she’d go back to her normal diet.
Not that her diet was super strict. She just didn’t like to fill her body with too much fatty or processed food.
She loved a good salad for lunch and had one just about every day.
Zach had gone for the quintessential male meal—a cheeseburger and fries. She had to admit it looked good. Maybe next time she was indulging, she’d have a burger instead of her usual chicken-fried steak.
They ate in silence and let the buzz of the diner fill in the gaps, but Tilly could only let that happen for a short time before the need to chat welled up inside of her. “Where did you live before you moved here?”
Zach took an inordinate amount of time to answer the question. He swirled a fry in his ketchup before popping it in his mouth and chewing slowly.
He was obviously in witness protection and was thinking of what he was supposed to say.
No, wait! He was starting over and had left a wife and child back wherever he lived.
But she discounted that one because there was no tan line on his ring finger—she’d looked when he first sat down.
Then again, with his job he may not have worn one, so maybe she shouldn’t discount that theory just yet.
Or, he was famous and had come to Marietta until his most recent scandal died down. Which could be possible, since she didn’t really follow the gossip sites on social media—that was a rabbit hole she never wanted to fall down.
“Is it really that hard to answer?” she asked when he ate yet another fry.
Zach looked out the window, and she really believed he didn’t want to tell her where he was from. “California. I’m from California.”
Considering the size of the state, that could mean he lived anywhere, but seeing as he was reluctant to share any further information, she didn’t push, even though she wanted to. Yet another thing on the list of things not to talk about. Soon there wouldn’t be anything left.
Maybe that’s what he wants.
Tilly should listen to her inner voice, but they were sitting at a table together.
No way could she ignore him. Her mom would be horrified if she’d heard through the town’s gossip train that Tilly had been rude.
Eunice Bloom expected all her daughters to be polite to whomever they were with, even people they didn’t quite like.
Which during her teenage years had been a little difficult.
In any event, she wasn’t about to start being rude now. “Okay, well I’m a born and bred Marietta citizen. My parents own a flower farm . . . Well, I should say my oldest sister and her fiancé run it now.”
She’d had no idea that the farm was in financial difficulties until the truth came out after their father died and her sister found the discrepancy when she was going through the books.
At the time, Tilly had wished she’d had more money so she could contribute financially, but instead she’d just been there when she could to help out.
She had one idea of how the farm could increase its bottom line, but she hadn’t brought it up after Chrissy and Ryder got together.
The man was a billionaire, and he’d injected the necessary funds to do all the repairs and updates to get the farm back on track.
But maybe she could still toss the idea out to them and see what they thought. Tilly always believed the farm should grow poinsettias, the perfect holiday flower and a way to bring in income when it was the slow season because of the colder weather.
She loved them and had a plant of her own that flowered every year. Maybe now that their father was gone . . .