Quiet Beautiful Things: A Small Town, Single Dad Romance

Chapter One

Sometimes adulting sucks.

Like now, when I’m pushing a cart through the aisles of Truman’s Grocery Store looking for things to make for dinner.

Okay, so technically, I’ve been an adult for a while. You’d think I’d have it down by now. But after four years of college—eating either take-out or dorm food—two years traveling abroad and visiting many of the world’s finest wineries, then two years of grad school—where my roommate could have been getting a degree in culinary arts and not business—I’ve never really had to cook for myself, save the occasional bowl of pasta.

I study a package of steaks. Why do they always bundle them in pairs? Then some burgers—those come in a four-pack. I sure as hell can’t finish all of those. I pick them up anyway. Maybe I’ll invite my brother Lucas and his fiancée over for dinner.

Throwing them in my cart, I turn then freeze. Because across the store stands the most breathtaking woman I’ve ever seen. She’s definitely not from Calloway Creek. I know everyone here. Or I used to.

She’s in the produce section, picking up and studying various vegetables I don’t even know the names of.

Vegetables. I need some of those, right? A pre-packaged salad I can douse with ranch and serve as a side to the burgers.

The woman puts something in her basket. Basket. Good. Maybe that means she’s shopping for one. Hell, the only reason I have a cart is that I despise grocery shopping and the less I have to do it the better.

She brushes a piece of blonde hair behind her ear, and I can see her face even more clearly now. Holy hell, maybe this place isn’t so bad after all. She’s a good twenty feet away, but I swear she comes into focus as if she’s right in front of me. She’s gorgeous. And though I can’t make out the color of her eyes, I know they are as beautiful as the rest of her. Her cheekbones are high and pink. Her lips rosy and full. And her body—if what’s underneath her bright blue romper is anything like the rest of her… wow.

I will her to look up and see me.

“Hello, Blake,” Mr. Truman says from behind the meat counter. “Haven’t seen you around for a while. You back in town now?”

I face him. “Have been for about a month, Mr. Truman.”

“Finally joining your daddy’s business, eh?”

“You know it. I’ve been working at the winery full time since I’ve been back.”

His head bobs up and down. “I suspect it’s in good hands then.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence. See you later, sir.”

“That you will.”

Glancing over at the produce section, I’m disappointed that the woman is gone. It’s just as well. I don’t need any distractions. As the newly appointed Chief Operating Officer of Montana Winery, all of my energy needs to go into impressing Dad—showing him I can handle things and letting him see I’m the responsible adult he always claimed I could be. He’s worked for decades putting the winery on the map, and over the past several years, he’s been handing over the reins. First, he made Lucas Chief Marketing Officer, then our middle brother Dallas, became Chief Financial Officer, and now me.

While he’s still very much a presence there—he is only fifty-eight after all—he’s due time off and an early retirement. It’s our turn to run things now. Even our sister Allie has gotten more into the business over the past few years, running the tasting tours and organizing events.

I catch a glimpse of blue down the toiletry aisle. The mystery woman looks up. Our gazes collide and she looks at me the same way I do her. As if intrigued. Mesmerized. Entranced. If expressions could speak, hers is saying she likes what she sees. But it’s also telling me she’s hesitant, as if silently begging me to make the first move. Like part of her is worried I wouldn’t be receptive.

However, I can’t move. My feet are cemented in place just as my eyes are. I swallow. Because for the first time in my life, I’m at a loss on how to approach a woman. At a glance, I can tell this woman isn’t like all the others. She’s different somehow. Special. How do I do this? I have absolutely no fucking clue.

I think it’s her eyes. I’m drowning in them. And I sure as hell don’t want to be saved.

She looks at me like she knows me. There’s no way she does. I’d have remembered a face like hers.

What she couldn’t possibly know—because no way is my face as expressive as hers—is that in these fifteen seconds, my whole outlook on life has changed. Because of her. A stranger in a grocery store. She also doesn’t know that this feeling inside me—this foreign feeling that once we speak, I’ll never be the same—has knocked the wind right out of me. It literally causes my breath to hitch, and I swear I hear angels sing.

