Chapter Nineteen
HUNTER WAS SITTING AT the bar a couple of days later, waiting for Lucas to show up so he could yell at him about tricking him into going to the cooking class—not that he was really mad about it anymore, but it was the principle of the matter.
When his phone buzzed, he checked it right away, grinning when he saw that the message was from Emma.
Emma: The latest book your dad ordered just came in. Should I bother to call him, or should I just bring it with me when I see you tomorrow?
Hunter: Just bring it with you.
She reacted with a little heart emoji, and he swore to God, there was a little cartoon heart rising over his head as well. And it was absurd—he was turning into a teenager here. But could anybody blame him?
Emma was fun, smart, sexy. The whole package, really, but it went deeper than that.
She made him feel like himself in a way he never had with anybody else before.
Probably because he’d never been willing to give them a real chance.
He’d tried to keep his distance from Emma, too, but it was futile. All he wanted was to be close to her.
It had only been two days since he’d seen her, and he was planning to go hiking with her tomorrow morning, when they both had the day off, but it didn’t matter. He wanted to ditch his friend and head to her place instead.
He wouldn’t. But he wanted to.
Taking a sip of his beer, he weighed his phone in his hand. There wasn’t any reason he couldn’t do both. The Tipsy Beaver was on the outskirts of town, but he could head down to the Crossing afterward, if she was into it.
He was just about to text and suggest precisely that when Lucas dropped himself down onto the barstool next to Hunter’s. The guy took one look at him, and his eyes went wide.
“Holy shit, you slept with her.”
Hunter just about choked on his beer. “Wait—what?”
“Who’d he sleep with?” Daniel asked from the other side of the bar.
“New girl,” Lucas told him.
“The one from the bookshop?”
Lucas rolled his eyes. “Is there any other new girl in town?”
Daniel raised his hands in front of his chest in a gesture of innocence. “Just asking.”
“Jesus Christ,” Hunter sputtered, glancing between the two of them. “Keep your voices down and your noses in your own damn business.”
“See,” Lucas crowed triumphantly. “He admits it.”
“I didn’t admit anything.”
“But you didn’t deny it, either, which is basically admitting.”
“He’s not wrong,” Daniel agreed. He pointed a finger at the empty space in front of Lucas. “The usual?”
“You know it.”
Daniel went to pour Lucas his beer, while Hunter was still sitting there boggling at the two of them.
“Look—” he started.
Lucas clapped him twice on the shoulder. “It’s all good, man. I’m happy for you.”
And what was even the point of denying anything?
He didn’t like the idea of his business being spread all over town by his blabbermouth friend, but he didn’t want to lie.
Honestly, he probably would have told Lucas all about the developments in his personal life tonight anyway.
It was just the principle of the matter, was all.
Lowering his voice, he grumbled, “How’d you know?”
Lucas took on the same conspiratorial aspect, meeting his gaze with raised brows. Speaking in an exaggerated whisper, he said, “You’re smiling.”
Well, maybe he had been. But the glare he shot Lucas now was accompanied by a searing frown. “You are such an asshole.”
Wordlessly, Daniel set down Lucas’s beer, and Lucas gave him a nod of thanks.
“Everybody’s talking about it, you know.”
Hunter’s stomach sank. “Oh?”
“Yeah, how you and the new girl were all over each other at the diner on Saturday.”
“Which I still haven’t forgiven you for, just so we’re clear,” Hunter said, putting on a show of glaring at him.
“You will.” Picking up his drink, Lucas cast a glance at him over the top of his glass. “Supposedly, you two were ‘adorable.’”
Hunter’s hackles rose again, and he started to grumble, but there was a lightness inside his chest, too. He cut himself off. “‘Adorable’?”
“That’s the word on the street.”
And, well… Hunter didn’t exactly hate that. Even though he probably should.
Then Lucas had to follow it up with “And then there’s the part about how you were also being adorable together at the dog park two days later.
Of course, I dismissed it all as gossip,” Lucas said with fake virtue.
He waved a hand around as if to encompass Hunter’s entire body.
“Until the shit-eating grin situation, that is.”
Right.
“So?” Daniel asked, appearing again as if out of nowhere. “You two are a thing, then?”
Hunter looked at Daniel and then at Lucas and then back. He ground his molars together.
