Chapter Five #2
Which was fine. What had she been expecting? For one little handshake to lead to a passionate make-out session two feet off the trail at his place of employment?
Did she even want that? She’d been single for a handful of weeks, after years of being in a serious relationship. She wasn’t going to go acting like a teenage girl with a crush after barely touching a guy’s hand.
More than ready to cut the tension, she glanced around at their surroundings. “It’s really beautiful out here.”
“I like it.” Chuckling, he shook his head. “Not sure it lives up to Mayor Thompson’s sales pitch, but we do our best.”
She seized on the change in subject. “What was up with that anyway? Him and Granny, both. They were acting so weird the other day.” She was coming to realize that Granny had her quirks, but it hadn’t just been her.
Frowning, she bit her lip. “The girls from the crafting group, too, now that I think about it.”
After the anonymity of New York, it was sort of nice to have people take an interest in her, and she appreciated their efforts, in that it had led to her being out on a quasi-date with a very attractive man today. But it was still weird.
“What can I say?” Hunter scratched his beard, and his tone was off somehow. “Small towns get really invested when new people float through.”
“I can’t be the only new person the place has ever seen.”
“Of course not. We have tourists who visit. Fishers, hikers. Folks who just want to see the pretty leaves.” His mouth pulled down on one side. “Though not as many fishers and hikers as there used to be, unfortunately.”
When he trailed off, she gently nudged him. “But actual newcomers? People who are here for more than just the weekend?”
“We have some of those, too. Usually people looking for a slower pace. Not everyone ends up caring all that much for it, but some stick around.” He shrugged. “Maybe Granny and the mayor and the knitting girls are all hoping you’ll be one of the ones who stick.”
“That still doesn’t explain why they were being so weird about us.
” This had been bothering her earlier, and Hunter’s deflections were only making her more curious.
She didn’t want to make it sound like she wasn’t happy to be here with him, but it was strange.
“Like, repeating that part about us meeting outside the bookshop?”
“Oh, right. That.” He kicked a stray branch off the path, not quite meeting her gaze, and—was that a bit of redness coloring his cheeks? “It’s nothing, really. Just.”
Was he flustered? That was… adorable. “Just what?”
“Just.” He exhaled a huff of breath before scrubbing a hand down his face. As if the words were being dragged out of him by force, he admitted, “It’s possible you may have accidentally stumbled into this goofy superstition thing.”
“Oh?”
“You haven’t heard it yet?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, it’s all BS, of course, but uh.” He glanced away and tugged at the straps on his pack.
“The old-timers like to say this thing.” He couldn’t be downplaying this more if he tried, which really got her attention.
“‘When two strangers meet at Heart’s Hope Crossing, they’re destined to help each other find their heart’s secret hope. ’”
She couldn’t help it—she laughed out loud. “Seriously? Any two strangers meet in the entire town and, what? Boom? They’re fated to be together?”
That would explain at least a little of the weirdness. Hunter had been the first person she’d met in town, so folks wanted them to get together. Silly, but not the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.
“Uh…”
Okay, now this big, gruff man was definitely blushing.
“What,” she teased. “Tell me.”
“It’s not just Heart’s Hope Crossing the town. It’s the actual Crossing.” He gestured with his hands, holding them up and making an X with them. “Heart Street and Hope Road.”
Her eyebrows just about hit her hairline. “You mean right in front of the Cozy Nook Bookshop? But that’s where—”
She stopped in her tracks.
Oh.
Oh.
“So when I crashed into you, that first morning?”
“Your fate was sealed.” He phrased it like a joke, but there wasn’t any humor in his eyes.
Ouch. Okay, so he wasn’t amused about the whole “destined to help each other find their heart’s secret hope” idea. She didn’t want to take that as a personal rejection, but honestly, it was a little bit hard not to.
As she slowly started walking again, she replayed their handful of interactions in her mind.
From the very beginning, he’d been grouchy and standoffish, and he’d been extra grumpy at Granny, who had clearly recognized their supposed destiny from the first moment.
Did he resent the entire concept of fate having thrown them together?
Or was he disappointed that fate had thrown him together with her, specifically?
“Well, I’m sorry your fate got all caught up in mine.”
“Don’t be.” He waved her off. “Like I said, most of the superstitious nonsense people believe in this town is just that—nonsense. They also build literal cat hotels to house all the black cats in town for Harvest Fest just so none of them can cross in front of anybody and bring them bad luck.”
That got a laugh out of her. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. It’s absurd. I’m not building a hotel for a cat, and I’m not letting people try to set us up together just because we both happened to be on the same street corner at the same time.”
And there was that little stab of rejection again.
“Sorry,” she said, instinctively pitching her voice higher. It wouldn’t help to let any of her dreary thoughts seep into the conversation. “If you didn’t want to do this—”
He rolled his eyes. “Believe me, if I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be. I’m not your soulmate, but I’m not against showing you around the park.” One corner of his mouth curled up, teasing. “Like the mayor said, it’s literally my job.”
That only made her feel worse. “Granny kind of bullied you into it.”
“Granny tries to bully people into all kinds of things all the time. You get used to it.”
“I’ll have to take your word on that.”
As they’d been talking, she’d put as much space between them as she could, but the path through the trees wasn’t that wide. And it didn’t matter anyway, because he closed the distance, nudging his elbow against her arm. Even through her shirt, the heat of him seared into her.
“It is not a hardship to be out here with you,” he promised. “No matter whose idea it was.”
The low rumble of his voice close to her ear sent waves of sparks shivering down her spine.
She was getting some seriously mixed signals here.
In one breath, he was firmly telling her that they weren’t soulmates—which, okay, fine, soulmates was an awfully strong term.
But in the next he was actively flirting with her?
“I’ll have to take your word on that, too,” she managed. “I appreciate you letting me tag along.”
Smiling, he edged back toward the other side of the trail again.
They walked in not-quite-awkward silence for a few minutes. The local legend about the Crossing answered some of her questions about people’s excessive interest in her spending time with Hunter, but it mostly just filled her brain with even more questions.
“So, obviously, the story about meeting at the Crossing doesn’t make any sense, but where does it even come from?”
Hunter muttered something that sounded like “The bowels of hell” under his breath, but then he cleared his throat and shrugged.
“You know how these things go. The official story is something about the founder of the town running into a lonely spinster, out gathering berries, and they fell madly in love.”
“That’s kind of sweet, actually.”