Mrs. Kendall, the high school choir teacher, comes around the corner humming a tune, and I laugh inwardly at my idiotic notion.

“Hello, dear,” she says, stopping her melody.

“Hi, Mrs. Kendall.”

“I didn’t know you were back in town. You helping out your parents?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good boy,” she says like I’m five and not twenty-six, then scampers off, resuming her humming.

When I turn back again, the mystery woman is gone.

I push my cart from aisle to aisle, searching for her. After all, we had a moment. Blake Montana doesn’t have ‘moments’ with women. Flings. One-night-stands. Hookups. But never moments. And for damn sure never ones as intense as whatever the hell passed between us in those few seconds.

Maybe she wasn’t even real. An apparition conjured up by my overactive imagination courtesy of my four-month dry spell.

Yeah, that’s what it was. My mind dreaming up the perfect woman. Dark blonde hair that reminds me of a sandy beach at sunset, expressive eyes a man could get lost in, the face of an angel, a body that wars are fought over, and a voice that would shout my name when I nuzzle between her legs. Utterly divine.

But I’m not crazy enough to think such a creature exists.

I put her out of my head and stick to the job at hand. I fill my cart with the usual: Cereal. Snacks. Milk. Beer. And some healthy shit I’ll probably never eat but get anyway in case Mom looks through my pantry.

Loading my car at the curb out front, my eyes are drawn down the street toward Gigi’s Flower Shop, the place I spent summers and holidays working when I was an undergrad. Dad wanted all of us to have work experience outside of the winery. He said it would build character.

Maddie—the flower shop owner—steps outside carrying a bundle of flowers, and I wave. No, wait, it’s not Maddie. It’s the mystery woman. She looks behind her, confused by my wave. Then she smiles, and, holy shit, it’s the biggest, brightest smile. I smile back. We have a moment. A second moment. Now I know I’m not imagining things. This girl is for real. And with just a look, we’re connecting on some existential level I’ve never experienced before. Like we’ve known each other forever, even though I’m certain we’ve never met.

A horn blasts next to her. She doesn’t even flinch. Her eyes never stray from mine, and it makes me feel like fucking Tarzan.

“Dude, you leaving? Some of us are in a hurry.”

I look over my shoulder. Hawk McQuaid is glaring at me, waiting for me to vacate the prime spot right in front of the store.

“Park out back, McQuaid,” I bark.

“Don’t need to.” He eyes my cart. “You’re leaving. So hurry it the fuck along.”

I put the final bag into my trunk and shut it, then leave the cart for him to take inside since he’s so impatient.

When I look back down the sidewalk, the beautiful, stunning, perfect woman is gone, replaced by three pre-teens on skateboards who happily zip their way past me.

Without further acknowledgment of Hawk, I slip behind the wheel. I take the long way home, driving slowly by Gigi’s, then the coffee shop, then through the roundabout the street was named after—McQuaid Circle. Apparently, since Hawk’s ancestors founded the town, he believes that gives him the right to park wherever the hell he wants.

Then, bingo… I see her. She’s walking toward the apartments set back from the park on the other side of the circle. As if she can feel my presence, she turns. Our eyes lock. There it is again, that feeling. What is that?

A car honks behind me. “Move your ass, Montana.”

I peer in my rearview. It’s my buddy, Dax Cruz. We grew up together, went to the same schools in Calloway Creek, then lost touch when I left for college. The rest of our families seem to despise each other, much like the Calloways and the McQuaids used to. Something about a feud surrounding our ancestors. But Dax and I never gave a crap what the rest of our relatives thought. And now that I’m home again, we’re friends just as if I’d never left—something his brothers and mine aren’t too keen over.

I stick my arm out the window and flip him the bird. He honks again, passes me, and yells, “See you tonight!”

Damn. The girl is gone once again. Vanished. Maybe she thought I was being creepy. But that smile—it said something else. I don’t know her name. I haven’t as much as spoken a word to her. But something deep down inside hurts at the thought that I might never see her again.

And somehow I know that would be a tragedy.