He’d been the one to assure Emma that she didn’t have to be afraid of him freaking out and abandoning her. As much as it terrified him, the connection they shared was real. Was there any point denying it now? To his oldest and best—if most annoying—friend?
He exhaled in frustration. “Fine, we’re… a thing.”
“I knew it!” Lucas shouted, way too loud. There were definitely folks looking at them, and Hunter shushed him.
“Tell the whole town, why don’t you.”
“Why?” Daniel asked. “You trying to keep it secret?”
“No.” Of course not. Why would he? “Just… there’s such a thing as privacy, you know.”
Lucas laughed. “Here? In Heart’s Hope Crossing?”
There was a tiny hint of a bitter edge to his tone, which was fair. When he and Abby had broken up at the end of high school, it was as if they’d done it on a stage. That couldn’t have been easy for him.
Especially when he’d come slinking back a year later with a busted knee and an even bigger cloud of busted dreams.
Perhaps not picking up on the subtext, considering he hadn’t been here at the time, Daniel laughed. “Seriously. My grandma sent me a care package from Taiwan, and I swear to God a dozen people asked me if I had some overseas, long-distance girlfriend.”
Lucas guffawed out loud, and Hunter chuckled. He rolled his eyes at the both of them, grumbling, “Fine, fine.”
Even as he was trying to keep up his grumpy, annoyed-with-everybody attitude, he couldn’t help the touch of a smile that curled his lips.
As much as he might prefer to keep other people out of his business, he loved this place, and he loved the idea of the entire town cheering him on.
He wanted to stroll down Heart Street, holding Emma’s hand.
He wanted people to notice and whisper and smile.
“Wow, you really are gone on this girl,” Lucas marveled. “Guess there’s something to that rumor about the Crossing after all.”
“No, there’s not.” Hunter batted away his nonsense instinctively, but there wasn’t any heat to his denial. Not the way there would have been, back a few short months ago.
And Lucas sure as hell noticed. “Wait—do you think there is something to the whole destiny bullshit?”
“Of course not.” Hunter was firmer this time, but he had to admit it. His conviction was wavering.
“Man.” Lucas shook his head. “This girl has really changed you.”
Had she? He was still the same guy he’d always been—just a little happier. A little more open to trying new things and to getting to know a new person.
A little less alone.
Once upon a time, he would have thought that was a bad thing. Being alone meant being safe. But now, he wasn’t so sure.
He let out a rough breath and took a long sip of his beer.
Maybe Lucas was right. Maybe he had changed.
But maybe—just maybe—that change had been for the good.
“I’ve got to say.” Mayor Thompson gestured around the bookshop as Emma rang up his purchase. “You’ve done a heck of a job with this place.”
“Thanks—I just hope Granny will think so, too.”
“She will.” He handed her his credit card, and she tapped it and handed it back. “She had a good feeling about you, y’know.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Apparently, Granny’s “good feelings” were just another part of the magic of this town. Emma didn’t take any of it literally, but she found all the talk of destiny and intuition more charming by the day.
When she first arrived here, she told Hunter that she’d ended up in Heart’s Hope Crossing by chance—and that was true. She’d been hung out to dry, and Granny’s offer of a job and a place to live had been a lifeline, so she’d grabbed on to it with both hands.
But what if there was something to Granny’s sixth sense? What if Emma was actually, honestly meant to be here?
What if she and Hunter were meant to be together, too?
Smiling, she placed Mayor Thompson’s books and his receipt in a green paper bag and handed them over. As he thanked her, she glanced around the store. There was this sense of rightness gathering within her, a warmth she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt before.
Managing a bookstore had seemed like a wild leap from her past experience, but she’d risen to the challenge. She enjoyed the work. Picking books and interacting with customers and putting together events and displays. And she was pretty sure she was good at it, too.
While she missed having Granny bustling around the shop beside her, she’d taken advantage of being indisputably the one in charge while the store’s matriarch had been gone. All the dust had been swept off the shelves, all the old, crumbling decorations discarded.
There wasn’t anything she could do about the faded awnings—yet—but she’d given the exterior a fresh look, with colorful fall mums in planters next to the door, and bright showcases in the windows, featuring local authors and autumn-themed picture books.
They’d already had an effect, too, with foot traffic up, and increased sales on everything she’d highlighted in the window displays.