Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
IRIS
The Worthington Hills Saturday market is in full, shameless bloom.
There’s no other way to describe it. It’s a full-on sensory assault.
Sunlight everywhere, bouncing off every glossy tomato and wild flower bouquet.
The air smells like kettle corn, cinnamon, and sunscreen.
People are everywhere, crowding the main walkways, weaving between booths like bees hopped up on lavender lattes.
I’m basically swimming in a sea of strollers, reusable bags, dogs in little bandanas, toddlers with sticky hands, and the occasional retiree absolutely crushing their power-walk.
Vendors are shouting, hawking jams and artisan bread and organic pet treats nobody’s dog actually needs but they buy anyway.
There’s a guy with a saxophone playing “Careless Whisper” for spare change, and I have to sidestep a basset hound wearing a cowboy hat just to get to the next row.
I love it. It’s chaos, but the good kind. The alive kind.
My basket’s already loaded down with heirloom tomatoes and a new aloe vera plant I’m going to add to my collection, but I’m still wandering the stalls, hunting for my next treasure.
Mostly, I'm trying not to think about Hunter Hartwell. You know, the six-foot-something wall of muscle and brooding sex appeal who’s been living in my brain rent-free for weeks, despite totally ghosting me.
It’s pathetic. But I’m determined to get over this embarrassing obsession.
That’s why I’m here, deep in the chaos of the market, determined to fill my head with anything except him.
Who cares if his hands are the size of dinner plates, and his eyes could make a nun spill her darkest confessions? I'm here to occupy my mind with something other than my smoking hot neighbor and to forget about the way my body lights up every time I think about his stupidly broad shoulders.
Today is about self-care. Not sex dreams about my neighbor. I mean it.
Truth is, I haven’t seen Grumpy since Wednesday. Not that I’m counting. Not that I checked the hallway every time I left my apartment or woke up at midnight and paced the living room, hoping to hear that familiar, deliberate tread outside my door.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting. My pathetic little crush, which I’d assumed would die a natural, dignified death, has metastasized instead.
I keep replaying that first interaction in my head—his voice all low and gravelly, his eyes pinning me like I’m a puzzle worth solving.
I can’t even walk past his front door without thinking of his stupidly broad shoulders and the way he managed to look both bored and ready to eat me for dinner at the same time.
I reset my stance, squaring my shoulders.
I’m a self-sufficient, capable woman, I remind myself.
I don’t need a damn man. Hell, I’ve never needed one.
I can take care of myself, thank you very much.
The thought charges through me, hot and sure, and I let it settle, fierce and stubborn, right behind my breastbone.
Maybe I want him—but I don’t need him. Not for a single fucking thing.
I’m about to make my final lap around the market and stop to grab a cold brew from the coffee cart, planning to call it a morning, when I see the crowd outside the Paws another claims co-sleeping is essential for bonding.
A third simply says “good luck, rookie” and leaves it at that.
I try to get ahead of disaster by making a “puppy zone” in the living room, barricading it with a couple of chairs and my laundry basket. Buster jumps the line in under three seconds, then sits on the other side, tail wagging, like he’s daring me to try again.
I sigh and collapse onto the floor, cross-legged, while he circles my feet and then, with a grand flourish, flops his head into my lap.
“You’re pretty cute,” I moan, scratching behind his ears. “I just hope we both survive the experience.”
Buster yawns, unconcerned, and curls up in my lap. Before long, he’s sound asleep and snoring adorably with his little paws wrapped tight around my heart.
I’m still sitting there, hypnotized by the world’s cutest beagle snores, when my phone buzzes with a delivery alert.
Shit. The crate and emergency puppy supplies.
The guy from Discount Mart knocks a second later, grunting as he deposits a suspiciously flat box that screams “assembly required” in my hallway.
Buster wakes up just enough to watch me struggle.
I haul the crate to my bedroom, rip open the box, and am instantly confronted by an IKEA-style battlefield of metal and plastic zip ties.
The instructions are, I swear, written in ancient runes.
I bite my lip, mutter curses that would make a sailor blush, and nearly lose my mind trying to understand the gibberish.